Read the rest of this entry »

The final installment of this week’s set of international player updates revolves around the amateur prospects who will begin to sign a month from now when the new international signing period begins on January 15. An overview of the rules that govern signing international amateurs can be found on MLB’s glossary here, while more thorough and detailed documentation can be found starting on page 287 of the CBA (forgive the 2017-21 version – the full text of the latest agreement isn’t publicly available yet), and page 38 of the Official Professional Baseball Rules Book. I pulled out portions of these documents for reference in the pieces published earlier this week and have done so again here, but I suggest readers familiarize themselves further. The international amateur arena is a procedural and ethical mess that has undergone wholesale structural changes several times during my time as a writer, most recently because of what the pandemic did to shift the timeline of each signing period.

Projected signing teams, scouting reports and tool grades on just over 30 players from the 2023 class can now be viewed over on The Board. Because the International Players tab has an apples and oranges mix of older pros from Asian leagues and soon-to-be first-year players, there is no explicit ranking on The Board, but I’ve stacked the class of anticipated 2023 signees in a table below with a ranking for reference should you need it. As has been the case with past classes, after these players sign, they will be pulled off the International Players section of The Board and warehoused in a ranking of their signing class for record-keeping purposes.

As always, the FV grade is a more important measure for readers to focus on than the ordinal rankings here. Because these players are so close in age to the younger prospects who participate in any given domestic draft, I like to use theoretical draft position as a barometer by which to grade the international amateurs. Scouting and comparing international players’ tools and athleticism to those of recent and upcoming domestic amateurs helps me to triangulate approximately where they’d go in a given draft, and assign them a FV based on that approximation. Players with a 40+ FV grade or above tend to be prospects who I think would go in the first two rounds of a draft, while the teenage 40 FV prospects are the sort I’d ballpark in the $700,000 to $1 million bonus range as draft prospects, basically the slot amounts just after the second round. Read the rest of this entry »

What kind of hitter did the Milwaukee Brewers get when they acquired Owen Miller from the Cleveland Guardians on Wednesday in exchange for a player to be named later or cash? Statistically speaking, the answer is someone who put up uninspiring numbers in his first full big-league season. The infielder, who recently turned 26 years old, logged a .287 wOBA and an 85 wRC+ in 472 plate appearances. After starting strong — he had a 1.043 OPS on May 8, and had delivered a number of clutch hits — Miller provided only a modicum of value with the bat.

In terms of his overall development as a hitter, Miller has evolved — intent-wise more than production-wise to this point — from the player who Eric Longenhagen described prior to the 2021 season. Ranking him No. 14 on that year’s Cleveland Top Prospects list, our lead prospect analyst wrote that the former third-round pick out of Illinois State University had a “minimalistic swing [that] enables him to make high rates of contact, while the strength in Miller’s hands generates doubles power.”

Miller stroked 26 doubles this past season, but only six home runs, and he had 93 strikeouts to go with 32 walks. By and large, he remains a work-in-progress — albeit one who can provide value with his versatility while continuing to work on his offensive skills.

The newest Brewer talked hitting in an interview that took place a handful of months into the season, only to be placed on the back burner until now.

———

David Laurila: How would you describe yourself as a hitter?

Owen Miller: “I’ve kind of changed, I would say. When I was younger — coming up in college, and in the minors — I was very contact-oriented, with a very line drive approach. I was handsy, trying to manipulate my barrel. Then, over the quarantine period when we had time to work on things… I understood that there are things that elite hitters do as far as using their bodies more, and I started to make some swing changes off of that. Not really swing changes, per se, but rather adjustments. Read the rest of this entry »

Jordan Walker is no. 8 on our Top 100 thanks largely to his bat. As our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen wrote in July, the 6-foot-5, 220-pound St. Louis Cardinals outfield prospect “is one of the most exciting young hitters in the minors, with elite power potential and superlative on-paper performance at Double-A while he’s still not old enough to have a beer.” At season’s end, the 20-year-old Stone Mountain, Georgia native boasted a .306/.388/.510 slash line, with 19 home runs and a 128 wRC+.

His tool set also includes a plus arm, which this writer witnessed firsthand during an Arizona Fall League game. Fielding a ball deep in the right field corner, Walker gunned a strike to second base that had me harkening back to the days of Dwight Evans and Dave Parker. A throw I wasn’t on hand to see was arguably even more impressive. As MLB.com’s Jesse Borek reported in mid-October, Walker “cut the ball loose at 99.5 mph, a throw harder than any by a St. Louis Cardinals outfielder since Statcast began to keep track in 2015.”

Shortly after talking to Walker’s close friend and AZL teammate Masyn Winn — featured here at FanGraphs on Tuesday — I approached the organization’s top-rated prospect to talk about his two most eye-catching assets: his bat and his arm. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to start today by telling you something very obvious: the new hot trend in contracts this offseason is extremely long deals. You know it. I know it. Ken Rosenthal says it, so it must be true. Living legend Jayson Stark laid it out as only he can: we’ve seen three free-agent deals of 11 or more years in the last two weeks, as compared to one in the entire previous history of baseball.

What factors are behind this hot new contract structure? Did a financial consultant walk through the Winter Meetings whispering “long contracts are in, pass it on” to team employees? I truly wish that were the case. It could be my big break in starting up Ben Clemens Investigates, and I’ve always wanted to wear a Sherlock Holmes hat. Bad news, though: to the best of my knowledge, that didn’t happen. It didn’t have to happen. The incentives to offer long-term deals are mathematically based, and I’m frankly pretty annoyed that I didn’t see this coming in predicting contracts this offseason. Read the rest of this entry »

Will Warren has quietly, and quickly, emerged as one of the top pitching prospects in the New York Yankees organization. An eighth-round pick in the 2020 draft out of Southwestern Louisiana University, the 22-year-old right-hander made his professional debut this year, and by June he was pitching with Double-A Somerset. On the season, he had a 3.91 ERA and a 3.74 FIP with 125 strikeouts and 119 hits allowed in 129 innings.

His best two pitches have been added to his arsenal since college. Warren’s sweeper, which spins as high as 3,000 rpm, replaced the pedestrian slider he’d thrown as an amateur; his low-to-mid 90s sinker, which helped produce a 53% ground ball rate, was developed just this past season. His physique has transformed, as well. The 6-foot-2 hurler now packs close to 200 pounds on his once-lean frame, giving him a more-projectable starter’s build.

Warren discussed his developmental strides late in the 2022 season.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with your M.O. on the mound. How do you get guys out?

Will Warren: “Basically attacking the zone, knowing that the guys behind me are going to make plays. As a sinkerball guy, I’m probably going to get a lot more ground balls than strikeouts, so I rely a lot on my defense to get people out.”

Laurila: I understand that you also have a pretty good slider.

Warren: “Yes. Analytics makes it easier to look at a pitch and say, ‘Oh, I can do this, I can manipulate it this way.’ When I got drafted by the Yankees, we [developed] the slider. We tinkered with some grips, and it ended up being what it is now.”

Laurila: Is it the Yankees whirly?

Warren: “It’s the sweeper, yes. Off the top of my head, I’m going say I get like 16–18 inches of sweep. I can get it bigger, but I think that’s what it is on average. The velocity is 84–87 [mph].” Read the rest of this entry »

Rarely can we point to an exact moment in time that turned us into who we are today. Our current selves are a culmination of all the experiences we’ve had since birth, good or bad, and their immediate and enduring effects. Motivational speakers claim to recall pivotal, life-altering instances with vivid detail, but not everyone has a story dramatic enough to earn themselves a personal soapbox.

The same goes for baseball players. There is no single game, inning, or plate appearance that molded Mike Trout into the comically talented slugger he is now. One day he was a modest teenager from New Jersey, and seemingly the next a generational hitter. In reality, thousands upon thousands of moments are scattered in between, but you can’t just walk up to one of them, isolate it, and declare it “the game Mike Trout became Mike Trout.”

Which is sort of what I’m going to do with Nick Lodolo.

Don’t get me wrong; I won’t spend the entire article trying to prove that, yes, this is when Lodolo took the next step. In fact, I have no idea if it’s something he’ll even hold onto. Young pitchers tinker with their approaches and repertoires all the time, and what I’m about to describe might be one of many fleeting changes. But there’s a good chance it’s significant. Lodolo, after this vaguely worded moment, became a noticeably better version of himself. And I don’t think the ways in which he improved came together on a whim; they make too much sense. Read the rest of this entry »

Masyn Winn has a high ceiling as a position player. Rated the best athlete in the St. Louis system by Baseball America, the 20-year-old shortstop is No. 2 in our Cardinals prospects rankings and No. 55 in our Top 100. Drafted 54th overall in 2020 out of Kingwood (Tex.) High School, Winn is coming off of a season where he slashed .283/.364/.468 with 12 home runs and 43 stolen bases between High-A Peoria and Double-A Springfield. His summer included an appearance in the 2022 All-Star Futures Game.

He could very well be a pitcher… or a two-way player. As our lead prospect evaluator Eric Longenhagen explained back in July, Winn “was a two-way amateur with huge arm strength,” and while no one was projecting him as the next Shohei Ohtani — a unicorn, he’s not — there is no denying his unique skillset. Winn had a throw from shortstop clocked at 100.5 mph during the Futures Game.

Winn discussed his pitching background and the possibility of him one day returning to the mound during his October/November stint in the Arizona Fall League.

———

David Laurila: I’m especially interested in your positional background. Why are you an infielder now, and not a pitcher?

Masyn Winn: “I’m not a pitcher because the Cardinals and I decided that’s the easier route to go. Hitting… I mean, it’s a lot easier to pick the glove back up and go back on the mound than it is to pick a bat back up. In our thought process, if I make it as a hitter, that’s fantastic. If not, I’ll just fall back to pitching. I think that’s a good plan because of how hard hitting is. Taking a couple years off and then trying to go back to it would be a little tough.”

Laurila: When was the decision made?

Winn: “I ended up throwing one inning at the end of last year. We were going to do a throwing program the last six weeks or so, but I ended up tweaking my arm a little bit, so during the offseason we decided to shut it down and just focus on hitting.” Read the rest of this entry »

A week ago at the Winter Meetings, Nationals manager Dave Martinez told reporters that the team was looking to add a veteran starting pitcher. On Friday, MASN’s Mark Zuckerman reported that Washington did just that, making its biggest move of the offseason by signing free agent Trevor Williams. The two-year, $13 million commitment, per The Athletic’s Stephen J. Nesbitt, represents the team’s third-biggest contractual commitment, behind the long-term deals of Stephen Strasburg and Patrick Corbin.

Williams played a significant role with the Mets in 2022, starting nine games while Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer were on the IL earlier in the season and making 21 relief appearances. Given New York’s glut of solid right-handed relief arms, he didn’t make the roster for the Wild Card Series against the Padres. Had he been on the Nationals in 2022, his 0.6 WAR would have been third on the staff, and his 3.21 ERA and 3.88 FIP would have been fourth (among pitchers who threw at least 25 innings).

Williams will immediately become the most reliable arm in Washington’s starting rotation. At Federal Baseball, Patrick Reddington noted that he had a 1.80 ERA against the Nationals in 2022, so if nothing else, they’ve co-opted a former tormenter. Read the rest of this entry »

Gabe Kapler was asked about next season’s more-balanced schedule when he met with the media during the Winter Meetings. More specifically, he was asked about not having to play as many games against powerhouse division rivals like the Dodgers and Padres. His response began with an unexpected nod to the team that finished in fourth place with a record of 74-88.

“The Diamondbacks were really tough on us this year,” said the Giants manager, whose club went 9-10 versus Arizona. “They’re a really challenging team. I think about the Diamondbacks a lot, because they’re so gifted and athletic, and they’re all so young. Torey [Lovullo] does a great job, and Mike Hazen… their whole front office is a good group.”

Arizona’s young talent on the position player side includes Corbin Carroll, Alek Thomas, Jake McCarthy, and Geraldo Perdomo, with more reinforcements on the way. Carroll, who debuted at the end of August, is No. 4 on our Top 100 — a list that includes five D-Backs — and the farm system that Hazen oversees as Arizona’s GM ranks sixth-best among the 30 organizations.

How does this group compare to the young talent Lovullo worked with as Boston’s bench coach from 2013-2016, and before that as the team’s Triple-A manager? Read the rest of this entry »