The Texas Rangers selected Texas Tech infielder Josh Jung eighth overall in last month’s amateur draft. They followed that up by taking Baylor infielder Davis Wendzel with the 41st overall pick. The Big 12 Conference co-players of the year both signed on the dotted line last week, Jung for a reported $4.4 million, Wendzel for a reported $1.6 million. Following get-ready stints at the team’s facility in Surprise, Arizona, each is expected to join short-season Spokane for the duration of the summer.

According to Rangers GM Jon Daniels, it wasn’t purely by chance that accomplished collegiate bats were his club’s top two selections.

“We didn’t make an about-face in our philosophy, but we did probably make a little more of a conscious effort to manage risk up top,” Daniels told me in mid-June. “That kind of dovetailed into where the strengths of the draft were, which in our opinion was more college than high school, and a little heavier on the position player side.”

The industry agreed with that assessment — only one prep pitcher went in the first 25 picks — but whether this was an outlier draft or not, pitchers are widely seen as riskier propositions. When I asked if that was a primary factor, Daniels delivered his answer with a wry smile. Read the rest of this entry »

There are generally three ways of bringing new players into a baseball organization: trades, free agency, and amateur signings, either through the draft or international free agent market. There isn’t necessarily a “best” way, as successful teams are built using a wide variety of methods. The table below shows WAR totals for the first half of the season split into the three categories above, along with waivers and Rule 5 picks, which constitute a very small portion of the total:

As the chart shows, homegrown talent and players acquired through trade come out pretty far ahead of free agency. In terms of the sheer number of players, there are over 400 in each of the homegrown and trade sections, with around 300 in free agency. As for the impact, it’s hard to argue with the importance of homegrown players when looking at the graph above. Breaking the homegrown section down, we can see how each team has done this season with players they’ve drafted or signed internationally and then developed in their organization:

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In 2011 and 2012, FanGraphs, borrowing from ESPN, held a Franchise Player Draft. The Hardball Times revived the draft in 2017, and we thought we’d take a crack at it again now. The idea is a simple one: throwing out existing contracts, teams, and other real life sundry, which player would you most want to build a baseball franchise around if you were starting from scratch? These picks were based solely on the players’ abilities as they stand now; those participating got to decide on their own how to value wins now versus wins in the long-term. To maintain a bit of mystery for the No. 1 pick, today we’ll present picks 16-30. Tomorrow, the top half of the draft will be revealed. We hope you enjoy. — Meg Rowley

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Ben Clemens, Pick 16: Juan Soto, Washington Nationals
I was overjoyed to see Soto still available at 16. He was in my personal top 10 — I thought there was no chance he’d fall this far. He’s still only 20, and at this point has two years worth of strong performance in the majors. He might never be a great defender, but he does so much at the plate that I don’t care. Hit for power? He has 34 extra-base hits already this year and a sterling .237 ISO. Control the plate? He walks 15.6% of the time for his career, nearly as often as he strikes out. Hit for average? He has a career .344 BABIP, and projection systems think he’ll stick around .330 for the rest of the year. It’s hard to imagine a more complete offensive player as a 20-year-old, short of Trout’s age-20 season. Maybe he won’t realize ZiPS’ lofty three-year projections, but almost no one is a better bet to be a great hitter five years from now than Soto. I considered Vlad in this spot as well, but they’re almost the same age and Soto has been excellent in the majors for longer, which I value more than Vlad’s prospect pedigree. Read the rest of this entry »

Adam Ottavino has had a strange 2019. Last year, he reinvented his game in a single offseason. This year, he’s mostly sticking with what worked in 2018, and the results have been pretty good. Despite pitching in homer-happy Yankee Stadium, he’s posted a 1.80 ERA (39 ERA-), and his strikeout rate is a gaudy 32.2%. He easily could have been an All-Star, even if his FIP is a less-inspiring, if still good, 3.85. His walk rate, too, has spiked — to 15.8%, near a career high. It’s too early to say whether Ottavino will back up his breakout 2018 or regress closer to his FIP by season’s end.

What it’s not too early to say, however, is that watching Ottavino pitch this year is an absolute joy. His slider, which he throws more than 40% of the time, has always been his calling card, and it’s as fun as ever, taking a great liquid arc across the plate that can make you question physics. His fastball, a hard two-seamer that he uses more like a four-seam fastball, locating it high in the zone, is a delightful offset to the slider. His cutter — well, his cutter isn’t as fun to watch as the other two pitches, but it sits in between them in velocity and movement and helps disguise everything else. What’s so great about Ottavino, though, isn’t just his raw stuff. It’s the way he uses those pitches that is so fun, and this year, he’s using them to get called strikes by the bucketload.

When you picture a 2019 slider in your mind’s eye, you might picture Ottavino’s, or maybe Patrick Corbin’s. Big break, the batter desperately trying to adjust his swing to hit something that’s falling down and away from him, and the catcher blocking a bouncing ball to record a strikeout. Ottavino still has that pitch in his arsenal, of course. Take a look at him going right after noted slider-masher Lourdes Gurriel and coming out on top:

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Fernando Tatís Jr is arguably the most-exciting young player in the game. He’s certainly gotten off to a rousing start. Through his first 55 games with the San Diego Padres, the 20-year-old shortstop is slashing .327/.393/.620, with 14 home runs, a 162 wRC+, and 13 stolen bases. Twice he’s scored on a sacrifice fly that was caught by the second baseman. Defensively, his range and his arm have both elicited oohs and aahs from what is becoming an increasingly-invigorated Padres fanbase.

The conversation that follows is focused entirely on the young man’s approach to hitting. He’s learned his lessons well — primarily from his father, former big-league infielder Fernando Tatis — but at the same time, his M.O. at the plate is straightforward. Tatis likes to keep things simple, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. Given the numbers he’s been putting up, why should it?

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David Laurila: Is hitting simple, or is it complicated?

Fernando Tatis: “It’s complicated if you want it to be. I think if you take it as simple as possible, you can be more consistent every day. People make it complicated when they start doing a lot of stuff — when you start doing a lot of stuff to your mind; when you think you’re doing this, you’re doing that. For me, a big thing is to remember that I’m playing baseball. I’m just a kid playing in a park. Yes, I have to make adjustments sometimes, but as simple as I can be at the plate is way better.”

Laurila: Are you basically hunting fastballs?

Tatis: “I’m always looking fastballs. I don’t want it to sound like hitting is that easy. Don’t get me wrong. Hitting is not easy. But again, as simple as I can make it is way better.”

Laurila: How do you go about recognizing breaking pitches? Is it mostly a matter of reps?

Tatis: “More reps will be better for you, but for me, recognizing breaking balls is … a big part is when you’re looking for his fastball, you forget about everything down. If you see spin up, those are the good ones to hit. The ones down are going to be hard.” Read the rest of this entry »

The pairing was worth the wait: two rookies, both denied well-earned call-ups last year due to service-time shenanigans, not only clubbed their way into the 2019 Home Run Derby at Cleveland’s Progressive Field, but all the way to the finals. In the end, the Mets’ Peter Alonso bested the Blue Jays’ Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who had done nothing less than steal the show by setting Derby records in every round. Alonso’s 23rd home run of the final round, which landed with around 18 seconds left in regulation time, beat Guerrero’s freshly-set record without his even needing to tap into his bonus time.

Between a more aerodynamic ball that is being launched with record frequency, and a decision on the part of officials not to enforce the rule requiring the pitcher to wait until the previous ball had landed (a source of controversy amid Bryce Harper’s 2018 win), Derby records were demolished left and right. And while it lacked the likes of Harper, Mike Trout, Manny Machado, Aaron Judge, and so on, youngest Derby field ever (average age 25.26 years) threw the spotlight on some of the sport’s brightest young talents. Every contestant except one (Carlos Santana) was 27 or younger. Even with a decided lack of star power — just five of the top 20 players in total home runs participated, none of them previous winners — the head-to-head, single-elimination bracket format, with timed four-minute rounds and 30 seconds of bonus time added for hitting two 440-foot homers (as measured by Statcast), kept things entertaining, though the event did wind up running long.

While the 24-year-old Alonso, who has already homered 30 times for the Mets this year, emerged victorious thanks to a trio of walk-off wins, the 20-year-old Guerrero, the youngest participant in Derby history, and the first offspring of a previous winner to participate (dad Vlad won in 2007) was the star of the night. Due in part to his delayed call-up and some early difficulty adjusting to the majors, the game’s consensus top prospect has hit just eight regular season homers (which might be the fewest of a Derby participant — I’m not sure), but on Monday night he showed poise well beyond his years, particularly during the extended exposure he received in an epic semifinal battle with Joc Pederson. The pair not only finished regulation time tied at 29, which matched the single-round record that Guerrero had just set in the quarterfinals, but they remained tied through a one-minute tiebreaker round and the first three-swing “Swing-Off” in Derby history. More on that momentarily.

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The past year has been a whirlwind for Liam Hendriks. A little over a year ago, he was designated for assignment by the Oakland Athletics. At that point in the 2018 season, he was sporting a 7.36 ERA with an ugly 6.43 FIP while also missing more than a month with a groin strain. No one claimed him on waivers and he was sent outright to Triple-A. He worked hard to regain his confidence while also honing his repertoire. He was recalled in September and pitched well enough as an opener to get the start in the Wild Card game against the Yankees. However, that game didn’t go to plan after an Aaron Judge two-run homer got the home team on the board early.

Even after all those setbacks, Hendriks has flourished as a critical piece in the A’s bullpen this year. He started the year in a familiar role, making a couple of opener starts and coming out of the pen as a middle reliever. But as the back-end of the Oakland bullpen began to struggle, Hendriks found his way into higher leverage situations. The climax of his year-long turnaround came when he was named to the American League All-Star team as a replacement for Charlie Morton.

Here’s how Hendriks stacks up against his fellow All-Star relievers and a few other top candidates.

Any of the other candidates listed above could have been chosen and no one would have batted an eye (ok, maybe not Ian Kennedy). But Hendriks leads the AL in WAR as well as park- and league-adjusted ERA. He’s been terrific, and the adjustments he’s made since last September are driving his newfound success. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this year, when I delved into Zack Greinke’s 2019 season, I was impressed by how militantly Greinke follows one common-sense pitching rule: he does absolutely everything he can to avoid walks when the bases are empty, then pitches to avoid contact as soon as a runner reaches base. It’s a classic piece of pitching strategy, but the lengths to which he’s willing to change his approach to match the situation were eye-opening. Greinke’s dogmatism got me thinking: are there areas of pitching where context is so strong that it dictates specific strategies?

Luckily, there’s been a wealth of research on the intricacies of pitching to the situation. Colin Wyers, the current head of R&D for the Astros, wrote an excellent investigation of the topic that holds up well today, but many more writers have tackled this problem. Mitchel Lichtman periodically addresses pitching strategy, Matt Swartz took a good look at the question, William Spaniel considered one narrow case in an interesting way — the list goes on and on. Rather than attempt to go toe-to-toe with these excellent analyses (preview: I’d lose), I’m going to take a slightly different tack. Instead of talking situational pitching broadly, let’s look at a couple situations where behavioral change makes sense and see if pitchers can actually exert any control over it. Read the rest of this entry »

This year’s Home Run Derby arrives at a time of unprecedented long ball saturation, no matter how one chooses to measure its dimensions. Teams are hitting 1.37 home runs per game, a 9.2% increase over 2017, the year of MLB’s previous high rate. Homers make up 3.6% of all plate appearances and 5.3% of all batted ball events, gains of 8.7% and 10.5% relative to 2017. You can more or less double those increases when comparing this year to last year, during which the frequency (1.15 per game) was merely the fifth-highest of all time, a hair behind 2016 (1.16). It’s getting kind of ridiculous, particularly now that we understand that recent changes to the ball’s materials and manufacturing process have resulted in a more aerodynamic ball that carries further.

Given that I’m the old crankypants who last week declared that we’ve reached the point of too many homers, you might find it odd that I’m the one touting the Derby, but I see no contradiction. I’m firm in my belief that we can indulge in a bake-off without mandating that everybody eat a whole pie — rather, 1.37 whole pies — per day.

Besides, while it took MLB more than 30 years — there was a derby television show in 1960, and the event has been part of the All-Star festivities since 1985 — to find a Derby format that works, the head-to-head single-elimination bracket setup with timed, four-minute rounds and 30 seconds of bonus time added for hitting two 440-foot homers, as measured by Statcast, really does make for an entertaining event. The fireworks produced by the likes of Giancarlo Stanton at Petco Park in 2016, or Aaron Judge at Marlins Park in 2017, or Bryce Harper at Nationals Park last year were a gas to watch, creating the kind of whizz-bang spectacle that raises the profile of recognizable stars and helps to grow the game. That said, the television ratings for last year’s event set a 20-year-low, so what do I know?

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Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Pete Fairbanks, Jack Flaherty, and Will Smith — on how they learned and developed their sliders.

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Pete Fairbanks, Texas Rangers

“My coach — this was in summer ball when I was 14 or 15 years old — was Matt Whiteside, who I believe pitched for the Rangers back in the day. He showed me a grip and said, ‘Hey, kind of just turn your wrist; turn it on the side when you throw it.’ It’s possible that it was originally taught to me as more of a curveball, but looking back it’s always had slider characteristics to it. Regardless, that was my introduction to a breaking ball.

Pete Fairbanks’ original slider grip.

“The grip was similar to the one I have now, although it has varied over time. My slider has been good and bad. For instance, it was really cutter-y in 2017; it was very flat. It had six-to-eight inches of lift to it, which obviously isn’t what you’re looking for from a slider. You’re trying to get closer to zero. But with the tweaks I’ve made to it this year, it’s really taken off.

“I worked with one of our systems guys, Sam Niedrorf, when I was down in High-A. He was the guy who was feeding me all of my numbers on it, so I could fiddle with it to get it where it needed to be this year. We had a portable TrackMan, and I threw a couple of bullpens in front of that. Read the rest of this entry »