Earlier this offseason, I spent some time reviewing the overall contact management performance of AL and NL ERA qualifiers. Exit-speed and launch-angle data was used to determine how pitchers “should have” performed on balls in play, and when the smoke cleared, CC Sabathia and Kyle Hendricks were named the 2016 AL and NL Contact Managers of the Year.
A few weeks ago, lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen published FanGraphs’ top-100 prospect list. Baseball America recently performed a similar exercise, as did Baseball Prospectus, Keith Law, MLB.com and John Sickels.
On the whole, there’s a lot of consensus among these rankings. Although the order varied, all eight of Andrew Benintendi, Dansby Swanson, Amed Rosario, Alex Reyes, Gleyber Torres, Eloy Jimenez, Yoan Moncada, Brendan Rodgers and Austin Meadows ranked within each outlet’s top 20. Fifty-nine players made every single top 100. The point of this article, however, isn’t to celebrate those similarities, but to point out the differences. In what follows, I identify the prospects that each outlet ranks higher and lower than the “establishment,” and look at how the various outlets compare to each other. Brace yourselves for an onslaught of tables and plots.
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List of Lists
Firstly, here’s the consensus prospect list. I hard-coded all unranked players as having ranked 210th, since Sickels ranked just over 200 names. The “Avg. Rank” column below is a simple average of all the rankings.
Here’s an excerpted note from the top of a FanGraphs player page you’ve presumably never visited:
RotoWire News: Pruitt has made the Opening Day roster for Tampa Bay, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reports. (3/30/2017)
Here’s Topkin, writing a little about Pruitt. Here’s Bill Chastain, also writing a little about Pruitt. I should tell you that the specific Pruitt here is Austin Pruitt, who is a 27-year-old right-handed pitcher. A quote from the team:
“We’ve got unique situations where guys can provide lengthier innings,” [manager Kevin] Cash said. “I think looking at it, Austin will be used as a multi-inning [guy]. But those multi-inning roles could come in a 2-1 ballgame. We wouldn’t hesitate to do that with him.”
Pruitt has been a starter, in the minors. He’s about to be a reliever. A particular kind of reliever, a kind of reliever that might be becoming increasingly prevalent. I like Austin Pruitt a lot, and so, allow me to try to sell you on him.
Unless something changes between now and Monday, Byung Ho Park won’t be in Minnesota when the Twins open at home against the Kansas City Royals. According to reports, the Korean slugger will begin the season with Triple-A Rochester. This comes as a surprise. Park was by far the team’s best hitter in spring training, bashing six home runs and slashing .353/.414/,745.
Numbers of a different order are part of the reason — Park isn’t on Minnesota’s 40-man roster — and Paul Molitor’s club is apparently going to carry 13 pitchers. Even so, the lineup lacks power, and Park is one of the few players capable of providing it.
There is another matter to consider: alienation. Park presumably won’t walk away from his contract — he’s signed through 2019 with a 2020 buyout — but at the same time, he can’t be pleased. The former Nexen Heroes star has been working hard to prove that last year’s disappointing debut was a simple matter of learning curve and bum wrist. When I spoke to him earlier this week in Fort Myers, he sounded like 2016 was in his rearview.
“Last year helped me a lot toward preparing for this year,” Park told me through a translator. “Last season I was a little anxious about some of the players I was facing for the first time. Now I feel more confident to face Major League Baseball. I can be less stressed out, and play a better game.”
Park’s problems with velocity are well-documented — a fact he owns up to — but MLB-quality heat wasn’t the only hurdle he faced in his first season stateside. Much of the stress he experienced came away from Target Field.
“I had to acclimate to so many different things outside of the baseball,” explained Park. “It’s easier to get through all of those things now, so I can purely focus on baseball, and on making myself better.”
Park admitted that doubt began to creep into his mind last year — maybe he wasn’t going to succeed here, as expected — but that is no longer the case. He feels his timing is much improved, and that he’s ready to do damage against American League pitchers.
The opportunity to prove that is temporary on hold. Byung Ho Park will begin the season as a Rochester Red Wing, not a Minnesota Twin.
Two years ago, the Cincinnati Reds finished the season by starting rookie pitchers in 64 straight games. Overall, rookies made 110 starts for the Reds that season, third most in history behind the 1998 Florida Marlins and the 2009 Oakland Athletics. The ’98 Marlins team featured the dismantled remnants of the previous season’s World Series title team and lost 104 games. The A’s team finished .500, as Brett Anderson and Gio Gonzalez made solid debuts while Trevor Cahill, Vin Mazzaro, and Josh Outman also pitched. As might be expected, the 2015 Reds were bad, but given their reliance on rookies, we might think the staff might prove to have more veterans in 2016 and 2017. That hasn’t been the case at all.
After getting 110 rookie starts in 2015, the Cincinnati Reds followed up with another 56 rookie starts last year. In the last 100 seasons, only 24 franchises have ever had 81 games or more started by rookie pitchers. Of those teams, the 1934 Philadelphia A’s, the 1936 Philadelphia A’s, the 1978 Oakland A’s, the 2009 Baltimore Orioles, and the 2015 Reds were the only ones to follow up the season questions with another 50 starts by rookies. For the Orioles, Brian Matusz barely avoided losing his rookie status in 2009, so his 32 starts in 2010 comprised the bulk of the Orioles’ 50 rookie starts, with Jake Arrieta nabbing the other 18.
As for the A’s, there have been 234 team seasons over the past 100 years in which rookies started at least 50 games; the A’s alone are responsible 12% (28) of them. Whether in Philadelphia, Kansas City, or Oakland, the organization has almost always been a spendthrift operation, and from 1935 to 1967, the club finished in last place or second-to-last place 25 of 33 seasons, never placing higher than fourth. Only 30 times in history has a team started rookie pitchers in 50 or more games at least two seasons in a row, and the A’s organization is responsible for seven of those times, encompassing 19 seasons.
At points, it looked like the next Nationals closer would be Koda Glover. At other points, it looked like it would be Shawn Kelley, and at other points, it looked like it would be David Robertson, or someone else belonging to another team. But now we can say that the next Nationals closer will be Blake Treinen. That is, at least, in the nearest-term future, barring a change or a trade, which could happen within any given matter of minutes.
For the Nationals, what this is is a resolution. It’s an answer, and all the other bullpen roles fall out of this assignment. For me, it’s a chance to write about Blake Treinen again. I’ve been on the Treinen bandwagon for a few years, mostly just because of his sinker. I’ve been somewhat obsessed with drawing parallels between Treinen and Zach Britton, another power-sinker reliever who converted from the rotation. Their sinkers behave similarly, thrown at similar speeds, and although there’s the clear difference of handedness, I have to go back to the well. Time to think about Treinen and Britton one more time.
Brandon Kintzler doesn’t fit your standard closer profile. The 32-year-old righty isn’t a power pitcher, at least not in terms of missing bats. He averaged just 5.8 strikeouts per nine innings last year while earning 17 saves with the Minnesota Twins. Featuring a sinker that he threw 82% of the time, at an average velocity of 92 mph, he had a 61.9% ground-ball rate and 3.15 ERA.
And then there’s his background. A 40th-round pick by the San Diego Padres in 2004, Kintzler was pitching in an independent league three years later — and not particularly well. The Brewers nonetheless gave him a chance, and he rewarded them by beating the odds and making it to the big leagues. After solid seasons as a setup man in 2013 and 2014, things once again went south. Following an injury-ravaged 2015 that saw him throw just seven innings, Milwaukee cut him loose. The Twins signed him prior to last season.
Kintzler is well acquainted with operating rooms. Since entering pro ball out of Dixie State College, he’s undergone repairs to his shoulder, elbow, and left knee. All have had major impacts on a career that has seen him go from non-prospect to arguably the least-respected closer in the game.
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Kintzler on his sinker-heavy approach: “I think everyone has different stuff. We all have different deception. We all have different… everyone talks about spin rate. I just think everyone is different. What I do works for me. I found out that what makes me successful is attacking with my fastball and forcing action. Could I try to strike out more people? Probably. But that means too many pitches, and I want to throw every day.
“The slider was my pitch coming up through the minor leagues. Read the rest of this entry »
By now, the most prolific pitchers of the spring have put in the equivalent of three major-league starts, some close to four with how short the average start has become. And as much as we talk about the inconsistent talent level in the spring, these starters have mostly faced major-league-quality hitters because the first four to five innings of spring baseball is a decent approximation of regular-season ball. It’s not entirely irresponsible to make certain observations about a pitcher two weeks into the season, so we might as well do it now, too. So let’s talk about Taijuan Walker. Again.
Earlier this week, Jon Heyman reported that the Cardinals and Yadier Molina were “getting close” on a contract extension. With Molina, 34, years seem to be as much as an issue as the dollars involved. Heyman reports that Molina was initially seeking a four-year extension, while the club countered with a two-year deal. Can they find common ground on a three-year contract?
Molina is entering the final year of his current deal, which features a mutual option for next season. He’s given the club a deadline of Opening Day to reach an agreement, though if the club offered him Russell Martin-money in mid-April, I suspect he would consider it.
Molina told MLB.com on Tuesday that the clock on extension talks is “running.” Said Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak: “We understand there is a deadline. I think everyone is going to roll up their sleeves and continue to work at it.”
But is the clock running out on Molina?
It feels like things with the Phillies should be a little more settled than they are. That could just be my own impatience, but even on the pitching side, we have to see if Aaron Nola and Vince Velasquez can stay healthy. And as for the young position players, Odubel Herrera might be the lone sure thing, and he’s bizarre. Maikel Franco still needs to prove that he’s valuable. J.P. Crawford needs to step up his own game. There’s been progress, but the actual core here is still being built.
Thinking about that led me to think about Aaron Altherr. Wednesday’s spring-training highlights also led me to think about Aaron Altherr.
