Don’t ask Corey Kluber if he throws a curveball or a slider. There’s only one response, and it will be so deadpan it’s almost a whisper on the wind: “Breaking ball.” Maybe it doesn’t matter, but maybe it does. But what is that breaking ball?
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: The trade deadline is over, and now we head for the final few months of the pennant race. So let’s talk deadline recap, awards speculation, or who will end up in the postseason. Or anything else, I guess.
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| 11:39 |
: Queue is now open. We’ll start in about 15 minutes.
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| 11:52 |
: Alright, let’s start this up a few minutes early.
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Hi Dave. Really enjoyed your Red Sox piece. Just wondering what you think the odds are that the Red Sox will trade Uehara or Napoli some time in August? |
| 11:53 |
: Napoli: 95%. As long as he stays healthy for another few weeks, he’ll end up on a contender, maybe STL as a better platoon partner for Brandon Moss. Uehara won’t clear waivers, I don’t think, so I’d guess he’ll stay.
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| 11:53 |
Are we to the point where we can legitimately discuss Jake Arrieta being a top 10 starting pitcher in the MLB? |
The Yankees rotation is looking rather thin these days. After losing Michael Pineda to a forearm injury, the team was left with a gaping hole in their rotation behind Masahiro Tanaka, Nathan Eovaldi, Ivan Nova and CC Sabathia. Even before Pineda’s injury, the team already had a hole at the back of their rotation in Sabathia, whose days as a productive pitcher appear to be well behind him. Overall, that’s an underwhelming rotation for team that’s likely headed to the playoffs.
Somewhat curiously, the Yankees didn’t acquire any rotation help at the trade deadline. Even more curiously, it doesn’t seem like they made much of an effort to do so. Instead, they seemed more interested in fortifying the back of their bullpen, which is already one of the best in baseball.
The imminent arrival of top prospect Luis Severino may have been the primary reason for the Yankees’ inaction. Minutes after the non-waiver trade deadline had passed, Brian Cashman revealed the 21-year-old’s next start would be in the big leagues. He debuts tonight against the Red Sox.
Severino has little left to prove in the minor leagues. The hard-throwing righty split time between Double-A and Triple-A this year, where he recorded FIPs of 2.34 and 2.53, respectively. Severino was similarly dominant last season, when he rattled off a 2.46 ERA and 2.46 FIP across three minor league levels: Low-A, High-A and Double-A. Read the rest of this entry »
Just days after completing a pair of trades, sending both David Price and Yoenis Cespedes out of town for five pitching prospects, Dave Dombrowski was “released from his contract” by Tigers owner Mike Ilitch. The timing of the move was perhaps more surprising than the end result, as Dombrowski’s contract expired at the end of the season, and Jon Paul Morosi had speculated that this might be his final season with the Tigers a month ago. After 14 years at the helm, perhaps it was time for both sides to get a change of scenery.
Certainly, Dombrowski’s legacy in Detroit is already secure. He took a moribund franchise and turned it into a perennial winner, putting together rosters that managed a .500 or better record in eight of the nine seasons after they posted the worst record in baseball history. They made the playoffs five times during that stretch, and went to the World Series twice. Unquestionably, Dombrowski’s tenure with the Tigers was a smashing success, even without bringing Detroit a championship that has eluded Mr. Ilitch for so long.
The foundations of this nearly decade-long run of success was built on the back of some of the most successful trades in baseball during his tenure. While many organizations preach the value of building from within, Dombrowski put good teams on the field that were often pieced together with players extracted from other organizations. Whether it was outright heists for quality players like Carlos Guillen, Jhonny Peralta, or Doug Fister, or blockbusters like his deal for now franchise icon Miguel Cabrera, Dombrowski seemed to come out on the winning end of more than his fair share of trades.
And even when ownership boxed him in with a bad free agent signing — like the nine year, $216 million commitment to Prince Fielder that forced Cabrera to masquerade as a third baseman — Dombrowski figured out how to salvage that deal, picking up a valuable contributor in Ian Kinsler while dumping the majority of Fielder’s remaining contract on the Rangers. Certainly, he wasn’t perfect — his deal sending Doug Fister out of Detroit was as bad as his original deal to acquire Fister was good — but Dombrowski’s trade record can stand up next to any other executive in baseball.
But for his many strengths, Dombrowski’s Tigers had one critical weakness that he could seemingly never overcome. For whatever reason, Dave Dombrowski was absolutely terrible at putting together a Major League bullpen.
Heading into the season, Kris Bryant enjoyed favored status when it came to predicting a National League Rookie of the Year. When FanGraphs writers were polled before the season, 20 of 36 votes went to the Chicago Cubs’ third baseman; seven went Joc Pederson; six were cast for Jorge Soler; Noah Syndergaard, Jung Ho Kang and Raisel Iglesias each got one. A couple months into the season, Pederson inserted himself into the race with 13 home runs by the end of May. As the year has moved on, Bryant and Pederson have come back to the pack a bit while Matt Duffy, Kang and Syndergaard have moved into the conversation for the NL’s top rookie. The award is no longer a two-horse battle, and all the players who have risen up are sure to see plenty of exposure since each of them is in the middle of a pennant race.
As Owen Watson wrote, this season has been a historic one for rookies, particularly position players. With Bryant and Pederson leading the way, the rookie class is producing at a greater level than any in the past decade. It’s likely the best class in nearly 30 years, back when Barry Bonds and Jose Canseco were rookies. In the past month, Bryant and Pederson have allowed a few other players to enter the race. Pederson — a three-true-outcomes player to begin the season — has removed the two positive outcomes over the past month, walking just 3% of the time and hitting only one home run. Bryant hasn’t fallen quite as far. He’s still drawing walks, but he is striking out nearly one-third of the time and has a wRC+ of 58 over the past 30 days. Read the rest of this entry »
When the Nationals picked up Jonathan Papelbon, they weren’t doing so to replace Drew Storen, but they knew they’d be giving him a demotion. It didn’t sit real well with Storen, nor did it sit well with a large number of fans, who wondered what Storen did to deserve getting booted from the closer role. Storen is in the middle of probably the best season of his career, with a strikeout rate that’s skyrocketed from last year’s one in five hitters to this year’s one in three. Storen has become a real shutdown reliever, and you generally don’t see those guys losing responsibilities.
But it is possible for Storen and Papelbon to share the later innings. Provided they get along, having both ought to be better than having one or the other, and Papelbon, for his part, was quickly impressed by the younger righty. A tweet that went around:
Jonathan Papelbon: “I was in the shower with Storen, I said ‘can you show me that slider grip tomorrow?’ He was really, really good.”
— Chris Johnson (@masnCJ) July 30, 2015
That slider — we should talk about that slider. Drew Storen has long thrown a slider, but his slider this year is behaving differently, and while you can’t simply chalk his entire improvement up to a tweak of one pitch, it seems to be a major component. Now, some weeks back, Owen already discussed a bit of what was going on. He highlighted some of the changes, and pointed out how successful the pitch is. So, Owen wrote about why the pitch is notable. I want to tell you why it might look familiar.
Watching the Mets and the Nationals Sunday night on ESPN, there was a lot of talk about momentum. Momentum that the Mets seem to have, which has allowed them to catch and overtake their heavily-favored rival. It’s an easy thing to say, and an easy thing to believe, but then, right before the Mets caught fire, you could argue they bottomed out. They lost to the Padres, they had the whole Carlos Gomez fiasco, and then they lost to the Padres much much worse. The Mets right now are at a local maximum. Immediately preceding this, they had crashed to a low point.
There are some parallels between the Mets as a whole and their own Lucas Duda. Overall this season, Duda’s been pretty good. Over the last week and a half or so, Duda’s been the very hottest hitter in baseball. But from the start of June through July 24, Duda slugged .275. He then ripped off a stretch of nine homers in eight games. The timelines aren’t the same, but, Duda, like the Mets, bottomed out, and then reversed course in an instant. Duda flipped his own momentum, and in so doing, he wound up bashing an anomalous dinger.
With Rick Porcello headed to the disabled list following a triceps injury, the Red Sox were in need of a starting pitcher for tonight’s start against the Yankees. Rather than turning to a Triple-A scrub to take Porcello’s spot in the rotation, the Sox opted to call up top prospect Henry Owens. Owens will take the mound in Yankee stadium tonight for his big league debut.
Owens, 22, has pitched exclusively at Triple-A Pawtucket this year, where he’s put up a 3.16 ERA and 3.68 FIP over 122 innings of work. The 6-foot-6 lefty has struck out 21% of the batters he’s faced, and has walked 11%. Other than Owens’ height, none of the figures cited above sound particularly impressive. Owens’ strikeout rate is hardly better than the International League average of 18.6%, and his walk rate is significantly worse than average. If you didn’t know any better, you might look at Owens’ 2015 stat line and conclude that he’s a fringe prospect.
Owens’ 2015 numbers may not be much to look at, but he performed markedly better in his first three seasons as a pro. In 2012, the year after the Red Sox took him 36th overall, Owens struck out 29% of opponent batters faced in Low-A. The next year, he whiffed 30% between High-A and Double-A in 2013. However, while the strikeouts were certainly encouraging, his 11% walk rate inflated his FIP to 3.61 over that span. Read the rest of this entry »
The hands seem so important when it comes to hitters, it’s fair to maybe be fascinated with them. Where are they before the swing? How do they get to the ball? How important is the top hand with respect to the bottom hand? It’s easy to spot them, it’s easy to track them, it’s easy to talk about them.
But so much of what you do with your body determines what is happening with your hands. And so, if you talk to Josh Donaldson about hitting, he won’t have a ton to say about his hands. But his shoulders? His torso? He’ll have plenty to say about those things.
And so, even if I asked Donaldson about his hands, it’s what followed that was maybe more interesting.
There’s no questioning that the Colorado Rockies’ rotation has been awful this season. In fact, by way of FIP-, the 2015 Rockies have the third worst rotation since 1915. As of this writing, not a single Rockies pitcher with more than 10 starts has a FIP that’s even above-average this year — which leaves fans with little to look forward to. That’s about to change, though, as the Rockies have summoned 23-year-old top prospect Jon Gray from Triple-A Albuquerque to start tonight’s game against the Mariners.
The Rockies drafted Gray third overall in the 2013 amateur draft out of the University of Oklahoma, and he immediately began to perform in the minor leagues. He closed out his draft year by pitching to a 1.93 ERA and 1.88 FIP in nine starts between Rookie Ball and High-A. Gray appeared to be on the fast track to the majors after such an exciting debut, but his performance tailed off substantially in Double-A last year. After striking out 26% and 42% of batters faced in Rookie Ball and High-A, respectively, he whiffed just 22% at the Double-A level. Along with a 8% walk rate, this resulted in a middling 3.91 ERA. KATOH forecasted Gray for just 2.3 WAR through his age-28 season. Read the rest of this entry »
