Last week, I wrote about how June is reach-out call season and how teams gather beforehand to establish an agreed upon outbound messaging to other teams about their plans. In that spirit, I tried to insert myself into each team’s discussions, and craft a suggested script for each club’s initial calls. We begin today with the National League.

National League East

New York Mets

We’ve had a ton of injuries and some big players haven’t really gotten going yet, but at the same time we are in first place, so we’re definitely going to be making a push. We feel good about the top of our rotation, but will be looking for some second tier starters for the last one or two slots. They’re the kind of guys who help get us to the playoffs, but probably don’t start in a series and so are lower acquisition cost types, unless Kevin Gausman or Max Scherzer become available. We’re also in the market for a center fielder, but there’s not much out there and we would want them to be a clear upgrade. We have financial room and we can be aggressive, but it’s going to take something really wild to access any of our top prospects like Francisco Álvarez, Ronny Mauricio and/or Brett Baty.

Atlanta Braves

We’ve been under .500 for most of the year, but we’re in second place and feel like we are a better team than this, so we will be looking to add. It’s tough because we’re owned by a corporation and not a person, so budget stuff is always going to be in play and we’ll need clarity from the top. We’re operating under the assumption that Marcell Ozuna’s tenure as a Brave has come to an end, so between that and Cristian Pache not hitting, the outfield is a point of focus for us, both in terms of finding a bopper for the middle of the lineup and someone to provide some depth. Travis d’Arnaud is arriving for the second half, so we’re fine at catcher for now. We feel good about our rotation, especially once Huascar Ynoa comes back from his silly injury, but we’ve had problems in the bullpen, especially with the bridge innings that get us to the end game; we should be players in the reliever market.

Philadelphia Phillies

It’s hard to say where we are at right now. We’re scuffling around .500 and feel like we’re better than this, but we’re not ready to get aggressive in terms of buying or selling. Let’s check back at the beginning of July? We’re happy with the everyday lineup for the most part, but our bench is pretty barren, so we’ll be looking to shore up there and get some ‘pen help should we decide to make a push.

Washington Nationals

We are not ready to open up for business yet, but we are close, so we would like your thoughts on Max Scherzer should we start listening on him in the coming weeks. Keep in mind that Max has 10-5 rights, so we will need to get approval from him for any trade. He’s aware of that, obviously, but we haven’t had specific talks with him yet in terms of potential destinations. And while he’s technically a rental, he also has all sorts of deferred money, so how we handle that will help define the return we are looking for. If we decide to sell, it will be a full court press. Brad Hand and Daniel Hudson make any bullpen better, and Jon Lester isn’t what he used to be, but he provides some stability and presence in the back of a rotation. In terms of position players, Starlin Castro and Josh Harrison should be decent infield depth pieces for someone, and Kyle Schwarber provides a lefty power source. We’re just putting out feelers for now, but unless something really positive happens over the next two weeks, expect things to pick up and get serious by the end of the month.

Miami Marlins

We don’t have the biggest names available, but we have a lot of players on the table, and might be your best option for a package deal that addresses multiple concerns. Keep in mind that we are already down the road on some of these players with teams, so if you want to get in, you might not want to wait until next month. Starling Marte is our best player as well as our best performer this year and will be the one we are looking to get the greatest return for. In terms of outfielders, Corey Dickerson hasn’t had a great year, but he has a track record of hitting and could be the lefty bat you are looking for. We’re getting a lot of calls on Jesús Aguilar; he’s a good power source and great guy to have in the clubhouse. Miguel Rojas can be a solid everyday shortstop or downright outstanding utility player for the right team. And while he’s obviously not a guy who is going to give you a lot of offense, Sandy León is a veteran catcher who knows how to fold up back there in the playoff setting. We’re holding on to our young starters, but in terms of ‘pen arms, Yimi García has been really good for us in a closer role and could set up for most playoff teams. On a smaller scale, Ross Detwiler can provide some lefty depth. It’s an expansive menu and we’re all ears.

National League Central

Milwaukee Brewers

We’re unlikely to move on anything big, as much as we are looking to make a series of incremental improvements. We’re still not comfortable with our first base situation and would like to find a mid-range bopper we can just plug in there who hits in the five or six hole every day. We’re very happy with our rotation, especially the potential playoff parts of it, so in terms of arms, we’re shopping for some bullpen improvement. Brent Suter has been up and down, and we’re hoping Hoby Milner will help, but an upgrade from the left side would help us feel better about it. That said, we’re not restricted to lefties and the way we use our starters, any additional ‘pen pieces would be of interest.

Chicago Cubs

The team is playing very well of late, so we’re not taking any calls on the impending free agents; it would take quite a collapse for that to change. We will feel better about our lineup once everyone is healthy, but we could use some more outfield depth. I know we told Joc Pederson that he would play every day here, but we can’t keep throwing him out there against lefties if we are making a playoff push, so a platoon piece to give us more firepower against southpaws would help. Our bullpen has exceeded all expectations, but we’re not comfortable at all with our rotation, especially in a playoff setting. If we get the green light from ownership, we will be laser focused on starting pitching.

St. Louis Cardinals

We’re a little stuck in terms of both our roster and payroll, so while we expect to make some moves, they will likely be on the margins unless we can find a clear upgrade to play a corner outfield. Like everyone, we’ll look at some bullpen arms and starter depth, but with our performance over the last week, we’re back in assessment mode, so feel free to check in a little bit later in the month while we figure out where we are going.

Cincinnati Reds

We’re only a handful of games out of first place, but there are also three teams ahead of us in the standings and we know that this division is highly unlikely to produce a Wild Card team. Right now we are standing pat, but we would talk about Tucker Barnhart right now in order to allow us to play Tyler Stephenson every day once Joey Votto comes back from the Injured List.

Pittsburgh Pirates

We’re ready to move on deals right away, we just don’t have much to deal. We’d listen on Adam Frazier, but with one year of arbitration remaining, we see him as much more than a rental and will want something real in return. We’ve already taken a lot of calls on Bryan Reynolds, and unless somebody wants to really blow us away, we’re not looking to move him. He’s still a Pirate for at least four more years and we’re hoping to turn this ship around faster than that. Yes, Gregory Polanco has been bad, but maybe a change of scenery would do him well, and if you want to get creative we can eat some of the money in order to improve our prospect return. We know it’s not a lot in terms of pitching, but Tyler Anderson doesn’t impact your payroll and might give you some consistency at the end of the rotation. In terms of bullpen arms, we’d listen on Richard Rodríguez and spin king Chris Stratton, but both still have two years of control left, so we’ll need to get back something we really like.

National League West

San Francisco Giants

Look, we are in first place and have the best record in baseball. We’re in no position to talk about moving our impending free agents. Maybe in a month if something bad happens, but we’re not even considering it right now and making no plans for it. We’re going to make a run here, but anticipate incremental improvements as opposed to a headline deal. With Evan Longoria’s injury we’d like to improve our infield situation, especially at second and third base. On a smaller scale, a veteran backup catcher to help get Buster Posey through the season would be of interest to us, and while we’re happy with the back of our bullpen, we’d like to improve our middle relief depth.

San Diego Padres

We’re the Padres, we’re splashy, and we’re going to look to make more waves in July. Interest is in any and all impact players available, and we have the prospects to get a deal done. We’d love to find a big bat we can plug into our outfield, allowing us to transition Tommy Pham into more of a flex role in the grass. It’s hard to find starting catchers in the middle of a season, but finding one to move Victor Caratini to a backup role would be a low-key big upgrade for us. We just don’t need any pitchers unless they’re absolute studs who win postseason games for us.

Los Angeles Dodgers

Yeah, I can’t believe we’re in third place either, but nothing has really gelled for us and we still think we have one of the, if not the, best teams in baseball. Once Corey Seager returns, our lineup is kind of locked in, but we might have interest in a bench bat or two. Like everyone else, we will be looking to lengthen our bullpen.

Colorado Rockies

Trevor Story will be healthy soon and as soon as he is, let the bidding begin. We would prefer to get one or two prospects we really like as opposed to a bigger package that includes more players but ones we’re not as crazy about. We need to get into the top of your prospect list to start a discussion. The same goes for Jon Gray. His imaging came back clean, and he’ll be back on the mound soon. The ways things are going, he will likely be one of the better starters on the block, and we’re going to treat him that way in regards to discussions. We’d be willing to eat some of Charlie Blackmon’s money in order to get a real prospect back. On a smaller scale, C.J. Cron provides some pop and on-base skills from the right side and doesn’t impact your payroll much. Mychal Givens is a consistently solid reliever who can be had for a rental price. We’re ready to talk about any of these guys starting yesterday, but frankly would discuss anyone on our roster if we thought a deal would make us better in the future.

Arizona Diamondbacks

Phones are open, so call now. We’ve already had a few inquiries on David Peralta as a veteran hitter at a decent price, while Eduardo Escobar and Asdrúbal Cabrera are both infielders who could play a starting or bench role on the right club. It’s early, but Josh Reddick has been hitting well and could be had for a low acquisition price. We don’t have much in the way of pitching, but if you get a little desperate for a starter, we’d give away Madison Bumgarner just to get out from under the contract.

In May, I took a look at some of the most compelling storylines in the American League for the teams least likely to make the postseason. Since that post ran, Shohei Ohtani has been involved in a benches clearing incident (don’t worry, he’s fine) and Miguel Cabrera inched closer to his 3,000th hit with this bases-clearing double to put the Tigers ahead of the Brewers:

The Brewers are in first place in the NL Central right now, so they will not be making another appearance in this post, as our projections like their chances in a tight division race and predict that they’ll hold that spot to win the division. No, this post is for the teams that are much less likely to make the postseason — the teams that won’t play meaningful baseball in October, but that can hopefully still offer something to the fans who continue to show up. Let’s delve into the prospects, players, and milestones on the horizon for the non-contenders in the Senior Circuit. Read the rest of this entry »

With the adoption of the Hawk-Eye tracking system before the 2020 season, analysts and fans alike can directly measure the orientation of the baseball’s spin axis as it heads towards the pitcher. Previously the readings we would see on Baseball Savant were based on the movement of the pitch; the spin axis was inferred. Tom Tango, Senior Data Architect over at MLBAM and author of The Book, delves into the nuances between the spin axis readings here. The differences are derived from the nature of the tracking system before (TrackMan radar) and after (the aforementioned technology from Hawk-Eye, which consists of a series of high-speed cameras placed around the ballpark) 2020. During the offseason, the good people at Baseball Savant rolled out some leaderboards with the new measured spin axis data and compared that to inferred spin axis by pitcher and pitch type. The deviation between the two quantities is the result of the seam-shifted wake effect, a new idea permeating the baseball analyst community. Christian Hook from Driveline has a good piece introducing the phenomenon, as do our very own Ben Clemens and The Athletic’s Eno Sarris; I’d also point you to Barton Smith, Alan Nathan, and Harry Pavlidis’ excellent piece at Baseball Prospectus, as well as Barton’s other work on the subject.

At some point in the future, I hope to add to the discourse regarding seam-shifted wake. For now, though, I want to look into another idea we can analyze with this new access to measured spin axis. Until recently the ability to dive deep into the new spin axis data has been limited. We, the public, only had access to data summarized by pitcher and pitch type. Now, thanks to the wonderful work of Bill Petti and his baseballR package (and MLBAM for deciding to release the information), we can extract the measured spin axis on the pitch level in 2020. With this influx of new data, I re-scraped and stored the pitch-by-pitch data in my Statcast database (which I could not have done without Bill’s tutorial).

With that being said, my first inclination was to look at how pitches paired together in the context of spin mirroring. The idea behind spin mirroring is to deceive the hitter. Two pitches that rotate about the same axis but in opposite directions are hard to discern by the batter. For insight into spin axis and how it differs for different pitch types, I recommend checking out this comprehensive piece from Dan Aucoin at Driveline where he explains the importance of understanding a pitch’s spin axis, how it explains pitch movement, and deviations between axis and expected movement based on the axis via the magnus force. Mike Petriello at MLB.com has also given good insight into how spin axis allows certain pairs of pitches and repertoire’s to yield better results than just velocity and movement would indicate. He specifically dug into Shane Bieber’s diverse repertoire, which lacks elite velocity and correspondingly elite spin. Read the rest of this entry »

Emerson Hancock brought a power arsenal with him to the Seattle Mariners organization. Drafted sixth-overall last year out of the University of Georgia, the 22-year-old right-hander features a mid-90s fastball, a biting slider, a plus changeup, and a capable curveball. But he’s not your prototypical flamethrower. While not backing away from the power-pitcher label, Hancock fashions himself more as a craftsman, a starter who can go deep into games by mixing and matching, and by commanding the strike zone. His track record backs that up. Over his final two collegiate seasons — this in the talent-laded SEC — he logged 131 strikeouts, and walked just 21, in 114-and-a-third innings.

No. 4 on our Mariners Top Prospects list, Hancock currently has a 2.19 ERA in four starts comprising 12.1 innings with the High-A Everett AquaSox. He talked pitching with FanGraphs over the weekend.

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David Laurila: To start, give me a self scouting report. How do you identify as a pitcher?

Emerson Hancock: “One thing I’ve always tried to do, especially since college, is be able to ‘pitch’ — mix speeds, throw pitches in different locations, throw anything in any count to get hitters off balance. That’s something I take pride in. Another thing is trying to do the little things right, like holding runners.”

Laurila: You have plus stuff. How do you go about balancing power and command?

Hancock: “Something that’s helped me is that I haven’t always had the power. In high school, I struggled to have that big-time velocity, so I kind of had to learn at a younger age how to ‘pitch.’ At Georgia, [velocity] started happening — it came along — so now I had this other way. I had to learn how to use it. Even now, in the minor leagues, I’m trying to find different ways to use it. It’s something that’s always evolving for me.” Read the rest of this entry »

Evan Longoria has been as critical to the Giants’ success this season as any of their grizzled veterans, but the NL West leaders (!) could be without the 35-year-old third baseman until after the All-Star break. Longoria suffered a sternoclavicular dislocation of his left shoulder in a collision on Saturday, and landed on the 10-day Injured List. Ouch!

The injury occurred during the top of the ninth inning of the Giants’ game against the Cubs. Shifted towards second base with lefty Anthony Rizzo at the plate, Longoria ranged to his left to field a soft chopper, where he ran into shortstop Brandon Crawford and got the worst of it, and not only because Rizzo was safe at first as Kris Bryant scored. Longoria remained on the ground for several minutes and left the field accompanied by the team’s head athletic trainer, Anthony Reyes:

Crawford was uninjured, but Longoria was placed on the IL on Sunday with what was initially termed a left shoulder sprain, and initial indications that he would miss four to six weeks. Sunday brought a bit more specificity, via The Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly:

Evan Longoria said he was diagnosed with a dislocated SC joint, which links the clavicle to the sternum. So the pain isn't in his shoulder. It's a weird injury and he isn't sure what to expect timetable wise. He's had X-rays but not an MRI yet.

— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) June 6, 2021

Sternoclavicular joint dislocations aren’t often seen in baseball; they’re more often associated with motor vehicle accidents or collision sports such as football and rugby. Anterior dislocations such as the one Longoria apparently suffered, are one matter, but posterior dislocations can be life-threatening, as they can affect a person’s esophagus, airway, or vital arteries. Read the rest of this entry »

Brandon Crawford’s career has always centered around his elite defense; he’s won three Gold Gloves and has been one of the best defenders in baseball over the last decade. But behind the accolades for his glove was a quietly improving offensive player. He upped his wRC+ each season in his first five and earned down-ballot MVP votes in 2016 on the back of 5.2 WAR and career-best defensive metrics. Heading into his age-30 season in ’17, our positional power rankings pegged him as one of the best shortstops in baseball and projected him for 3.5 WAR.

Instead, Crawford started a sharp decline, putting up just 4.4 WAR over the next three years. By the time 2020 rolled around, his career was a half-sunk dinghy; coming off of a near–replacement-level season, he was expected to lose playing time. And his downturn couldn’t have come at a worse time, with free agency coming after the 2021 season and the Giants under new boss Farhan Zaidi beginning to transition away from the aging veterans who made up a big chunk of San Francisco’s roster. But facing the end, Crawford posted a 111 wRC+ and a career-high .209 ISO last season, then built on that improvement this year with a 141 wRC+ and 2.1 WAR — the latter the best figure than he’s put up since ’17.

The following chart shows a closer look at his late-career resurgence.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite things about attending a live baseball game is how it sounds. Sure, the pops and cracks of leather and wood on the field are comforting in their own right, but what I’m really talking about is the chatter. The constant din of anonymous talkers throwing out well-researched stats, or strongly felt opinions on pitchers’ hair length, or two-notches-too-loud questions about where the Bud Light guy is. And as much as I enjoy the ambient noise of a major-league ballpark, for my money, there is no baseball chatter that compares to that found in the stands of a high school game.

At the end of May, I attended my first live baseball game since 2019, a matchup on the South Side of Chicago between Marist High School and Marian Catholic. Heading into the game, Marist had the best record in Illinois, thanks in part to Noah Smith, their toolsy infielder, and our top-ranked high school prospect in the state. Also on the field was Smith’s Area Codes teammate and fellow Louisville commit, Eddie King Jr., playing in the outfield for Marian Catholic. But in the bleachers along the first base line, the chatter wasn’t about whether Smith would ever eliminate the sway in his swing and stabilize his head to more consistently identify breaking balls, or how hot a bat King was swinging after he smashed a double off the left-field wall (he had homered in the game the day before, also against Marist). Instead, I found myself seated in between a group of teens who had googled the team’s roster because one of them was pretty sure she’d sat next to one of the outfielders in Freshman Spanish, and a mom who spent the entire game playing defense against her toddler, who was intent on pulling on the cord coming out of the camera she had perched on the railing to record her older son’s performance on the field.

After the game, there were hugs and pats on the back from the parents in the stands, and awkward giggles from the group of girls I’d been sitting by, none of whom seemed keen on actually approaching any of the players. Marian Catholic won 9-7, issuing Marist its first conference loss of the season (and third loss overall), and knocking them down to second place in the state. If anyone in the stands noticed, they hid their disappointment well. But regardless of whether or not the audience at this mid-week, mid-afternoon high school game was aware of the stakes of the game itself, it was clear how much they cared about the players on the field. The sense of community was palpable. Even as an outsider, I felt like I’d attended an event that meant something to my fellow spectators – something specific, and unrelated to baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

After a week hiatus, the FanGraphs Power Rankings return. We’re two months into the season and the best teams in the rankings have started to pull away from the pack while a large group of teams have congregated in the middle. These teams are on the bubble between viewing themselves as contenders and deciding to retool for next year by selling at the trade deadline.

A quick refresher: my approach takes the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), and their starting rotation and bullpen (50%/50% FIP- and RA9-) — and combines them to create an overall team quality metric. I add in a factor for “luck” — adjusting based on a team’s expected win-loss record — to produce a power ranking.

The top tier stays big, as the top three teams from each league have put some distance between themselves and their competition.

In the National League, the top trio happens to all be battling for the NL West division crown, too. After getting swept by the Dodgers at home two weeks ago, the Giants have won nine of their last 11 games, including taking revenge against the Dodgers a week ago and recording a big series win over the Cubs. They’ve “pulled away” from the Padres by opening up a two-game lead in the division, though the loss of Evan Longoria won’t help their cause. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve read a lot of my work here, you probably know that I’m a huge fan of bunting. Some bunting, at least — I’m not talking about bone-headed sacrifices at the altar of small ball. There’s just something satisfying about a well-placed bunt, pushed past the pitcher and to an open space vacated by the defense. Bunts against the shift are a delight. Bunts not against the shift, where the hitter is simply better at bunting than the defense is at defending, are great too. This article is not about one of those bunts.

On Friday night, the Dodgers were locked in a tight battle. Runs had been hard to come by against opposing starter Ian Anderson, though Julio Urías was doing his part to keep the team in the game, surrendering only a solo home run through four innings. In the top of the fifth, Urías got a chance to help the team on the offensive end as well. With runners on first and third and the game tied after a close play at the plate, he stepped up to bat with one out in the inning.

Urías isn’t a bad hitter, at least as far as pitchers go. He sports a career line of .175/.188/.190, a fair sight better than the overall .124/.143/.159 line across baseball over the course of his career. Still, he’s an awful hitter, as far as major league hitters go. Dave Roberts called for a bunt. Read the rest of this entry »

Cole Winn has been on a roll. Pitching for the Double-A Frisco Rough Riders, the 21-year-old right-hander is coming off consecutive scoreless starts where he’s allowed just one hit and fanned 13 batters in 12 innings of near-spotless work. The earlier of those outings was notable for more than just his dominance. As the 2018 first-rounder stood on the mound, a fox darted across the field, traversed the warning track, and finally escaped, untouched by human hands.

Winn — No. 3 on our Texas Rangers Top Prospects list and with a 1.63 ERA on the season — talked pitching (and fox-delays) prior to last Thursday’s game.

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David Laurila: Before we get to pitching, I need to ask you about the fox…

Cole Winn: “I didn’t see it until after I threw the pitch. It was kind of a blur that ran right in front of me. And it was a little bit frustrating that it took so long to get it off the field, because I felt like I was in a good groove. I was on a roll, and that kind of slowed me up for a pitch or two before I got back into it. But honestly, it’s one of the strangest things that’s ever had happened to me — or that I’ve ever witnessed — on a baseball field.”

Laurila: Where was the fox when you first noticed it?

Winn: “When I first saw it, it was right in front of me. Like, it ran between home plate and the pitcher’s mound. I have no clue where it came from. I asked around, and no one else knew where it came from. So it was strange. It was really strange.”

Laurila: The video I saw ended with the fox still running along the warning track. How did it get off the field? Read the rest of this entry »