It’s either a great or a terrible winter to be a shortstop. On the one hand, four shortstops – Carlos Correa, Trea Turner, Xander Bogaerts, and Dansby Swanson – figure to be among the offseason’s top free agent earners, making up half of the top eight in FanGraphs’ 2023 Top 50. On the other hand, those four have each other as competition, and differentiating oneself among the All-Star shortstops of four of the last six World Series champions can’t be easy. All four showed just what they’re capable of in 2022. Turner, Bogaerts, and Swanson each finished in the top 15 in position player WAR, separated by a grand total of 0.3, and Correa – if he raised any doubts by getting off to a slow start in Minnesota – slashed .370/.419/.613 over his last 29 games to finish first among all shortstops with a 140 wRC+. These players aren’t interchangeable by any means, and Swanson doesn’t have the offensive pedigree of the other three, but the teams showing interest in one are more than likely to at least take a look at the others. A year after Corey Seager, Trevor Story, Javier Báez, and Correa were among the top free agents available, this winter’s shortstop class is even more loaded.

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When he was first featured at FanGraphs in October of last year, Edouard Julien was described as having a unique profile and a potentially bright future. A native of Quebec City whom the Minnesota Twins had taken in the 18th round of the 2019 draft out of Auburn University, the left-handed-hitting second baseman was coming off a season in which he led the minors with 110 walks while logging a .434 OBP. Augmenting his patient approach with promising power, he’d homered 18 times between the two A-ball levels.

An adjustment was nonetheless needed. Julien’s batting average had been a middling .267, and his 144 strikeouts and 28% K-rate were suggestive of a hitter who’d been guilty of taking too many hittable pitches. Eric Longenhagen addressed the issue this past March. Describing the now-23-year-old, our lead prospect analyst wrote: “Patient bordering on passive, Julien’s bat is what will carry him to the big leagues.” Read the rest of this entry »

It can be difficult to find the thing you didn’t realize you needed until you didn’t have it when it counted, or to offload it when you realized you had more of it than you could use. That thing, in this case: production from the catcher position.

Catchers are unlike infielders or outfielders, in that you can only one can play at a time. Or rather, two catchers can play at once, if one slides over to first base or DH, in which case the thing that makes them so special — the ability to slap on some plastic padding and soak up foul tips and 58-foot curveballs five nights a week — essentially goes to waste.

Consider Oakland’s situation; after developing Sean Murphy into one of the top catchers in the game, the A’s landed former top-10 pick Shea Langeliers in the Matt Olson trade. Langeliers reached the majors this year and hit fairly well, but not so well that he’s an ideal DH, which is where he made most of his starts on account of being blocked by Murphy.

Or how about the Blue Jays, who have not one but three starter-quality catchers? Alejandro Kirk emerged as a star in 2022, and Danny Jansen put up 2.6 WAR and a 140 wRC+ in just 72 games. That left Gabriel Moreno, one of the top prospects in baseball, even more blocked than Langeliers when he emerged as big league-ready late this season.

It makes sense, therefore, that trade rumors swirl around both Oakland and Toronto, as both teams could stand to cash in their surfeit of backstops for help elsewhere. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite things about baseball is the sheer number of mind games going on before every pitch. Will the batter sit on a fastball? Will the pitcher give in to the count and throw that fastball the batter is sitting on? The batter is weak against changeups, but the pitcher’s best secondary is a slider – what does that mean for each of their mindsets? First base is open, but the next batter up is strong – what does that mean? The permutations and counters are endless.

It doesn’t stop with the batter-pitcher confrontation. What if there’s a pickoff called? The defense is back and shifted – would a bunt make sense here? Does the count matter for the defense? What about the score? You can spin endlessly around these decisions, and it’s wonderful. I spend plenty of time watching the game and daydreaming about which tactics each team might employ.

That’s all awesome, and a great part of baseball. This article is very much not about those mind games. There’s another part of baseball that I also enjoy – watching phenomenal athletes at the top of their craft. Forget the game theory and levels of counter-play – the physical skill on display in a random baseball game is immense. Read the rest of this entry »

The Blue Jays and Mariners have swung the biggest trade of the young offseason so far, as Seattle has acquired Teoscar Hernández from Toronto in exchange for reliever Erik Swanson and pitching prospect, Adam Macko.

For the Mariners, the calculus for this trade is simple: immediate improvement on the offensive side of things by adding one of the 30 best hitters in baseball. The table below shows hitters with at least 1,000 plate appearances since the start of the 2020 season, ranked by wRC+:

That 132 wRC+ comes with a 26.7% strikeout rate and 6.3% walk rate. That shaky plate discipline and a BABIP that ran well above average (.345) made it unclear whether Hernández could sustain this success. But changes to his stance and leg lift unlocked a part of his swing that allowed him to make hard contact in the air more consistently. Once a hitter figures out how to do that and has a 96th percentile average exit velocity like he does, the odds are in their favor.

This trade signals a few things from the Mariners. The first is that long-time outfielder Mitch Haniger is unlikely to return. That’s not shocking, given that he wasn’t extended a qualifying offer and that he seems to have already hit his offensive peak. The second is that they are going all in to try to catch the defending World Series champion Astros. Hernández is not a long-term addition; he’s under contract for just the 2023 season. This is, essentially, a one-year rental to goose the offense.

Shipping Swanson away isn’t ideal for Seattle, given his fantastic performance this season: a 1.85 FIP in 53.2 innings. But the team’s usage of him in the postseason — he only threw one inning in five games of play — suggests that he’s seen as expendable, making him an easy choice to include in a trade for a top-30 hitter. After all, even if the Mariners love Swanson’s pedigree and stuff, it’s always worth trading middle relievers for productive hitters, even if they have only one more year of team control.

That said, I’m a firm believer in Swanson. His whiff rates on his four-seamer and splitter are both well above average, and he seems to have perfected how to use them to go with his above-average extension and straight over the top delivery. The Jays’ most glaring weakness was their bullpen, so if their goal was to improve it, then they have succeeded.

The bigger question mark in the deal is Macko. He topped out this year with 38.1 innings in High A, striking out just under 36% of the hitters he faced, but he also walked 12% of them. He was solid with a 3.77 FIP and 3.21 xFIP as well. That’s all well and good, but with minor league pitchers, it’s always important to get to the good stuff — literally. So I asked Eric Longenhagen, who is constantly sourced for information, for the goods on Macko, and lucky for us, Eric got a few looks at him in the Arizona Fall League. Check out the video below to get a better look of Macko’s stuff and mechanics.

Per Eric, Macko had some Jekyll and Hyde characteristics in Arizona, with his secondaries and command coming and going depending on the outing. That makes sense, given his walk rates. When he was on, his stuff was interesting. He has two breaking balls: a curve of the loopy ilk that comes in at the low-70s, and a slider that’s more of a mid-80s gyro spin-dominant kind. Macko tended to pitch backwards in the AFL with those two pitches, adding a running four-seamer at 93–94 mph and topping at 96 to finish hitters off in the top of the zone.

To me, the most interesting tidbit was that Macko has rather short arms and as a result can get down the mound to a low release point. That’s ideal for getting whiffs and popups on fastballs at the top of the zone. By the looks of it, the spin is pretty true as well. It might not be perfect, but Macko’s fingers stay over the ball very well, which goes right in line with the pitch playing up the zone. The curveball might not have great specs on its own, but when paired with this deceptive fastball, hitters struggle to hit it. It’s the classic pairing of high four-seamers and big depth curveballs below the zone.

When Macko has command of the slider, it flashes plus. During the regular season, he used that pitch nearly a quarter of the time, and the fastball just about half the time. The curve had about a 15% usage; he also featured a changeup sparingly. Per Eric, that pitch also flashed plus when he used it. I know this all sounds exciting, but it’s always important to remind yourself that the saying of “if the command is there” needs to be at the forefront of your mind. This big “if” is enough to put Macko in the 45+ FV tier, rather than at 50 or above. But given that the Jays’ system isn’t too deep anymore, that will put him easily in their top 10 when Eric updates it.

To recap, the Mariners get a fantastic hitter to slot right into the middle of their lineup, and the Jays get a quality reliever and intriguing pitching prospect. This trade is likely only a prelude to more moves from the Jays, though; there are rumblings all around suggesting that George Springer’s time in center field will soon come to a close, and it seems like there is another play to be made there. After all, you can’t move a 130 wRC+ hitter for only a middle reliever and expect your team to improve. This is all speculation, but there is almost certainly more to come.

While Aaron Judge and Anthony Rizzo both officially rejected their qualifying offers on Tuesday, the Yankees retained the latter nonetheless. The team agreed to terms with the 33-year-old first baseman — New York’s second-best hitter this season, after the big guy — on a two-year, $40 million contract that contains a club option for a third year.

This is the second offseason in a row in which Rizzo and the Yankees have agreed upon a two-year deal, but the bells and whistles have changed. Acquired in a 2021 deadline trade with the Cubs, he re-signed with the Yankees once the lockout ended in March via a two-year, $32 million deal that guaranteed him $16 million each year and contained an opt-out after 2022, which he exercised following a very solid performance. This time around, he’s guaranteed $40 million, via $17 million salaries for this year and next plus a $6 million buyout on a $17 million club option for 2025.

Though Rizzo would have gotten a raise by merely accepting the $19.65 million qualifying offer, it didn’t hurt his cause that earlier this week, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported that the Astros had identified him as their top target at first base. Yuli Gurriel has manned the spot for Houston for the past three years but is now a 38-year-old free agent coming off a sub-replacement level season (85 wRC+, -0.9 WAR). The thought of the world champions upgrading by taking a piece from the team they swept out of the ALCS probably didn’t sit well in the Bronx, particularly given a market where the top remaining alternative would have been 36-year-old righty José Abreu, a less optimal fit for the Yankees’ lineup. More on that below. Read the rest of this entry »

Can I let you in on a secret? I was already halfway through writing about Tyler Anderson when the news of him signing with the Angels broke because Anderson fascinates me. That article is more or less still in here. I also talk about how he fits into the Angels’ plans and how the contract comes into play at the end. It’s two reads for the price of one: one neat trick Anderson added in recent years, plus where he’ll pitch next season.

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Tyler Anderson wanted it all. Normally, you have to pick a lane as a pitcher. You can be an over-the-top fastball type, throwing four-seamers that are equally tough on opposing batters no matter their handedness. Or you might opt to be a sidearmer; that gives you a huge advantage against same-handed hitters, but allows opposite-handed hitters to see the ball cleanly and gain a huge edge. Generally speaking, relievers are more likely to throw sidearm. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but it makes sense. Starters have to navigate so many different hitters that they’re bound to face opposite-handed ones more often.

Anderson has always been a starter, and he always sported an over-the-top release point. If you picture a clock face, his four-seamer spins in the direction of 11:00; mostly straight up and down with a tiny bit of leftward tilt, as befitting a lefty with a high release point. As I said above, that means small platoon splits, and that was indeed the case. Anderson allowed the exact same wOBA to lefties and righties in his first five seasons in the majors. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve been aware of either the Baltimore Orioles or FanGraphs Dot Com in the past nine months, you already know the two entities have not always played nice with one another. On the eve of the 2022 season, our playoff odds gave Baltimore just 0.1% chance of making the playoffs, meaning that out of 20,000 simulated universes, the Orioles would only reach the Wild Card round 20 times. (I’ve been to one of those universes. Chick-fil-A is open on Sundays, Ryan Reynolds owns Twitter, and the airlines never got deregulated. It’s heaven.)

As late as September, when the Orioles had clearly surpassed any reasonable expectations and were still in the hunt, our playoff odds were still quite pessimistic relative to other projections systems. Sure enough, Baltimore finished 83-79, three games behind Tampa Bay. But for a team that hadn’t finished at or above .500 since 2016 and hadn’t even won 55 games in a full season since 2017, that’s a good year. Something to build on, particularly considering the wellspring of young talent bubbling up from the minors like the Clampett family’s oil well.

And yet the Orioles aren’t exactly keeping the band together. After moving Jorge López and Trey Mancini at the trade deadline, the first week of the offseason proper has seen several more departures, including Robinson Chirinos, Rougned Odor, and Jordan Lyles. That’s three starting position players (at least for part of the season), as well as Baltimore’s leaders in saves and innings pitched. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mariners don’t necessarily have a specific model when it comes to drafting and developing pitchers. But they do favor certain traits, and a pair of talented young right-handers serve as prime examples. One of them is George Kirby, whose 3.0 WAR this season was tops among American League rookie hurlers. The other is a 2020 fifth-round pick who emerged as arguably the most promising arm in the system.

“Taylor Dollard was identified by our pitching strategists as an interesting mover,” Mariners President of Baseball Operations Jerry Dipoto said of the 23-year-old right-hander. “We do movement assessments on draft-eligible pitchers, and from there we identify picks in the middle rounds that we think we can really do something with. Dollard was very high on our list that year.”

Plus command was, and remains, the Cal-Poly product’s primary selling point. Dollard waked just 2.2 batters per nine innings as a collegian, and this year he issued 31 free passes in 144 innings with Double-A Arkansas. His other numbers were equally impressive: 106 hits, 131 strikeouts, and a 16–2 record with a 2.25 ERA. Buoyed by that performance, he climbed to No. 3 in our Mariners top prospect rankings.

Tom Allison, who at the time was Seattle’s VP of Scouting, played a key role in bringing Dollard on board. According to Dipoto, the longtime scout and executive “had an itch” for the right-hander and was “probably the first one that rang the Taylor Dollard bell.” Read the rest of this entry »

Nick Anderson has had a hell of a baseball career. If you haven’t already heard his story, allow me to enlighten you. Anderson played Division II baseball for three years at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota before transferring to an NAIA school, Mayville State University, for his senior year. Despite being drafted by the Brewers in the 32nd round of the 2012 draft, he opted to play independent league baseball for three years. From 2015-18, he made his way up the Twins’ minor league ladder, then was traded to the Marlins that winter. Finally, he made his major league debut as a 28-year-old in 2019. His career had already been a wild ride.

Is it surprising that a player like Anderson found himself on the Tampa Bay Rays? It shouldn’t be! They saw something in him, as they often do, and acquired him and Trevor Richards at the 2019 trade deadline while trading away a talented prospect in Jesús Sánchez and another reliever in Ryne Stanek. Anderson’s performance in the first half of the season had been impressive, but upon his arrival in Tampa in August, he got even better. In 21.1 innings, he struck out 52.6% of the batters he faced, only surrendered five runs, and pitched to a 1.62 FIP. That’s pure dominance.

Anderson saw similar success in the shortened 2020 season, posting a 1.35 FIP in 16.1 innings. But since then, he has only thrown six big league innings due to a partially torn UCL in 2021 and then a bumpy recovery in the minors this season after opting for a UCL brace procedure rather than Tommy John surgery. On top of that, he dealt with plantar fasciitis. If you ever experienced that, you know that it feels like the bottom of your foot is ripping in half every time you take a step. Anyways, Anderson has gotten another opportunity, this time with the Atlanta Braves.

Right-handed reliever Nick Anderson and the Atlanta Braves are in agreement on a major league contract, sources tell ESPN. The 32-year-old Anderson is on a split deal that will pay $875,000 if he’s in the big leagues and $180,000 in the minors. He spent four years with Tampa Bay.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 11, 2022

If he does indeed end up with the big league club, he’ll have the chance to re-establish himself as one of the more lethal relievers in the game. How likely he is to do so, however, is unclear. Historically, the road back from a torn or partially torn UCL without receiving Tommy John surgery hasn’t been a great one. That doesn’t mean Anderson won’t buck the trend, but it does leave me skeptical that he can return to his previous form.

If there is a path back to success, it will need to include recovering his four-seam fastball’s shape and maybe a tick of velocity. Anderson’s mechanics fluctuated as he dealt with injuries, and it led to him releasing the baseball differently than he did during his dominant 2019-20 stretch. Below is a table of the qualities that changed between 2019 and ’21, and the resulting performance:

Anderson’s fastball was at its best when he was getting an additional half inch of extension and releasing from a lower arm slot. That isn’t all that surprising. He doesn’t have overwhelming spin or velocity, so having a release point that gave him a flatter entry into the zone was crucial for his success. Being a 6-foot-4 person with a loopy arm swing made Anderson tough to read and allowed his fastball to play up when he was able to drive his release further toward home plate. Because of the drop in his release and extension, he also lost ride on his fastball. Basically, it all fell apart.

Now, he’s left in a tough situation. Did his increase in extension cause his elbow issues, or did the elbow issues come first and lead to his fastball shape and movement deteriorating due to a suboptimal mechanical change? It’s impossible to say exactly, but what we can do is look at his mechanics and try to point to specific movements other than the arm swing itself that can explain the drop in release point and extension. I’ll start with two videos from 2020. The first is from August 7, and the second is from August 12:

Next, let’s look at two videos from 2021. The first is from September 19, and the second is from September 26:

To me, it doesn’t even require slow motion video to see what changed in Anderson’s mechanics. His shin angle is almost dead at 90 degrees (perpendicular to the ground) in 2020. That is a perfect starting point to keep your lower half anchored in the ground while creating hip and shoulder separation. He is then able to strongly plant in the ground and get to full knee extension right when he releases the ball. The stronger your base, the more control you have in your hips as you rotate down the mound. You can’t get down the mound into a low release point without holding your base well. If you don’t, it’ll look something like Anderson’s struggles in 2021.

During his brief 2021 stint, Anderson couldn’t find steady mechanics. I watched all of his appearances, and whether it was in the setup of the hands or the feet, they all had something slightly different. On September 19, he used a more aggressive leg kick, which led to him getting down the mound too quickly. Because of that, he reached full front knee extension earlier than in 2020. This led to him releasing the ball higher and earlier. It was a decent location, but that doesn’t mean the process was optimal.

He must have felt something was off because a week later he changed his hand setup, but it didn’t do him any good. The two things that are telling to me were his reciprocal movement to releasing the ball, and his upper back posture. In 2020, he had a controlled kickback that went right back through the center of his body as he stood on one leg after delivering the pitch while swinging his right foot around. In 2021, he delivered the ball with his upper back bending a bit too much (you can see it on the ripples of his jersey across his name), which led to his arm and right leg kicking up and back instead of towards his center of mass.

Again, it’s hard to say exactly why these changes occurred, but regardless of the cause, it’s clear Anderson was compensating. If he can return to something closer to his 2020 mechanics, then perhaps he can better optimize his fastball shape to once again play with his curveball and be a productive pitcher for the Braves. The one thing I still worry about is whether the mechanics that gave him better extension and release were unsustainable for his body. If that’s the case, it might be unrealistic to expect the velocity, mechanics, and shape to all return without re-injury. I know I’ve caveated this multiple times, but there is reason to believe Anderson is a resilient fella. After all, he has overcome the odds time and again during his career. Why should he stop now?