Brett Baty has a bright future, and he’s showing glimpses of why in his first full professional season. Just 21 years old, the left-handed-hitting third baseman is slashing .291/.378/.471 with 12 home runs in 378 plate appearances between High-A Brooklyn and Double-A Binghamton. Moreover, he’s doing so with a first-round pedigree. Baty was drafted 12th overall by the New York Mets in 2019 out of an Austin, Texas high school.

On paper, he’s a slugger. Ranked No. 2 on our updated Mets Top Prospects list, Baty was described by Eric Longenhagen prior to the season as having “light tower power.” His M.O. differs from that description.

“I like to say that I’m a hitter before the power, and the power is just going to come,” said the 6-foot-3, 210-pound Baty. “I’m just trying to hit the ball hard, wherever it’s pitched. I don’t want to get too pull-happy — try to hit pull-side home runs — so I’m up there thinking ‘line drive to left-center, line drive up the middle.’ Basically, I’m trying to stay within myself at the plate and hit balls hard, wherever they might land.”

Watching balls land over the fence is a thrill for any hitter, and that’s especially true for prospects looking to validate their first-round bona fides. But again, Baty shies away from the bopper label. Read the rest of this entry »

The Twins came into 2021 with postseason aspirations, ones that were quickly dashed by an atrocious start to the season. By the trade deadline, they were dealing for the future; Nelson Cruz, Hansel Robles, and J.A. Happ were all rentals, but José Berríos, who was dealt to the Blue Jays, looked like a key part of the team for both this year and next. Trading him was a calculated gamble that they could sacrifice some certainty next year for future value. Now, 2022 is in even more jeopardy: Kenta Maeda, the team’s best pitcher, will undergo Tommy John surgery and miss a good chunk of next year.

For the Twins, this is obviously brutal news. This season was already a write-off, but they had mostly done a good job of building for next year even as they disappointed in the present. Cruz aside, the team will retain most of its offensive core next year, and while Andrelton Simmons will hit free agency, with Jorge Polanco and Luis Arraez still in the fold, they’ll have a huge array of options for how to replace him. Heck, reunite with Cruz on another one-year deal, and they could field a solid team without any further infield starters needed (Josh Donaldson to third base, Arraez to second, and Polanco to short). Austin Martin, the centerpiece of the team’s return for Berríos, might be ready to bolster that infield depth as soon as next year, as well.

The lineup, however, isn’t the Twins’ biggest problem. It’s underperformed this year, no doubt, but their pitching has been disastrous. They’ve allowed 5.3 runs per game, the third-worst mark in the majors. It’s no sequencing fluke, either: by BaseRuns, they also have the third-worst pitching staff in the big leagues. You won’t win a lot of games if you allow so many runs, regardless of how many bombs you’re hitting on the other side of the ball.
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It’s already September, and maybe you’re still processing that fact. I’ll do you one better by pointing out that the Dodgers and Giants are about to play each other for the final time in the regular season. This is the earliest in the year that these rivals’ last series has occurred since way back in 1968, when Willie Mays and Don Drysdale were fixtures of the rivalry.

With Los Angeles and San Francisco tied atop the division and both teams on pace for 100 wins for the first time since 1962, I thought it prudent to break down what we might expect in this big weekend series.

The Series So Far

The Dodgers and Giants have split their 16 games so far (with San Francisco winning five of the last seven), featuring stellar pitching, unlikely heroes, home run robberies and blown saves. A four-game series in mid-July was full of drama, including Tyler Rogers giving up a walk-off homer to Will Smith, his second three-run outing against the Dodgers this season.

The very next night — actually the next two nights — it was Kenley Jansen who was handed a ninth-inning lead but walked off to a booing home crowd both times after giving up seven combined runs.

That’s just how this series has gone; no lead is safe from a disaster.

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The Yankees snapped a four-game skid on Wednesday against the Angels to avoid a sweep and stay two games ahead of the Red Sox in the AL wild card race. Gerrit Cole was brilliant, striking out 15 en route to his 14th win of the season. Two-out singles from Luke Voit in the third inning and Brett Gardner in the fourth plated most of the runs for the Yankees, with Aaron Judge adding insurance with a solo shot in the eighth.

Perched atop the lineup was DJ LeMahieu, who reached base three times and scored the first run of the game. It’s been a bit of a down year for the veteran second baseman, who earned MVP consideration in the 2019 and ’20 seasons. Not known for his power before that former season, he caught the power bug immediately after joining the Yankees, slugging 36 home runs in 871 plate appearances, good for one home run every 24 trips to the plate. Those aren’t huge power numbers in today’s game, but it’s a much higher frequency of home runs than he managed hitting in Coors Field half the year — three times as often, in fact.

This season has gone very differently in the home run department. LeMahieu leads the team in plate appearances (575) and games played (126) but has gone deep only nine times, a rate that’s much more in line with how he hit prior to coming to New York. So what about his performance has changed?

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These are notes on prospects from Tess Taruskin. Read previous installments of the Daily Prospect Notes here.

Robert Hassell III, CF, San Diego Padres
Level & Affiliate: High-A Fort Wayne Age: 20 Org Rank: 4 (72 overall) FV: 50
Line: 3-for-6, 3 HR, 3 K

Notes
On Wednesday night, true to his name, Hassell worked in threes. In his third game since his promotion from Low-A (where he had the third most hits and third highest average on the season), the lefty provided both homers and strikeouts in triplicate. But contrary to last night’s line, the 2020 first-rounder’s season has been characterized neither by excessive power nor a concerning K-rate; he slashed .323/.415/.482 at Low-A with a 138 wRC+, maintaining walk and strikeout rates both in the mid-teens.

While the Wednesday whiffs represent an unconcerning blip in an approach that has otherwise proven far more advanced than his age would let on (he just turned 20 a few weeks ago), the dingers — his first, second, and third at High-A — were a glimpse at the type of power that would be a welcome addition to Hassell’s profile, if he’s able to sustain it. Over the course of the night, he demonstrated his ability to hit balls out to both left and right field, and against both left- and right-handed pitchers.

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Brent Rooker has had an up-and-down rookie campaign. Demoted to Triple-A following an injury-marred April, the 26-year-old outfielder logged a 141 wRC+ with 20 home runs in 62 games with the St. Paul Saints. He’s been less productive, yet no less promising, since returning to the Twins toward the tail end of July. In 153 plate appearances, the No. 35 pick in the 2017 draft has six long balls to go with a a 91 wRC+ and a .304 wOBA.

Those numbers aren’t a mystery to Rooker, nor are the swing analytics that help dictate what he’s doing in the batter’s box. Two partial seasons into what will hopefully be a long and productive big-league career, the former Mississippi State Bulldog is more than just an up-and-coming slugger: he’s a student of hitting.

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David Laurila: Do you view hitting as more of an art, or as more of a science?

Brent Rooker: “I think the best hitters are a combination of both. They’re very artistic in terms of what they feel and the way their bodies move. They know how to manipulate their bodies to allow them do what they need to do in order to accomplish what they want to accomplish in the box. But I also think the best guys know, statistically and analytically, what they do well and what they don’t do well. They use that to their advantage.

“Obviously, you have guys on both sides of the spectrum. Some guys are more feel guys, and others are more by the numbers and analytics. But again, I think the best guys — the truly best guys — are a combination of both.”

Laurila: That said, do you lean more toward one than the other? Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday, I took a swing at a question often asked of me: Which players have helped their Hall of Fame cases the most this year? In that piece, I highlighted 10 position players, some of whom have gained significant ground via JAWS, others who reached major milestones or simply returned to productivity after injury-plagued stretches. For this dispatch, I’ll first turn my attention to the pitchers, then backtrack to cover a handful of others — position players and pitchers — in a more lightning-round fashion.

For this exercise, I’m focused mainly on mid- or late-career players rather than early-career ones. All of the starters have a JAWS of at least 42.0; roughly speaking, that’s the equivalent of seven six-win seasons, a point at which I start to take mid-career pitchers seriously. JAWS and peak (WAR7) gains are the major drivers of this, but positional standards, traditional milestones, and ordinal rankings are considerations as well. For relievers, I’m using the WAR-and-WPA hybrid stat via which I’ve examined recent candidates such as Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman, and Billy Wagner. All WAR (and WPA) figures here refer to the Baseball Reference version, unless otherwise indicated.

One other thing to note: since my reference point for “old” WAR and JAWS figures dates back to January 2021, some portion of these players’ gains may be due to updates to bWAR itself, particularly via changes to ’19 and ’20 park factors and tweaks to 2017–20 Defensive Runs Saved that were announced in March, but also due to a second update to 2020 park factors that just went live on Tuesday.

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There’s this episode of SpongeBob Squarepants that I love, in which Mr. Krabs’ snowballing desire for jellyfish jelly causes SpongeBob to catch more and more jellyfish until none remain. I bring this up because I like to imagine front offices as Mr. Krabs: Over the past few years, they’ve been shifting against more and more hitters, with seemingly no end in sight.

It turns out, however, we might have already reached the peak of infield shifting, at least in terms of volume. Comprehensive shift data dates back to 2016. Since then, here’s the rate of shifts against left- and right-handed batters each season:

This season, we’ve reached a point of stagnation. Teams haven’t budged from the mark they set against lefty hitters in 2020. Moreover, after a steady year-to-year increase, the rate of shifts against righty hitters has actually dropped. What I find more interesting — and ultimately want to dissect — is the latter trend. That teams aren’t looking for new lefties to shift against makes sense, since there’s presumably a limited pool. But righties demonstrate pull-side tendencies, too. If we assume teams are shifting mainly based on pull rates, we’d also expect the number of shifts against righties to keep climbing.

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In the days leading up to the trade deadline, Jarred Kelenic earned himself a mention in Jay Jaffe’s corner outfield replacement-level killers, a series that analyzes the players who are dragging down contending teams. The idea is to identify positions of need for potential trades to come, but Kelenic’s struggles in the majors weren’t going to force the team to make a deal. Instead, as Jay put it, “this should probably be a sink-or-swim situation unless he’s totally overwhelmed.”

Kelenic has already been in the spotlight because of the Mariners gaming his service time; his performance since his promotion has put him back in it. He got the call on May 13, but simply didn’t hit: In his first 23 games over a total of 92 plate appearances, he slashed .096/.185/.193. He collected just eight hits total and had come up empty in his last 44 plate appearances when the Mariners optioned him back to Triple-A in early June.

After a successful stint at Tacoma — a 137 wRC+ — Kelenic was brought back to Seattle. This time around, the results have been a bit better, but they’re still ugly overall, as he’s gone from a 10 wRC+ in that first stint to a .181/.263/.315 line and 65 wRC+ since his second promotion. Through Tuesday’s action, he’s up to a 45 wRC+ and -1.1 WAR in 64 games:

Even with the improved numbers since his return from Triple-A, Kelenic is still running the 11th-lowest wRC+ among qualified hitters in that time. He’s still not hitting well. But while there may not be one answer for why he is struggling, I believe that there’s a huge plate discipline problem that isn’t entirely captured in the walk and strikeout rates alone. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday night, rookie sensation Wander Franco extended his streak of getting on-base at least once to an impressive 31 games. There’s still quite a ways to go before you make the shade of Ted Williams wonder if his 84-game (!) streak is in jeopardy, but it’s a mighty impressive feat for a 20-year-old.

That said, Franco is no ordinary rookie. As much a consensus No. 1 prospect as anyone I can ever remember, he didn’t exactly sneak up on anyone who was paying attention; his 80 Future Value grade — a first on our prospect lists — wasn’t something given out recklessly. At 18, an age at which minor league prospects are just getting started in the “real” professional leagues, he was already terrorizing the full-season Florida State League, hitting .339/.408/.464. That would be great for a first base prospect; for a young shortstop, it’s astounding.

Despite losing a key developmental season in 2020, Franco didn’t need much time to get going. Skipped right to Triple-A this year, he hit .315/.367/.586 for the Durham Bulls and was called up six weeks later. Outside of a home run in his very first game, the first week or two was an adjustment period; through 14 games, his line stood at .211/.274/.351 with 13 strikeouts in 57 at-bats against five walks. But since starting his on-base streak, he’s hit .314/.385/.504, also with 13 strikeouts but in 121 ABs.

Every streak has some element of good fortune, but in Franco’s running plate discipline numbers, you can almost see him adjusting to pitchers. And those numbers tend to be “stickier” than most other offensive numbers; short-term changes in results are more likely to be real compared to, say, batting average.

After his first two weeks in the majors, Franco’s contact rate increased despite him simultaneously swinging at more pitches. As pitchers in recent weeks have started throwing fewer strikes against him, that swing rate has responded accordingly, but his rate of contact has continued to rise. His performance during the streak isn’t exactly a galaxy away from his ZiPS minor league translation of .291/.335/.503 at Durham; combine that with the real improvements in plate discipline, and you can make a good argument that we’re seeing the bonafide Wander Franco in these waning days of summer.

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