This is Mike Hattery’s second piece as part of his September residency at FanGraphs. Hattery writes for the Cleveland-based site Waiting for Next Year. He can also be found on Twitter. Read the work of all our residents here.

Certain players in baseball become symbols, willingly or not, for the seismic conceptual shifts of which they’re a part. Jeremy Brown and Scott Hatteberg, for example, remain emblematic of Oakland’s attempts earlier this century — the sort of attempts documented in Michael Lewis’s Moneyball — to exploit inefficiencies in the game. Ben Zobrist, meanwhile, continues to represent the ability of Tampa Bay’s front office to identify valuable, if overlooked, talent. More recently, Daniel Murphy and Josh Donaldson have become the public face of the air-ball revolution. 

For some who follow the minor leagues, catcher Eric Haase in the Cleveland system has achieved a similar level of notoriety. Despite lacking the name recognition of either Murphy or Donaldson, Haase has nevertheless transformed himself in much the same way as those two, elevating the ball more often and reaping the benefits.

Haase’s 2017 season has shifted expectations about his career. Merely a fringe prospect entering the season, he’s now regarded, at the very least, as a future major-league backup who’ll punish opposing pitchers with power from time to time. As FanGraphs’ own Eric Longenhagen noted in an edition of his Daily Prospect Notes last month:

Some scouts question his mobility and he has fringe arm strength, but Haase receives pretty well and has plus, all-fields raw power. While strikeout prone and unlikely to develop even an average hit tool, Haase’s combination of power and position make him a solid bet to play some sort of big-league role, likely as a slugging backup, though some scouts like him as a sleeper regular.

Haase’s collection of statistical indicators earned him the 47th spot on Chris Mitchell’s midseason top-100 KATOH rankings.

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Two summers ago, I asked Greg Mroz — then a radio broadcaster for the Clinton Lumber Kings — which of their players I should interview and write about. He recommended Zack Littell. I proceeded to do so for a Sunday Notes column, despite never having heard of him. Not too many people had. At the time, Seattle’s selection in the 11th round of the 2013 draft barely registered a blip on prospect radar.

Mroz deserves some props, because Littell is now living large. Playing for two different organizations, at two different levels and for three different teams, Littell finished this season with a record of 20-1. The most recent of his victories came on Wednesday with Minnesota’s Double-A affiliate, the Chattanooga Lookouts, in the Southern League playoffs.

No one saw it coming — you can’t predict 20-1 — and the same could probably be said of his multiple changes of address. Seattle swapped Littell for James Pazos last November, and the Yankees subsequently traded him to the Twins as part of July’s Jaime Garcia deal.

“The first one was out of nowhere,” Littell told me. “I was at home, hanging out in the offseason, and got a call — one minute I was a Mariner, and the next minute I was a Yankee. Coming to the Twins… I got scratched from a start the night before, so I kind of knew something was up, but I thought I was going to the A’s because of all the Sonny-Gray-to-the-Yankees rumors. But when I got the call from (New York GM Brian) Cashman, he told me I was going to the Twins.”

The 21-year-old North Carolina native is smart enough to know that W-L records are to be taken with a grain of salt. Read the rest of this entry »

A brief examination of the Cleveland Indians’ roster reveals a number of good players having a number of good seasons. That’s generally the type of thing you’d expect from a team that currently possesses one of the best records in baseball.

Much of Cleveland’s overall success has been the result of a strong second half. By wins above replacement, Corey Kluber has been the club’s most important contributor since the All-Star break. Among non-pitchers, Francisco Lindor has a very narrow lead over one of his teammates in the WAR column. And the identity of that teammate might not be completely obvious. It isn’t last year’s breakout star Jose Ramirez, for example. It’s not big offseason acquisition Edwin Encarnacion, either. No. In a virtual tie with Lindor for second-half WAR is veteran Carlos Santana. The first baseman has arguably been the best player on baseball’s best team in the second half. The 31-year-old soon-to-be free agent has inarguably been one of baseball’s best hitters since the All-Star break.

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Baseball is like one big reference book. The veterans that fill the landscape have knowledge born of their experience, you just have to ask. Luke Weaver in St. Louis has been asking, and that inquisitiveness has benefited his game in ways that aren’t obvious. Command, deception, new pitches — the veterans around him have given him many presents.

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Earlier in the week, it came out that the Red Sox had been using an Apple Watch in their dugout to relay information about the Yankees’ signs from their video replay staff. While sign stealing isn’t illegal, the use of electronic communication in the dugout definitely is, and for violating that rule, MLB will now have to punish the organization in some way. And if they want to use this punishment as a deterrent to keep other teams from following in Boston’s footsteps, they’ll have to go beyond a slap on the wrist.

But realistically, given where technology currently is, trying to use punishments as deterrents could easily turn into a game of whack-a-mole. As Jeff Passan notes, every team does stuff like this, but they just hide it better.

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So, things might be getting out of hand…

A lot of folks inside and outside the game don’t care for September roster expansion. After all, why play the game one way for five months, with one set of roster rules, and then in the most crucial month of the season change the limits of rosters?

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Early Thursday, I listened to an exchange between Buster Olney and Indians president Chris Antonetti. As you’d expect, there was talk about the Indians’ winning streak, and about the impressive play of Jose Ramirez. But Olney also asked Antonetti about an observation that had been relayed to him by some number of league evaluators. In the opinions of those evaluators, one area where the Indians stand out is in their reluctance to throw predictable fastballs. Pitchers have been taught forever that the fastball needs to be established early on. What if a team simply didn’t believe that?

Listening to the segment got some gears whirring. This isn’t a post about the Indians. This is a post inspired by an observation about the Indians. Let’s have a little talk about fastball usage.

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Doug Fister has only made more and more sense. He was most surprising in the early days, the successful days, the days when Fister was a command-first No. 2. He was never considered much of a prospect, because prospect evaluators love them some velocity, but Fister made it work through his pinpoint location. He was, in a sense, in the same mold as Dallas Keuchel and Kyle Hendricks. And then, gradually, Fister got worse, as his repertoire eroded. He lost what speed he had, and he lost his results, having exceeded his own narrow margin of error. Fister joined the Astros in 2016 as a roll of the dice. He wasn’t very good, and then he was a free agent. He didn’t get a job until the desperate Angels signed him in May. He was dropped a month later. Fister became what he was going to become, having gotten to the end of the line.

Yet one last opportunity beckoned, one with the Red Sox. Dave Dombrowski had seen Fister’s best self, and he needed a pitcher. Over Fister’s first month, he allowed nearly a run per inning. A shift to the bullpen ended on July 31 anyway, and Fister has taken off. He’s thrown seven games, and he’s looked like…classic Doug Fister. I mean that. Seemingly out of nowhere, Doug Fister has turned back the clock.

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As the only league among the four major North American sports to operate without some form of a salary cap, Major League Baseball has always been in somewhat of a unique position. Without the traditional ceilings on team salary, the sport has always left itself open to financial disparity and all the articles and opinions that go along with it.

For 20 years, baseball has tried to curb big spenders through the use of luxury taxes. Six teams paid a total of $70 million in taxes this past year, and baseball decided to continue hammering away on high-payroll teams in the new CBA approved last December. While the financial penalties maybe caused teams to think twice before spending on the free-agent market, the luxury tax never directly affected a team’s ability to access one key pipeline of talent: the Rule 4 (or, June amateur) draft.

This all changed last December. As noted by Baseball America’s J.J. Cooper, exceeding the luxury-tax threshold will result in draft-related penalties beginning in 2018. The full list of sanctions is described on page 110 of the 2017-2021 Basic Agreement, but for those who don’t have that kind of time, they can be summarized in two points:

• If a team’s actual payroll exceeds $237 million in the 2018 season (increasing to $250 million in 2021), their highest draft pick will be moved back 10 places.
• If the offending team’s highest draft pick falls in the first six picks of the draft, their second-highest draft pick will be moved back 10 places instead.

For the first time, Major League Baseball has tried to affect a team’s ability to acquire amateur talent after spending large amounts of money. If a team wants to devote an outsized quantity of money (compared to the rest of the league) to acquiring established players, they have to risk the potential of their future by seeing a major source of young talent dry up slightly. However, if you look closely at the new penalties, you see less of a leash on high-payroll teams and more of an inadequate deterrent that will fail to provide any checks at all.

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Baseball is getting chippy.

On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that the Red Sox were being investigated by Major League Baseball for violating the league’s rule against using electronics in the dugout. Specifically, the Yankees filed a complaint alleging the Red Sox used an Apple Watch to receive information from their replay staff, who had used the video reviews to decode the Yankees signs. According to the report, the Red Sox did not deny the allegation, instead going with the playground favorite “they do it too” defense, filing a counter complaint stating the Yankees using a YES Network camera to steal signs.

Then yesterday, Athletics third baseman Matt Chapman got ejected after arguing with Angels catcher Juan Graterol over, you guessed it, sign stealing.

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