After a promising end to their 2021 season, the Detroit Tigers made a few big splashes in free agency to support a wave of young prospects on the verge of making their big league debuts. Instead of continuing to build on that momentum, however, Detroit took a huge step backwards last year, losing 96 games while scoring the fewest runs in the majors. Their new additions, Javier Báez and Eduardo Rodriguez, combined for just 2.6 WAR, and their top position player prospects, Spencer Torkelson and Riley Greene, had rough introductions to the big leagues. This cyclone of disappointment led to the dismissal of long-time general manager Al Avila and a bevy of questions about the direction of the franchise.

There are plenty of problems new president of baseball operations Scott Harris needs to address on the roster and in the organization. The early-career struggles and future development of Torkelson and Greene loom the largest, however. As prospects, those two were seen as can’t-miss, heart-of-the-order bats who would form the core of the next great Tigers lineup. Instead, their disappointing rookie seasons were a significant contributor to that league-worst offense in 2022.

Torkelson and Greene are both under 24 years old and will have plenty of opportunities to develop into the kind of contributors that reflect their status as former top prospects. Still, it would behoove Detroit to give them every advantage to succeed in the big leagues, leaving no stone unturned. To that end, the Tigers announced on Wednesday that they would be making some adjustments to the dimensions of Comerica Park ahead of Opening Day:

We’re adjusting @ComericaPark’s outfield dimensions and lowering wall heights in key areas prior to Opening Day 2023.

— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) January 11, 2023

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If you’re like me, you’ve spent a lot of time this offseason clicking around on RosterResource’s excellent Free Agent Tracker. Or perhaps not. Perhaps you have friends and family to attend to, or hobbies, or a rich inner life. Good for you. Don’t rub it in.

If you sort the unsigned players either by 2022 WAR or ’23 projected WAR, the same name comes up: Elvis Andrus. You remember him — that guy from the Rangers in the early 2010s. You’re probably aware he’s still kicking around, and also that he was quite good in 2022. And yet he remains without a job for 2023. Curious.

Andrus was part of the last generation of star shortstops who benefited from the Ozzie Smith scouting corona: If a shortstop was fast, hit for a high average, and played defense with skill and joie de vivre, he must be Ozzie Smith. Then the likes of Carlos Correa came along and now shortstops look like 3-4 outside linebackers. Read the rest of this entry »

Bo Bichette burst onto the scene in 2021, proving to be every bit the star he looked like as a prospect. His bat was dynamic, and he hit for both power and average. His defense at shortstop was passable, which was all anyone could have hoped for. He was durable, too, ranking among the league leaders in both plate appearances and defensive innings. Yet despite all that, the most exciting aspect of his game wasn’t his bat, or his glove, or his resilience; I’d argue it was his baserunning.

According to BsR, the comprehensive baserunning metric we use here at FanGraphs, the young phenom was electric on the bases. He finished with the seventh-highest BsR in baseball, ahead of names like José Ramírez, Myles Straw, and Trea Turner. Meanwhile, he ranked just 37th among qualified players in wRAA and 72nd in OAA. In other words, his value on the bases was where Bichette stood out most from the rest of the league. The metrics from other sources support this point — Baseball Reference had Bichette tied for 11th in baserunning, while Baseball Prospectus had him at 16th. Only six other players ranked among the top 20 on all three sites: Read the rest of this entry »

Nelson Cruz wants his ring. Since watching a World Series slip right over the webbing of his glove in 2011, he has played 11 more seasons, well past his 40th birthday, in pursuit of that ultimate goal. On Wednesday, the 42-year-old agreed to sign on for his 19th major league season with his eighth team, heading to San Diego to join a fun Padres team looking to find its way even deeper into the playoffs after reaching its first NLCS of the 21st century last year. The deal, worth $1 million over one year, pending a physical, reunites Cruz with former Rangers assistant general manager A.J. Preller as well as former teammates and Dominican countrymen Manny Machado and Juan Soto, who he’ll suit up with first as general manager-player for the Dominican World Baseball Classic team in March.

Cruz could easily have called it a career by this point. After establishing himself as a big league bat in Texas, he has enjoyed a prosperous second act as somewhat of a slugging journeyman, representing four different teams in the All-Star Game since his age-32 season. Of his 459 career home runs, 382 have come since his 30th birthday, trailing only Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth, Rafael Palmeiro, and Hank Aaron. Prior to last year, hadn’t posted a wOBA under .340 or wRC+ under 123 in nearly a decade.

And then came 2022, the type of year that would chase most veterans into retirement. In 124 games as the primary DH for the 55-win Nationals, Cruz’s prodigious power disappeared; his slugging percentage went from .497 to .337, his ISO dipped from .232 to .103, and his wRC+ fell from 123 to 85. Aside from a 22-game stretch in late May and early June during which he looked like prime (or 38-year-old) Cruz, hitting .418/.483/.633 in 90 plate appearances, he wasn’t able to offer much value at the plate. He battled inflammation in his left eye that was obscuring his vision, which he said had been a worsening problem for about a year and a half. He was ultimately shut down in mid-September, but instead of calling it quits, he had his eye surgically repaired and got back to work, most recently alongside 2022 AL batting champ Luis Arraez. Read the rest of this entry »

Clayton Beeter was a promising pitching prospect in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization when he was first featured here at FanGraphs midway through the 2021 season. He’s now a promising prospect in the Yankees’ system, having been acquired by New York early last August in exchange for Joey Gallo. A 24-year-old right-hander whom the Dodgers drafted 66th overall in 2020 out of Texas Tech University, Beeter is coming off of a season where he logged a not-so-impressive 4.56 ERA at a pair of Double-A stops, but also 129 strikeouts in 77 innings. Possessing a power arsenal, he’s a hurler with a high ceiling.

Command has been Beeter’s bugaboo. The Fort Worth native walked 5.4 batters per nine innings last year, and his career mark as a professional is 4.7. Much for that reason, our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen feels that Beeter profiles best out of the bullpen, where he would feature a fastball that “has big carry thanks to its backspinning axis.” Eric has likened the action of Beeter’s best pitch to the one thrown by Tampa Bay Rays reliever Nick Anderson.

Beeter believes that he can remain a starter, and the Yankees appear to want to give him that opportunity. They loosened the reins on his pitch count after trading for him, and not only was that welcome news for the young right-hander, but it also had a positive effect on his walk rate. After issuing 35 free passes in 51.2 innings with Double-A Tulsa, Beeter issued just 11 walks in 25.1 innings with Double-A Somerset.

Beeter discussed the deal that brought him to Yankees, and what it could mean for his future, at the end of the 2022 season.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with the trade. How surprised were you?

Clayton Beeter: “Everyone knows it’s a possibility to get traded, but no one really sees that actually happening. That’s kind of the way it was for me. My pitching coach with the Dodgers had asked me the week before if the deadline was weighing on me, and I was like, ‘Not really, I don’t think I’m getting traded at all.’ Then, sure enough, I’m riding in the car to a road trip, and Twitter starts blowing up with my name on it. It happened.”

Laurila: Surprise aside, what was your reaction?

Beeter: “I was sad to leave, because I had some really good friends over there, but I’d also been feeling a little… I guess ‘stuck.’ I kind of needed a fresh start, and that’s exactly what happened. I was actually really excited to move teams.” Read the rest of this entry »

Every few years, the same old question sets the internet aflame: Why do Americans care so much about the British royal family Does batting average matter? If you haven’t seen my favorite formulation of the problem, here’s Tom Tango’s version of it:

Which is the more productive batter (all other things equal)

A.
.315 batting average
.365 OBP
.510 SLG

B.
.260 batting average
.365 OBP
.510 SLG

— Tangotiger ? (@tangotiger) January 9, 2023

I’ve taken a crack at this exact question before. The answer simply isn’t very surprising. If two hitters have the same on-base percentage and the same slugging percentage, they’re similarly valuable to their team’s offense. That’s why OPS is a popular offensive statistic despite its relative lack of precision; it does a lot of the same work as wOBA and wRC+ because its two component stats are mostly found in similar ratios and correlate well to offensive production. Linear weights are still better, because they do a better job of accounting for how important each plate appearance outcome is when it comes to run scoring, but you can get most of the way there with OBP and SLG.

There’s not much reason to go through the exact math of how wOBA works again, because the people who would be swayed by that math have already been swayed. But sabermetric forefather Voros McCracken mentioned a novel way of looking at the problem, and I thought I’d take a crack at it now that there are no more Carlos Correa free agency articles left to write. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a busy offseason for the Angels, who have added to their superstar duo in Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani by trading for Gio Urshela and Hunter Renfroe, and signing Brandon Drury, Tyler Anderson, Carlos Estévez, and now Brett Phillips. Phillips has bounced around the league since his debut in 2017, maxing out at just 292 plate appearances in a season. In 2022, he spent time with the Rays and Orioles but was DFA’d by both and became a free agent. The 28-year old will earn $1.2 million in Anaheim this season.

Phillips is a baserunning and defensive specialist with some sneaky pop. To put it another way, he has struggled at the plate throughout his career and has never made it as a starting position player. While he was quite solid in 2021, slashing .206/.300/.427 with a 103 wRC+ (and a 138 wRC+ when he held the platoon advantage) and 2.3 WAR, that production was nowhere to be seen in ’22. In 900 career plate appearances, he holds a 71 wRC+, and his Steamer projection of 74 wRC+ suggests that’s what you should expect going forward.

Phillips’ biggest weakness at the plate is his struggle to put bat on ball. Over the past two seasons, he’s come up empty on over a third of his swings, ranking in just the third percentile of hitters during that timespan. His uppercut swing has a large hole up in the zone, where his whiff rates in that area approach 50%. While he doesn’t chase many pitches out of the zone, his approach at the plate is more passive than disciplined, as he also watches many pitches over the plate. The end result is that pitchers earn far more strikes against him compared to the average hitter; his 32.9% CSW ranks second-worst among all batters. Throughout his career, he has walked at an above-average 9.7% clip, but his enormous 37.8% strikeout rate makes Giancarlo Stanton look like Luis Arraez in comparison. And while many of his compatriots on the whiff rate leaderboard like Joey Gallo and Miguel Sanó have outlier raw power, Phillips has never hit a ball harder than 108 mph. Read the rest of this entry »

Just under a year ago, Jake Mailhot identified Texas first baseman Nathaniel Lowe as a player with breakout potential. In fact, he wrote a whole article called, “Nathaniel Lowe Has Breakout Potential.” Then the 2022 season happened, and — you guessed it — Nathaniel Lowe officially broke out. He hit 27 home runs and raised his wRC+ from 114 to 143. Good for Nathaniel Lowe! He’s a slugger. Good for Jake Mailhot! He’s a clairvoyant.

The thing is, Lowe didn’t exactly follow the script laid out for him. Jake noted that for the last month and a half of the 2021 season, Lowe added some “responsible aggression,” lowering his strikeout rate despite swinging more often. He did that by making a ton of contact in the zone. Jake broke Lowe’s 2021 plate discipline stats down in a table, using August 16 as the dividing line. I’ve gone ahead and added 2022 to that table:

Read the rest of this entry »

It looked like Spenser Watkins’s career might be over when he was released by the Detroit Tigers in July 2020. Six years had passed since he was drafted in the 30th round out of Western Oregon University, and at no point over that span was he viewed as more than a fringe prospect. Possessing neither plus velocity nor a difference-making secondary, the right-hander was coming off a minor league season where he’d logged a 6.07 ERA. That the only offers Watkins was receiving were for non-playing roles wasn’t exactly a surprise.

Then the Orioles came calling. That opportunity, fueled by an education in pitching that he never received with the Tigers, ultimately catapulted him to the big leagues. On July 2, 2021 — nearly a year to the day after Detroit gave up on him — Watkins walked onto a mound in a Baltimore Orioles uniform. A year and half later, the Scottsdale native has 39 major league appearances comprising 160 innings under his belt. Moreover, unlike in his Tigers days, he knows how his arsenal plays.

Watkins discussed his education-driven evolution as a pitcher late in the 2022 season.

———

David Laurila: Two years ago, you were a career minor leaguer who’d been let go by the Tigers. How did you go from there to where you are now?

Spenser Watkins: “I was released during the COVID season, so I wasn’t playing; I didn’t go to the alt site, or anything like that. Basically, it was ‘OK, let’s see what the free agent market has to bring.’ Come December, that became, ‘OK, I’ve got to figure out what the next step is; I’ve got to figure out a way to provide for my family.’ Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, yes, another turn in the Carlos Correa saga. After agreeing to a deal with the Giants that fell apart and then agreeing to a deal with the Mets that hung in contract limbo for weeks, Correa is on the move again, back to where he started 2022. As Jeff Passan first reported, Correa and the Twins have agreed to a six-year, $200 million deal with vesting options that could boost the total payout to $270 million over 10 years.

By now you know Carlos Correa the player. He’s been one of the top free agents on the market for two years running, and he’s been one of the most prominent players in the game for half a decade. We’ve written about his free agency plenty of times already. But if you’d like a refresher, here it goes.

Correa has a well-rounded offensive game, the type of hitter you can plug into the middle of your order and not think twice about. He takes his walks and rarely strikes out. He does that not because he has an otherworldly batting eye, but rather because he has a solid sense of the zone and a good feel for contact. It also helps that opposing pitchers prefer to avoid the zone against him, owing to his comfortably plus power. He also plays solid shortstop defense, somewhere between plus and excellent depending on which scout or defensive metric you listen to. Put it all together, and he’s an All-Star level player every year when healthy. Read the rest of this entry »