On Monday, I took a look at the hitters that KATOH liked the most from rounds two through eight of last week’s amateur draft. I was planning to follow up with a complementary piece on pitchers the following day, but was rudely interrupted when basically all of the top prospects were called up to the major leagues. But now that we have a respite from this year’s onslaught of prospect call-ups, we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming. Here are a few of the pitchers, in order of projected WAR, who slipped past the first round but caught KATOH’s eye.

Garrett Cleavinger, LHP, Baltimore Orioles
Draft Round: 3rd
Projected WAR: 6.6

Garrett Cleavinger was positively dominant in his three years in the University of Oregon’s bullpen. The hard-throwing lefty pitched to a 1.94 ERA over his college career, and struck out an impressive 13.3 batters per nine innings. He was most dominant of all in his junior campaign, where he struck out a whopping 14.9 batters per nine, while walking a manageable 3.8. It’s well known that relief pitchers are generally less valuable than starters. But among relievers, Cleavinger’s performance was about as good as they come. The fact that he pitched in the Pac-12 conference also works in his favor.

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Command is a funny thing. It’s not easy to spot in the numbers. You have to watch a game and see the pitcher consistently miss his spots before you start to understand that even a guy with great walk rates may not have great command. Taijuan Walker does not have good command. He also walked 9.5% of the batters he faced in the minor leagues, a number that isn’t as far off the American League average this year (7.6%) as you might expect.

Pretty sure the catcher wanted this fastball low and away.

Over the last four starts, Walker has walked three batters in 29 innings. If you have an opinion regarding Walker’s command, you probably won’t change it over four starts. But Walker is still young enough, and not yet fully formed — perhaps there’s something else he’s done that can help us better understand why command is so hard to quantify. And also how likely it is that Walker can keep up this production.

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When you promote someone as young as Carlos Correa, the most you can realistically hope for is that the player’s able to hold his own. Sure, it would be possible for a 20-year-old to become a standout immediately, but just because it’s possible doesn’t mean it’s reasonable to expect. The majors are hard, and rookies aren’t finished products, because the rookies haven’t been in the majors, and the majors are hard. Generally, you look for learning, and you look for glimpses. You look for signs you’ve promoted the player to the appropriate level.

We don’t know what rookie Carlos Correa is going to be. Lots of baseball left to go; lots of adjustments left to be made. This much could be said, though: if a 20-year-old rookie were to become a standout immediately, he might do things like Correa has done. It would be difficult to imagine a more promising start, and underscoring everything, the Astros got a hell of a glimpse of Correa’s talent on Wednesday in Colorado. On Wednesday, Carlos Correa did something amazing. Let’s watch it.

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In May 2014, I wrote an article within these very pages with basically the same exact title. The calendar has turned to 2015, and the American League is even wilder, woollier, and every bit as mediocre. Recent traditional powers like the the Yankees and Red Sox — and even the Rangers, A’s, and Angels — aren’t what they used to be, and the anticipated next wave, represented by the Mariners and Indians, has been slow to deliver. What we are left with is a morass of clubs, with few clear positive standouts, and few relatively hopeless also-rans. How to make sense of this?

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It’s raining prospects. Every time I check Twitter, it seems, I catch wind of yet another player who’s been summoned to the majors. The latest player to get the call is Kyle Schwarber, the power-hitting “catcher” in the Cubs organization. Schwarber made his big-league debut on Tuesday night as a pinch-hitter, and struck out in his lone plate appearance. Last night, he made his first major-league start, serving as the Cubs designated hitter. Schwarber made the most of this opportunity by going 4-for-5 with a triple.

Word from the Cubs is that Schwarber’s promotion is only a temporary one. The Cubs play their next five games in American League ballparks, which means they’ll need a designated hitter. The Cubs would be hard-pressed to find a better designated hitter than Schwarber. Although he lacks a real defensive position, he hit .320/.438/.579 in the minors this year. Schwarber’s 192 wRC+ in Double-A is the highest among qualified minor-league batters.

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Everyone makes mistakes. Some marry people they shouldn’t. Some cheat on their taxes. Some refuse to eat their dinner and find out later I won’t give them dessert and then throw a holy fit that prevents me from starting my article on how Francisco Cervelli is the Pittsburgh Pirates MVP until very late. But I will persevere. Welcome to an article about how Francisco Cervelli is the Pittsburgh Pirates MVP!

In fact, this brief reflection on mistakes is relevant, as the Yankees seem to have made one when they dealt Cervelli to Pittsburgh last November for reliever Justin Wilson. It’s not that Wilson is lousy so much as Cervelli has been fantastic. But let’s consider only mistakes for the moment. The Yankees gave Brian McCann $85 million over five seasons to be their starting catcher before the 2014 season because he was (a) available on the free-agent market and (b) one of the few major-league catchers who’s both a good hitter and good defender. McCann’s defensive reputation was as strong as his hitting, and in addition, he consistently scored high in catcher-framing statistics according both to Baseball Prospectus and StatCorner throughout his career. If anyone is worth $17 million for five seasons in his early and mid-30s that sounds like a good candidate.

But then last season happened. McCann had one of the worst offensive seasons of his career, recording a 92 wRC+, although his pitch-framing skills helped keep him a valuable player. In 2014, he stole 68 strikes and added 10.2 runs via his framing alone, according to Baseball Prospectus. StatCorner says the number is 11.4. Either way that’s a win and a bit more. This season he’s back to hitting again (119 wRC+) but his pitch-framing numbers have taken a nosedive. Perhaps it’s not surprising that McCann would step back a bit in pitch-framing skill as he enters his age-31 season.

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It’s possible Andrew McCutchen hasn’t been the hottest hitter in baseball, but at the very least, there haven’t been many much hotter. What makes the year notable, though, is that — as late as early May — McCutchen’s OPS was rattling around in the .500s. McCutchen didn’t go from good to red-hot. He went from bad to red-hot, and it’s worth examining the turnaround. Especially since I went to the trouble of examining his slump several weeks back. There was a time when people were legitimately worried about the Pirates’ best player. Now it’s all peaches.

It was on May 8 that I published an article titled “The Matter With Andrew McCutchen,” for JABO. Part of this article will now have to review that article, but understanding what was happening is critical for understanding what’s changed.

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On June 10, David Murphy went 2 for 4 in a 9-3 loss to the Seattle Mariners at Progressive Field. The Indians outfielder faced right-hander Taijuan Walker in his first three plate appearances. His fourth time up, he faced left-hander Joe Beimel. Murphy, who is hitting .326/.367/.473 on the season, broke down his four at bats the following day.

LEAD-IN

“My general approach is the same for every pitcher. I take an up-the-middle approach. My swing plays into my favor when I pull the ball, but at the same time, a good hitter needs to be able to cover the entire plate. Walker has a good fastball. It’s a little bit sneaky, so if you’re not ready for the heater, you’re going to miss it. His command is what gets him in trouble, so at some point, you’re probably going to get a pitch to hit. But he pitched well against us at their place, about a week-and-a-half ago, and he did a pretty good job again last night. Read the rest of this entry »

There seems to be an urge to consider Jeff Francoeur‘s Tuesday pitching appearance symbolic. Francoeur’s an outfielder called on to pitch, and he went two innings in a blowout because the bullpen phone was off the hook, and at one point he had to reassure a coach on the field he still had something left in the tank. Superficially, it seems appropriate for this 2015 Phillies major-league train wreck. I’m not totally sold, though. For one thing, communication mishaps can happen to good teams. And for another, has this really been that much of a catastrophe? The Phillies suck, but the Phillies were expected to suck, with our preseason projections calling them the worst club in baseball. This was unavoidable. But, Cole Hamels has been healthy and good. Jonathan Papelbon has been healthy and good. Maikel Franco‘s been good. Down below, J.P. Crawford‘s been good. Aaron Nola’s been good. There are things going right, here, even while the team loses game after game. Winning wasn’t ever going to be the point. Being able to win again soon is the point.

Maybe I’m taking it too seriously, though. Maybe you’re not supposed to think about it too long. And besides, the state of the Phillies is a different conversation. It’s a bigger conversation. The conversation people want to have right now is more about Jeff Francoeur. How long have we wanted to see Jeff Francoeur pitch? He finally did it, and on a day that two other non-pitchers pitched, in a whole other game.

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If there was a seminal moment in the movement towards statistical analysis in Major League Baseball, it may very well have been the 2001 publication of Voros McCracken’s research on Defense Independent Pitching Stats, which he shortened to DIPS. In a series of articles over the course of a few years, McCracken demonstrated that Major League pitchers were more or less equal when it came to preventing hits on balls in play. While there were huge and sustained differences in walks, strikeouts, and home runs allowed, the same did not hold true for the rate at which balls were converted in outs when a pitcher gave his defense a chance to get involved. Whether it was Pedro Martinez or Aaron Sele, roughly 30% of all balls in play went for hits, with minimal variation between pitchers.

McCracken’s idea was so antithetical to general wisdom about evaluating pitching that the subject became a primary source of research in the analytical community, but guys like Tom Tippett (now working for the Red Sox) and Keith Woolner (employed by the Indians) mostly ended up confirming McCracken’s original thesis. Despite a conclusion that seemed absurd, for the most part, pitchers really didn’t appear to have much control over whether balls in play went for hits or outs.

Tippett did manage to find a few types of pitchers who could somewhat break the mold, most notably knuckleballers, and further research showed that the data suggests more that pitchers have “little control” rather than “no control” over their hit rates on balls in play, but even with a more muted conclusion, the reality is that most big league pitchers end up in the range of a .280 to .320 Batting Average on Balls in Play, or BABIP as it is usually called these days. There are differences in pitchers in that range, but by and large, that’s mostly where everyone fits.

Everyone, that is, except Chris Young.

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