This was supposed to be the year that things started heading in the right direction for the Houston Astros, you know. After bottoming out in 2013 with a third straight 100-loss season, a season-ending 16-game losing streak, 0.0 television ratings, and endless accusations of “not trying to win,” they were expected to at least trend upwards in 2014. Thanks to importing major league players in Dexter Fowler and Scott Feldman, welcoming top prospects George Springer and Jon Singleton, and seeing unexpected steps forward from Jose Altuve and Dallas Keuchel, it largely has. The Astros are still a bad team, but they aren’t even last in their own division, and they’re merely within the range of other bad teams, as opposed to drifting on their own private island of awful.

But despite some on-field positives, it’s still been a tough few weeks for the organization. The leaked Ground Control files were an embarrassment. Stories began to pop up about potential hits to the organization’s reputation thanks to their non-traditional methods. 2012 top pick Carlos Correa had a successful season cut short by a broken leg. 2013 top pick Mark Appel has struggled badly in A-ball. Now, there’s this: Casey Close, the agent for 2014 top overall pick Brady Aiken, is criticizing the Astros for how they’ve handled negotiations with both Aiken and another of his Astros-drafted clients, fifth-round high school pitcher Jacob Nix.

To catch you up for those just joining us: Read the rest of this entry »

Something I assume the Rays understand: From here on out, they project to be perhaps the best team in the American League East. Something else I assume the Rays understand: They’ve dug themselves into too deep a hole, so this year the playoffs presumably aren’t in the cards. And that’s why we’re probably going to see the Rays trade David Price within the next couple weeks. He can help them only so much in 2014, he’ll be difficult for them to afford in 2015 and pieces received in return could replenish what’s become an emptier system than usual. This is how the Rays do the Rays. Price’s status is no kind of secret.

Given how good Price is — and given how many teams consider themselves to be in the playoff hunt — the lefty has a number of potential suitors. Price is the premier impact player available, so no one out there can shift the balance like he can. He might be worth 2 WAR in the final two-and-a-half months; then there’s the playoff bonus, to say nothing of 2015. It’s pretty easy to plug in numbers and see how Price could improve any rotation. But how do those improvements translate to changes in the odds?

Another way of asking the same question: Who might stand to benefit the most — in 2014 — from acquiring a guy like David Price?

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Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

Archie Bradley, RHP, Arizona Diamondbacks (Profile)
Level: Triple-A/Double-A   Age: 21   Top-15: 1st   Top-100: 5th
Line: 46.2 IP, 38 K, 26 BB, 45 H, 3.66 ERA

Bradley is a talented pitcher.

The 21-year-old hurler entered the season as the No. 1 ranked pitcher on FanGraphs Top 100 Prospects list. He recently placed second amongst pitchers behind Seattle’s Taijuan Walker on the mid-season update. Keep in mind that he missed significant time during the first half due to an elbow injury and you have a good idea of just how talented this Oklahoma native truly is.

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As a starting pitcher, you get to the All Star Game by dominating with a full array of pitches. You’re built to go deep into games and see lineups multiple times. You scout the opposing hitters and it’s all a lot of work. Then you get to the All Star Game, you break from your routine, you have to come in for a short stint, and you can air it out.

It’s a situation ripe for fastballs.

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Much has been written about pitch framing, and Tyler Flowers knows the subject well. The Chicago White Sox backstop has caught 255 big league games and another 362 at the minor-league level. He’s no grizzled veteran, but at the age of 28 he’s far from a neophyte behind the dish.

Flowers is 6-foot-4, which makes receiving low pitches a challenge. It’s a facet of his game he’s working to improve, and he’s doing so fully aware that not all framing nuance is of a purely physical nature. Flowers shared his thoughts on selling strikes — and related matters — when the White Sox visited Fenway Park last week.

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Flowers on getting the low strike: “When the situation permits – nobody on base – I’ve been putting one knee down. I’ve been lowering my center of gravity probably another three-four inches, which strengthens my ability to handle a pitch at the bottom of the zone. Before, it was 10 inches high, now all of a sudden you’ve lowered yourself so the bottom of your zone is six inches high. You can handle that pitch and not have it carry out of the zone; you can be in a strong position to kind of hold that pitch and kind of massage it back up into the zone to keep it looking like a good pitch.

“I think smaller guys have an advantage in that department. Take a Jonathan Lucroy. He’s a little smaller — a little more wiry and limber – and is able to sit extremely low. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes, we nerds like to go out on the town. One of those times is the weekend of the Saber Seminar, which is one of the best events (if not the best) on the yearly sabermetric and/or sabermatic calendar. This year’s Saber Seminar is August 16-17. So, just as we did last year, we’re once again going to set up shop at The Mead Hall in Cambridge the night before Saber Seminar, on Friday, August 15th!

Last year’s event was a great time, if I say so myself. Mead Hall has a nice little upstairs lounge that herded us nerds into a corner where we couldn’t hurt anyone with our math gave us some privacy. Combine that with good food and over 100 beers on tap, and that’s a winning equation!

We’ll be kicking things off around 7 pm, which is coincidentally right around the time when the Red Sox will begin the second game of a four-game set with the Astros. My sources tell me that folks like Dave Cameron, David Appelman, Carson Cistulli, Matt Swartz and David Laurila will be on the premises for the event, as well as Saber Seminar event organizers Dan Brooks and Chuck Korb.

Saber Seminar itself is sold out, but whether or not you have a ticket, you should come by Mead Hall and join us for an evening of beer and baseball. We can discuss what defensive position Xander Bogaerts should be playing, just how much of a problem George Springer’s strikeout rate is, and much, much more.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Tommy La Stella doesn’t have the lowest isolated-power figure of the 310 batters to have compiled 150-plus plate appearances this season. Indeed, he has the 19th-lowest. What distinguishes La Stella from the 18 players above him on that particular laggardboard, however, is that La Stella has also recorded a park-adjusted batting line above league average. La Stella’s ability to draw walks (he has a 10.8% walk rate) while limiting strikeouts (and 11.4% strikeout rate) — plus the influence of a probably fortunate .333 BABIP — have all conspired to produce a 107 wRC+ over 176 PAs.

Nor is any of this unexpected, really. Over parts of four minor-league seasons, La Stella recorded about a third more walks than strikeouts. This past March, both Steamer and ZiPS projected La Stella to produce an above-average park-adjusted offensive line. Right now, in mid-July, both Steamer and ZiPS project La Stella to produce an above-average park-adjusted batting line for the rest of the season.

The utility of a player with minimal power will always be a concern. What La Stella’s first 40-plus games as a major-leaguer suggest, however, is that, given sufficiently competent plate-discipline skills, a batter can render himself useful despite an almost total absence of power.

In fact, La Stella has produced so few extra-base hits that a sufficiently motivated weblogger could theoretically compose an entire post featuring animated GIFs of those same extra-base hits without unduly taxing either the relevant site’s server or a reader’s capacity to load that post comfortably.

As I say, one could theoretically do that. One could also actually do it, as well — in fact, has actually done it, today and here.

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As I see it, there are three ways to determine which is better, between the American League and the National League. Those ways:

• The hard way
• The easy way
• The easiest way

The easiest way is to just pick one and stand by it. Think the National League’s better? Declare as much and refuse to give any ground, no matter the evidence. You have made your determination!

That leaves two ways to do this with actual math. The more complicated way is to look at the performances of players who’ve switched leagues, and compare those performances to expected performances. That’ll get you somewhere, but that’ll also cost you a good amount of time, most probably. Thankfully, there’s an easier way that works just fine. Want to know which league is better? Look at how each league has performed against the other league! This is the 18th year of interleague play. It’s as old as Brady Aiken. It’s not new anymore — it’s old enough to join the army — and we can make use of the data it provides.

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With the season on hiatus for the playing of the Midsummer Classic, we might recall some of the best players never to play on all All Star team. My personal nominations for such an award, if it were to exist, would be for Garry Maddox, one of the best center fielders I’ve ever had the pleasure to watch, and Tim Salmon, a consistent, prolific middle-of-the-order power threat. Toss in Kirk Gibson for good measure. Articles are also written about the worst players ever to play in All Star Game, but this is not one of them. This is about an unlikely participant – the Reds’ Alfredo Simon, who was yesterday named as a late addition to the NL roster. Anyone who had him in the “Future All Star” pool at any time in the last decade and a half, please step to the head of the line. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2012, the Orioles — fresh off a losing streak dating back to the Cal Ripken / Mike Mussina / Davey Johnson squad of 1997 — shocked all of baseball by winning 93 games and the American League wild card game. Backed by what seemed like completely unsustainable one-run luck and with the knowledge that the rest of the AL East was still dangerous, most analysts said something along the lines of “that was fun, good luck doing it again.” They didn’t quite get back to the playoffs in 2013, but 85 wins was still something to be proud of, thanks mostly to 53 homers from Chris Davis and the smashing defensive debut of Manny Machado.

Once again, no one thought much of them headed into 2014. The Red Sox had just won the World Series; the Yankees had added Masahiro Tanaka, Brian McCann, Jacoby Ellsbury and Carlos Beltran. The Jays couldn’t possibly be as bad as they’d been in 2013, and the Rays might have been the best team of any of them. In our 2014 predictions, only two writers picked the O’s to win the division.

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