Let me explain how I landed on Jose Alvarado. Alvarado is a reliever for the Rays. I actually wrote about him last June, but not because of his pitching.

Right. So why Alvarado, on today of all days? It’s not like he’s been showing up in trade rumors. Here’s the explanation: I’m a guy who loves looking at bullpens. I was also looking at the Twins last night, considering them as a possible sleeper. One guy they should be getting back is Michael Pineda. Another guy they already got back is Trevor May. May is going to pitch out of the Minnesota bullpen, and when he returned in 2018, he put up some encouraging numbers. I went into the leaderboards, to see how his numbers stacked up. That’s where I came across Alvarado. That’s what prompted all of this work.

Almost completely off the radar, Alvarado broke out late in the season. There’s no need to be complicated here. This is a very simple table:

That’s a list of some talented pitchers. Down the stretch, Alvarado struck out almost literally half of his opponents. He struck out the same rate of opponents as Edwin Diaz. I’ve written before about Ryan Pressly’s breakout. I’ve written before about Jose Leclerc’s breakout. What happened with Alvarado? Did anything happen with Alvarado? The answer is yes. He changed on the fly, and became something dominant.

Read the rest of this entry »

This year’s free agent class was supposed to be historic, but with Clayton Kershaw pitching only really well, Josh Donaldson and Andrew Miller hurt, David Price and Jason Heyward not performing well enough to opt out of their deals, and Matt Harvey taking a nosedive, this class only turned out to be pretty good. Manny Machado and Bryce Harper are two superstars hitting free agency in their mid-20s. Having one of the two would make for a great headliner; signing both would provide multiple teams with the opportunity to transform their franchise. After those two, we’ve seen starting pitchers do pretty well so far, and a bunch of relievers sign solid deals, but the talk of a slow offseason has returned.

Some of last winter’s slowness was mitigated by star players receiving contracts close to expectations. Yu Darvish, Eric Hosmer, J.D. Martinez, and Lorenzo Cain all signed deals that seemed fair as spring approached. Jake Arrieta didn’t come that far off when we consider his opt-out. Machado and Harper are still likely to sign very big contracts, while some in the middle might end up getting squeezed. But with this free agent class the supposed justification for teams saving their money on the heels of MLB payrolls going down despite soaring revenues, another slow winter is cause for concern for the players.

In examining the slow market, Ken Rosenthal recently called the system broken and floated some differing perspectives on the causes, effects, and solutions. One paragraph, in particular, caught my eye. Read the rest of this entry »

Here, in Part 2 of our series, we will crown the infielders for the 2019 Ken Phelps All-Star Team, a team of guys who, for whatever reason, have mastered the highest levels of the minors but are organizational depth at best, or forgotten entirely at worst, and yet have skills that might (might!) make them useful on a big-league team. Part 1, featuring the members of our outfield, can be found here. The pitchers will follow later.

Third Base: Damek Tomscha

For the second year in a row, our third baseman will be someone from the Philadelphia Phillies’ minor league system. Tomscha was a fiftieth-round pick (seriously!), declined to sign, and was drafted twice more before finally turning pro after being taken in the 17th round. In Dan Szymborski’s latest ZiPS projections for the Phils, Tomscha’s top comp was the immortal Brennan King.

Tomscha is already 27, but he’s done nothing but hit pretty much everywhere he’s gone. His wRC+ numbers between 2014 and 2018 at every level where he’s spent more than 100 plate appearances go like this: 126, 127, 131, 152, 123, 125. (His foray into Triple-A was less encouraging, good for a 60 wRC+ in 93 plate appearances.)

Now, to be fair, Tomscha has only ever shown power like that at Double-A Reading, a level somewhat legendary for inflating power numbers and turning players like Dylan Cozens and Darin Ruf into reincarnations of Babe Ruth. That said, Tomscha has been a good hitter even when he’s not hitting for power, even in the low minors, and has long shown off defensive skills as well.

And he’s a pretty good contact hitter too, with the 17.2% strikeout rate he posted in a small sample at Triple-A this year being the worst of his career.

So what is the package? A big, strong right-handed contact hitter, who doesn’t strike out much and might have some power potential. That’ll work for us at third base.

Shortstop: Arismendy Alcantara

Back in the day, Alcantara was a hot commodity as a prospect who flashed power and speed in the Cubs’ minor league system. It didn’t work out, though – in 459 major league plate appearances, the switch-hitter hit 11 homers and stole 14 bases, but struck out at a rate that would make Mark Reynolds blush, on his way to a .189/.235/.315 triple slash and 49 wRC+. A 1.9% walk rate and 35.2% strikeout rate with the Reds in 2017 – good for a 5 wRC+ (!!) – sealed his fate, and he hasn’t played in affiliated baseball since.

But something happened in 2018 when Alcantara spent three stints in the Mexican League: he started drawing walks. A lot of walks, especially by Alcantara’s standards. Despite being four years younger than the average player at his level – after all, Alcantara is still just 26 – he walked at a 9.5% rate or better at three different Mexican League stops. To put that in perspective, Alcantara’s 38 walks in 397 plate appearances was more than he’d had at any level since he was a 21-year-old at Double-A in 2013. The result was a .285/.353/.527 line with 18 homers and 15 steals, showing the tantalizing power-speed combination is still in there. But what’s also in there is this defense at shortstop.

Now, it’s entirely possible that Alcantara’s newfound plate discipline is a mirage, or that it won’t translate back to affiliated baseball. That said, the package is intriguing enough, and Alcantara is still young enough, that he may just be a late bloomer. Major league baseball might have given up on him, but we won’t.

Second Base: Jack Mayfield

Unlike Alcantara, here’s a name you might never have heard before. Mayfield, 28, is no one’s idea of a real prospect – he wasn’t even drafted. But during his time in the Astros’ farm system, he seems to have developed one tool that’s hard to fake: power.

The breakout came in 2016 at Double-A, when Mayfield obliterated opposing pitchers to the tune of a 132 wRC+ and a .288 ISO. Despite faltering in his first taste of Triple-A later that year, Mayfield rebounded and in 2018 proved he was in Fresno to stay, with a .270/.324/.457 triple slash, .341 wOBA, and .187 ISO, his second consecutive year at the level with an ISO above .185 and a wOBA above .340. And even more intriguingly, Mayfield can play defense. Here he is flashing the leather at third base:

And here he is at second base – adding a pretty awesome flip to shortstop:

Now, Mayfield isn’t without his warts – no one on this list is, after all. His plate discipline is lackluster, to put it mildly; he’s never posted a double-digit walk rate, and even in his second-best season, 2016, he struggled to reach a .300 OBP. Still, there have been signs of growth there as well. His BABIP in 2016 was unsustainably low (.226 at both Double- and Triple-A); he’s run BABIPs consistently above .300 both before and since. Mayfield may never walk more than 6% of the time in the big leagues, and he’ll probably strike out a ton. Still, the power and defense are real, and his profile is similar to another 5-foot-11, 190 pound infielder: Brandon Inge. Mayfield doesn’t have Inge’s upside, of course (when Inge was Mayfield’s age, he already had four big league seasons under his belt). But a poor man’s Brandon Inge still has some value, and given a full season’s worth of plate appearances, Mayfield might surprise.

First Base: Joey Meneses

Quick: who led the International League in home runs in 2018? If you guessed top Tigers prospect Christin Stewart, you’d only be half right, as Stewart shared the honor with Philadelphia Phillies minor leaguer Joey Meneses, 26. Another player who was never drafted, Meneses slashed an impressive .311/.360/.510 in 2018, good for a 143 wRC+ and .381 wOBA. Now, it would be easy to conclude that Meneses is a product of where Phillies’ minor leagues affiliates play – after all, Darin Ruf and Dylan Cozens both posted inflated numbers as a result of the hitter-friendly parks in the Phils’ system. But Meneses might be different. For one thing, while 2018 was his first year in the Phillies’ organization, he’s hit everywhere he’s gone. In 2016, while playing for the Carolina Mudcats, the Braves’ Hi-A affiliate, he hit .342/.401/.490 – offense which amounted to a 146 wRC+ and .401 wOBA. He struggled in his first taste of Double-A, but returned to his mashing ways in his second go-around in 2017, with a 124 wRC+ and a career-high walk rate (9.5%).

Now, given Meneses’ gaudy stats, the obvious question is why he isn’t a prospect, even at 26. The answer is that while he has always hit the ball hard, 2018 was the first time he’d shown consistent power. But there’s reason to hope he wasn’t just a Phillies’ minor league mirage. Here he is, hitting a long home run away from Lehigh Valley.

Do you notice the uppercut? Meneses is a swing-changer. Until 2018, the big right-handed first baseman had hit the ball primarily on the ground, with ground ball rates above 50% at every stop but one since 2014. But in 2018, he flipped the script, dropping his ground ball rate to 44.7%, a career low, and upping his flyball rate to 32.9%, his highest rate since rookie ball. That wasn’t Meneses’ only change; after being an all-fields hitter in 2016 and 2017, hitting at least 40% of his balls in play to right field, he started pulling the ball in 2018, hitting fewer balls to right field and more fly balls to left. The result was a career-high HR/FB%, and the second-highest pull rate of his minor-league career.

Of course, even launch-anglified Joey Meneses wasn’t going to displace burgeoning star Rhys Hoskins in Philadelphia, and so the Phillies released him at the end of the season after he received an offer to play in Japan for the Orix Buffaloes. Still, it looks like Meneses made some legitimate changes to his offensive game – changes that, while not likely to make him a star, certainly make him more interesting.

Infield: Corban Joseph

Joseph, 29, was immortalized as the Guy Who Took Over First Base from Chris Davis (TM) last year in Baltimore, a job that lasted all of 19 plate appearances. In reality, however, Joseph probably has something to offer a team that’s willing to look past the obvious flaws. Joseph has the ability to stand at every defensive position on the dirt except shortstop. And Joseph has plate discipline, contact ability, and a bit of pop, which has helped him rack up more than a thousand minor league hits. In a sense, that’s damning with faint praise; Joseph has been in the minors for more than a decade, but has a grand total of 26 major league plate appearances to his name.

In 2018 for Double-A Bowie, Joseph walked more (9.9%) than he struck out (8.2%) with a .185 ISO and 143 wRC+, his second consecutive year at Double-A with a wRC+ of 120 or higher on the back of that skillset. Oh well, you might say, he was a 29-year-old at Double-A; he’s supposed to do that. And that’s certainly true, but he has also shown the same ability at Triple-A – in 2016 for Norfolk, Joseph hit .305/.362/.435 with an 8.3% BB% and 10.2% K%, good for a 129 wRC+.

So what is Corban Joseph? The profile is a bit similar to John Jaso, minus the catching ability, of course. Still, though, Joseph might be better than some of the utility infielders entering 2019 with guaranteed jobs. And there’s an argument to be made Joseph is better than David Fletcher, who will, barring other moves, open 2019 with a starting job in the Angels’ infield. Joseph is probably good enough for a big league job somewhere; he’s just never gotten the opportunity.

Catcher: Beau Taylor

Here’s a guy who, given the state of catching in the major leagues, could probably have a major league job somewhere on opening day, even though he probably won’t. Taylor is 28 and a career member of the Oakland Athletics’ minor league system, where he has been since 2011. He’s also no one’s idea of a prospect, accruing just six major league plate appearances, all in 2018. Why? For one thing, he doesn’t hit for power; this was his last of just three home runs he hit in the A’s system in 2018, after he hit 5 in 2017, and 5 in 2016.

He doesn’t really hit for average, either; despite a .341 BABIP in 2018, he hit just .248 in 2018. And he doesn’t really control the running game, throwing out just 12 of 73 attempted baserunners in 2018.

So why is Taylor here? Because he has plate discipline. Indeed, quite good plate discipline. In 2018, he walked in 14% of his plate appearances at AAA. In 2017, he walked in better than 12% of his plate appearances. In fact, Taylor hasn’t had a walk rate below 10% since a 2014 half-season at Double-A, when he posted a 9.7% walk rate. And owing to all the walks, Taylor has posted a wRC+ above 90 at every stop but one since 2014.

Steamer doesn’t think much of Taylor, projecting just a 69 wRC+ for 2019 at the big league level. But Jonathan Lucroy just posted a 70 wRC+ for the Athletics, and at least Taylor might still have some upside.

Designated Hitter: Neftali Soto

Once upon a time, Neftali Soto was a big-time Reds prospect who, despite underwhelming numbers, possessed exciting tools. The good news is that Soto, now 29, mashed .310/.364/.644 in 2018 with 41 homers in just 459 plate appearances, fulfilling his longstanding prospect status. The bad news is that he posted those video game numbers in Japan, and went totally ignored stateside.

That’s a shame, because Soto’s transformation from failed prospect to power hitter began in 2017, when he (all together now) started hitting more fly balls. An increased fly ball rate – he went from just 16% in the White Sox organization in 2015 to 34.9% for the Nationals’ Triple-A affiliate in 2018 – led to a power surge, and across two levels of the Nats’ system he destroyed minor league pitching to the tune of a .311/.364/.528 triple-slash, and an ISO above .200 at both levels. Soto’s new look can be captured in this game for Syracuse, when he homered three times, one to each part of the outfield.

Despite his newfound power and contact abilities, the book on Soto remains below average plate discipline; his 29-to-100 strikeout to walk ratio last year in the NPB demonstrates that nicely. Still, bats with this kind of power have some value and could merit a major league opportunity. After all, it’s a safe bet Soto would outhit Chris Davis, and wouldn’t a rebuilding team like the Rangers be better off seeing what he could do with 550 at-bats than giving them to Ronald Guzman?

Next time, we’ll look at the Phelpses’ pitching staff.

Brian Anderson knows who he is as a hitter; he’s less sure of what kind of hitter he’ll be in the years to come. At 25 years of age with just 765 big-league plate appearances under his belt, the fourth-place finisher in last year’s NL Rookie of the Year balloting has a lot of growth in front of him.

Drafted by the Marlins out of the University of Arkansas in 2014, Anderson has displayed reliability, versatility, and a smooth right-handed stroke since arriving in Miami in September 2017. Manning both third base and right field, he finished the 2018 campaign with a .273/.357/.400 slash line and a team-high 34 doubles. Moreover, he was a mainstay in Don Mattingly’s lineup. Anderson was a spectator in just five games.

One thing he didn’t do often was leave the yard. Partly the result of playing in pitcher-friendly Marlins Park, Anderson homered a paltry 11 times. Which circles us back to the “what kind of hitter he’ll be in the years to come?” question. Anderson doesn’t lack raw power. It’s a matter of tapping into it more consistently as he continues to mature as a hitter.

Anderson discussed his gap-to-gap approach, as well as his long-ball potential, when the Marlins visited Fenway Park late last August.

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Brian Anderson on hitting: “It’s about getting my pitches to hit. More specifically, getting good pitches within my approach and putting a good swing on them. It starts with my work in the cage, and then BP is for working on barreling the ball to all parts of the field. It’s for making sure that I’m hitting the ball the right way.

“Once I’m in the box, it kind of depends on the pitcher. Certain pitchers don’t throw to certain spots, and some pitchers are most vulnerable in certain spots. I like the ball more out over the plate. I like it more down in the zone and middle to middle away. That’s kind of the zone I try to lock in on, and I’ll try to drive that ball to right center. If I get hanging off-speed, or a heater in, then I’m (pulling the ball). Generally speaking, I’m more focused on the middle of the field. Read the rest of this entry »

The White Sox have made a series of minor moves this offseason to prepare themselves for contention at some point in the future; that might be as soon as next year, but it’s more likely in 2020 or later. The team added Ivan Nova from the Pirates to provide innings in the rotation. They added Alex Colome from the Mariners to help the pen. Chicago acquired Yonder Alonso from Cleveland to improve the offense and let Jose Abreu spend more time at designated hitter. If there was a $7 million to $10 million unwanted player, the White Sox have seemed willing to take on the salary in exchange for a fringe prospect. That strategy took on a different form today, as the team snapped up free agent reliever Kelvin Herrera on a two-year, $18 million deal with a vesting option, per Jeff Passan.

Herrera, not unlike many relievers, has had an inconsistent career. In 2012, 2014, and 2016, he put together very good seasons, with a sub-3.00 FIP and at least one win above replacement. In 2013 and 2015, he was closer to average. In 2017, when he took on closer duties in Kansas City, he just wasn’t very good. Last season, he put together a very good first half, which prompted Kansas City to trade him to Washington at just the right time. In DC, Herrera pitched poorly, and was sidelined with a rotator cuff injury and then a foot problem that ended his season. He’s missed time due to right arm injuries in 2014, 2017, and last year, also not uncommon for a reliever throwing in the high-90s. This is what his velocity looks like by season.

Velocity isn’t everything, and at 29 years old, Herrera is still young, but the drop is concerning. Here’s a similar graph showing his strikeout and walk rates.

Herrera’s walk rate has always been fine aided by a career 60% first strike rate, including 67% last year. It is interesting that his strikeout rate doesn’t necessarily correlate with his fastball velocity. He wasn’t striking out a lot of batters in 2014 and 2015, when he still had great velocity, and then when his velocity first dipped in 2016, he struck out batters at the highest rate of his career. In ranking the Top 50 free agents this offseason, Kiley McDaniel put Herrera 49th overall and 10th among relievers. McDaniel pegged Herrera for a one-year deal at nine million dollars, roughly half the guarantee he ended up receiving. Dan Szymborski wrote Herrera’s report in that post and came to a similar conclusion. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this winter, the New York Mets were looking to upgrade their catching situation. The team was dissatisfied with Travis d’Arnaud, Kevin Plawecki, and Tomas Nido as the frontline options, and after rumors of a J.T. Realmuto trade, the team ended up signing Wilson Ramos to give them four, major league-caliber catchers. Cleveland has moved in the opposite direction. The team traded top prospect Francisco Mejia to San Diego for Brad Hand and Adam Cimber over the summer to aid their bullpen. Then, when winter began, Cleveland moved Yan Gomes to the Nationals to save money. That left Cleveland with the ultra-light hitting Roberto Perez and the all-or-nothing Eric Haase, whose projections lean more toward the “nothing” side than the “all.” That made the two teams pretty good trading partners, and this is the result:

Cleveland receives:

• C Kevin Plawecki

New York receives:

• RHP Walker Lockett
• 2B Sam Haggerty

Read the rest of this entry »

It was just a little over two years ago that the Orioles lost to the Blue Jays in the AL wild-card game. At that point, Zach Britton was one of the greatest per-inning pitchers in the world, yet the Orioles left him in the bullpen while they lost in extra innings. Before they got to Britton, they went to Donnie Hart. Before they got to Britton, they went to Brian Duensing. Before they got to Britton, they went to Ubaldo Jimenez. It was as inexplicable then as it still is today –Britton was too good of a weapon to ignore, when the stakes were so high. There’s nothing to wait for in a game of that magnitude.

For Britton now, it might feel like ancient history. He moved on to a different team, and in 2018 he made it back to the playoffs, where this time he actually pitched. And Britton has elected to re-sign with that team, agreeing with the Yankees for $39 million over three years. The idea, from the Yankees’ perspective, is to again build out a bullpen that already included Aroldis Chapman, Dellin Betances, Chad Green, and Jonathan Holder. Britton will pitch in the seventh and eighth innings, this being further evidence of how teams are coming to reward non-closers. Something else is different, however. Britton will be paid more than he was in 2016. And yet he also hasn’t been that pitcher ever since. The Yankees are rolling the dice on a hard-to-hit sinker.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, I started a new tradition here at FanGraphs: the Ken Phelps All-Star Team, a 21st century revival of my favorite part of Bill James’ Baseball Abstracts. Ken Phelps was a talented hitter who nevertheless toiled for years in the minors, not exhausting his rookie eligibility until age 28. As Jeff Bower characterized it for Baseball Prospectus, the Phelps All-Star team represented “an assemblage of players with skills that made them useful, but who were generally not given a fair opportunity to prove their worth in the majors or had been given unwarranted labels they couldn’t shake.” Basically, the idea behind our exercise was to identify minor leaguers who, like Phelps himself, were not considered notable prospects (though some may technically still have prospect eligibility) and had earned a Quad-A label, and yet might be competent (or better) big leaguers if given the opportunity.

Last year’s team proved quite successful by the modest standards set for Quad-A players. Our team was projected to go 57-105, which was just one win worse than the actual record of the 2018 Royals and was ten wins better than the 2018 Orioles, who (unlike the Phelpses) had the benefit of a half-season of Manny Machado. And several players I identified also established themselves as legitimate major leaguers, led by Richard Rodriguez, who posted a 63 ERA- and 64 FIP- across 69.1 innings, striking out a third of all the hitters he faced. Deck McGuire received an extended look (38 innings) in the major leagues, and despite his relatively poor results, showed flashes with a 94-mph fastball and an above-average sinker and change-up. Ryan Carpenter showed his plus command and minuscule walk rate could translate to the big leagues across five starts with Detroit, though he was hurt by a home run problem. Mitch Walding, Brandon Snyder, Jabari Blash, and Scott Copeland all saw major league time in 2018, with Walding making his major league debut. All in all, this might not sound like much, but remember that we’re talking about free talent – these are guys who, in essence, aren’t supposed to be doing much at all.

So with that, we bid adieu to the 2018 team and turn to the 2019 team, which we’ll unveil over the next few days. First, let’s review the criteria for selection. Remember, these players are not supposed to be prospects, so this isn’t like Carson’s Fringe Five series. The Quad-A label earned by these players may very well be accurate, and we’re not expecting this fictional team to go and win 100 games. Instead, we’re looking for free talent – guys who, for whatever reason, have mastered the highest levels of the minors but are organizational depth at best, or forgotten entirely at worst, and yet have skills that might (might!) make them useful on a big-league team.

And because scouting and analytics are better than ever before, the idea behind this team has to change a bit. Major-league equivalencies have become mainstream, which means that we have to do more than simply project big-league performance. For that reason, we’re going to tweak James’ original criteria slightly. To qualify for our team, a player cannot have had more than 550 plate appearances or 50 innings pitched in the major leagues, which we’ll use as proxies for a season’s worth of MLB time. He also cannot have appeared on any of FanGraphs’ organizational top prospect lists or the Fringe Five in the past two years (2017-18), and must be 25 or older. Oh, and just to make things fun, we won’t re-use anyone from the 2018 team.

Today we begin our look at the 2019 Ken Phelps All-Star Team by examining at the outfield. The balance of the position players (Part 2), as well as the pitching staff (Part 3), will follow later.

Left Field: Rusney Castillo

Here’s a blast from the past! Once upon a time, Castillo, now 31, was the Red Sox’s hot new offseason addition, a player considered dynamic enough that Boston paid $72 million to play him in the team’s outfield. It didn’t work out – Castillo was handed a big league job in 2015 and fell flat, posting just 0.1 fWAR and a 73 wRC+ across 80 games. The Red Sox removed him from their 40-man roster in 2016, and since then he’s labored in Boston’s minor league system, with his most notable accomplishment being the ignominy of landing on a list of baseball’s worst contracts. He has seen all of eight plate appearances, all of which came in 2016.

Whether it was the decreased pressure, simple player development, easier competition, or Castillo adjusting to his new environs, he’s quietly broken out for Pawtucket over the last couple of years, following a .378 wOBA and 138 wRC+ in 2017 with a .348 wOBA and 120 wRC+ in 2018. His line drive rate and the percentage of balls he sent to the opposite field both spiked in 2018, as Castillo became more of an all-fields hitter.

Now Castillo still has his warts, as every player on this list does. His power never really developed or been consistent – he followed fifteen homers and a .193 ISO in 2017 with five and a .097 in 2018. Even his improved plate discipline was still subpar, with just a 5.7% walk rate. His in field fly ball rate spiked in 2018 and, despite still having above-average speed, his base-running deteriorated, and he was relegated to a corner spot in the outfield.

Still, Steamer suggests that at least some of Castillo’s gains were legitimate, projecting a 90 WRC+, and despite the move to the corner, his defense remains above-average. Further, his coaches at Triple-A are convinced he could hold his own in the major leagues, a combination of his improved performance and commitment to conditioning.

“He’s a big leaguer,” said [Pawtucket Manager Kevin] Boles. “He’s a big leaguer on a Triple A field. You coach at third. The third baseman says, ‘How is this guy still here?’ Everybody knows it. Everybody knows he’s major league-quality.”

Castillo may be a forgotten man in Boston — the outfield spots in Fenway are spoken for — and his salary will likely strike most clubs as pretty rich considering what he is at present, but the tools that made him enticing in 2014 seem still to be there, and perhaps improved. We’ll start him in our outfield.

Center Field: Cole Sturgeon

Sturgeon, 27, has the distinction of having played in three hundred games for Boston’s Double-A affiliate across four seasons before finally being called up to Triple-A for good late in 2018. He raked at Double-A in 2018 to the tune of a .443 wOBA and 178 wRC+, which was most likely the result of having been at the level for the aforementioned 300 games, but also showed some legitimate growth that he carried to Triple-A. After seldom walking in the low minors – across two levels in 2015 and 2016, Sturgeon never eclipsed a 6% walk rate – the outfielder improved both his strikeout and walk rates in 2017 and 2018, posting an 8.6% BB% and 14.3% K% at Double-A in 2018 before keeping most of the gains in his walk rate in Pawtucket.

What makes Sturgeon interesting for our purposes, though, isn’t his hitting. It’s his above-average defense, which he manages despite not having plus speed.

The Red Sox have given Sturgeon a shot in spring training before, largely to see if he can be a fourth outfielder. The sum of Sturgeon’s parts isn’t a star, and probably isn’t even a big league regular. But there might be a poor man’s David DeJesus here, and that’s enough to be interesting. We’ll take him on our team.

Right Field: Yadiel Hernandez

Hernandez, a 31-year-old Cuban émigré, is probably the player on this list most likely to make a major league impact in 2019. When the Nationals signed Hernandez in 2016, they considered him to be a “high-floor, low-ceiling type who . . . could serve as a left-handed hitter off the bench or a defensive replacement late.” MLBTradeRumors cited Baseball America’s Ben Badler in calling Hernendez a “small and not overly toolsy player who profiles as a corner outfielder,” which MLBTR’s Jeff Todd called “a rather unexciting profile.” And even with the likely departure of Bryce Harper this offseason, he is well behind rookie sensation Juan Soto, top prospect Victor Robles, and established major leaguers Adam Eaton and Michael Taylor on the Nationals depth chart; there’s been understandably little talk of him entering Washington’s 2019 outfield mix, even in spite of Eaton’s lengthy injury history. He’s seen just one plate appearance in major league spring training.

Still, Hernandez’s performance thus far suggests he might have upside beyond what was originally thought. For one thing, he draws walks. His 9.9% walk rate at Triple-A in 2018 was his lowest thus far in the minor leagues, and he posted an 11% walk rate across two levels this year. He’s shown an above-average contact tool, and has yet to post a BABIP less than .320. And perhaps most interestingly, Hernandez is showing some burgeoning pop, with 18 homers and a .171 ISO across two levels in 2018. Here he is showing some impressive opposite-field power early last year:

Patience, contact, a bit of pop, and passable defense are an intriguing mix, and on a team with less outfield depth, he might be considered for a starting spot. In any event, he fits nicely in our lineup.

Outfield: Zoilo Almonte

Once upon a time, Almonte, now 29, was a toolsy fringe prospect in the Yankees’ system with an 80-grade name. But despite flashing power and speed in the minors, he cratered in a 34-game cameo with the big club in 2013 (56 wRC+) despite a reasonably good strikeout rate (16.8%). He returned to the minors, where he continued to hit in the Yankees and Braves’ systems, before mashing in the Mexican League in 2016 (123 wRC+ and .207 ISO), and turning into a bona fide middle-of-the-order monster in 2017 (.355/.421/.536 triple-slash, 148 wRC+, .425 wOBA). Intriguingly, Almonte proved his 2017 metamorphosis wasn’t a fluke when he took his talents to the NPB’s Chunichi Dragons in 2018, hitting .321/.375/.486 with a lot of nights like this one:

Almonte finished sixth in the league in batting, second in doubles, fifteenth in OPS, fifteenth in on-base percentage, ninth in hits, tenth in total bases, and fifteenth in homers (all among 65 qualifiers), an impressive showing for the former prospect.

Now, just because Almonte can hit in the Mexican League and in Japan doesn’t mean he can hit in the majors. But Almonte has hit everywhere he’s been except the bigs, and he’s now shown the ability to hit for power and average at Triple-A, in the Mexican League, and in Japan, all of which serves our purposes well. Plus, Almonte has begun to show steady improvements in his plate discipline; in his 2018 season, he was eighteenth in the league in walks, only one of which was intentional. Given his ability to play all three outfield positions capably, he’ll do fine as a fourth outfielder, and, given a big league opportunity, there’s a chance he could outproduce Melky Cabrera in 2019.

Parts 2 and 3 to follow.

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

At last, we’ve reached the final installment of my round-up of the 14 players on this year’s Hall of Fame ballot who are certain to fall below the 5% threshold, with most of them being shut out entirely. It’s no tragedy that they’ll miss out on plaques in Cooperstown, but their triumphs and travails are worth remembering just the same.

Jon Garland

Known mainly for his durability, Garland was the perfect embodiment of a League Average Innings Muncher (LAIM), a term coined by blogger Travis Nelson in late 2003, generally describing dogged but unspectacular sorts such as Dave Burba, Jeff Suppan, and Steve Trachsel who rarely deviated from average run prevention by more than 10%. Over a nine-year span from 2002-2010, the heavy sinker-reliant Garland never made fewer than 32 starts or threw fewer than 191.2 innings, only once finishing with an ERA+ outside of the 91-to-111 range. In 2005, he put it all together, making his lone All-Star team and helping the White Sox to their first championship in 88 years.

Born September 27, 1979 in Valencia, California, Garland grew to 6-foot-5 1/2 and 200 pounds by the time he was a senior in high school (1997), able to throw 90 mph when that was a big deal. That year, he made a variety of pre- and postseason All-America teams, and planned to go to the University of Southern California, but when he was chosen with the 10th pick of the amateur draft by the Cubs, he signed for a $1.325 million bonus and was on his way. Less than 14 months later, he was traded to the White Sox straight up for reliever Matt Karchner in a rare crosstown deal; the Cubs got all of 60.2 innings of 0.1 WAR relief work in exchange for their top pick from the previous season.

Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the New York Mets. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from our own (both Eric Longenhagen’s and Kiley McDaniel’s) observations. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a new feature at the site that offers sortable scouting information for every organization. That can be found here.

Other Prospects of Note
Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.

Outfield Projects
Freddy Valdez, OF
Stanley Consuegra, OF

Valdez, 17, got $1.5 million in July 2018. He’s a traditional corner outfield power prospect; physical, with a huge frame and natural feel for lift. He’s athletically limited and may end up in left field. Consuegra worked out at shortstop when he was an amateur but his footwork belonged in the outfield and he’s already out there full time. He’s a lean, projectable power bat and will be 18 next season.

Catching Depth
Ali Sanchez, C
Juan Uriarte, C
Wilfred Astudillo, C

Sanchez is an above-average defender with a plus arm and might be a backup, but his bat is so light that that’s probably his ceiling; he might just be a third catcher. Uriarte had a breakout statistical 2017 and had kept his body in check when he broke camp and headed to Brooklyn, but he fouled a ball off of his leg in his first at-bat and didn’t play the rest of the year. He’s picked up offseason reps in Mexico. Astudillo is a squat catcher who has notably low early-career strikeout rates, if you can believe it.

Relief-types
Kyle Dowdy, RHP
Daniel Zamora, LHP
Bryce Montes de Oca, RHP
Jose Butto, RHP

Dowdy was a 2018 Rule 5 selection. His full report can be found here. Zamora got some big league time last year. He’s a low-slot lefty with a pretty extreme horizontal release point who throws a ton of his above-average frisbee slider. His fastball only sits in the upper-80s, so he’s going to have to have pinpoint fastball command to profile as more than lefty specialist. Montes de Oca, 22, is a physical, fireballing reliever who touches 100 but has had injury issues, including a Tommy John in high school and nerve transposition surgery in college. Butto, 20, could be a traditional mid-90s, above-average breaking ball reliever.

Can Play Shortstop
Edgardo Fermin, SS
Luis Carpio, SS

Each of these guys can pick it at short but probably won’t hit enough to be more than a utility type at peak. Fermin has a knack for barreling balls at the top of the zone, though, which we like.

Individuals Who Didn’t Fit Into Another Group
Joe Cavallaro, RHP
Brailin Gonzalez, LHP

Cavallaro is a side-arming righty with a slider that spins at 2650 rpm. He had a good year in A-ball at age 22 and might be a reliever. Gonzalez, 19, is a semi-projectable lefty who can spin a plus slider. He sat in the upper-80s last year and needs more velo to come.

System OverviewThe Mets have been aggressive this winter under new GM Brodie Van Wagenen, dealing top 100 prospect and 2018 first round pick Jarred Kelenic and fringe top 100 prospect Justin Dunn, along with a 40+ and three 40 FV prospects. This will likely send what was an average farm system at season’s end to one somewhere in the 20s when we re-rank the farm systems later this winter. The system will produce an everyday player early in 2019 in first baseman Peter Alonso, but he’s the only prospect likely to return any real big league value next year. The exciting part of the system this year will be at Low-A Columbia, where the No. 3, 4, 5, and 7 prospects should all start the year; all show potential to be top 100 prospects in the next 12-18 months. Given the posture Van Wagenen has taken so far, these prospects will either be the potential center pieces of blockbuster deals or the wave of cost-controlled starters who will show up in about three years when the current big league group is losing its effectiveness. This new regime will carryover the same amateur scouting group but will have a new leader internationally, with Omar Minaya overseeing the effort after former director Chris Becerra left for the Red Sox.

Several league sources have told us that the Mets don’t scout beneath full-season ball, which is the opposite of what most others teams are doing as data comes to be a greater and greater part of the player evaluation process at the upper levels of the minors. The Mets haven’t acquired a player below full-season ball since Blake Taylor was the Player to be Named Later in the 2014 Ike Davis deal with Pittsburgh. As New York makes several trades, it appears they’ve mistakenly limited the talent pool from which they’re drawing by only caring about full-season prospects, something that the new regime has to live with this offseason, even if they desire to change it next year, because they simply lack reports on a lot of players.