The New York Yankees are supposedly rebuilding — and, in a sense, it’s true. They didn’t make the playoffs last season, and they haven’t seen the American League Division Series since 2012. They started the winter by trading the guy who had been their starting catcher for the past three seasons. Those are all some traits that might be representative of a team in transition.

On the other hand, they haven’t dropped below .500 in forever. You have to go back to 1992 to find the last time the Yankees failed to break even. They’ve never been the bad team that one now commonly associates with a tear-down effort. Also, they’ve spent some money in free agency this offseason, on Aroldis Chapman and Matt Holliday. These aren’t the types of players/deals — closers, short-term deals for aging superstar — that teams who are far from contention typically sign/make.

So who are the Yankees? If you had to pick between pretender and contender, you’d have to land on the latter. Let’s take a look at the potential starting lineup. As always, the venerable Mike Axisa has done much of the legwork for us. In his recent piece on how the Yankees may split Brett Gardner and Jacoby Ellsbury in the lineup, here was his best guess as to how the Yankees’ lineup will shake out this season.

1. LF Brett Gardner
2. 2B Starlin Castro
3. C Gary Sanchez
4. DH Matt Holliday
5. SS Didi Gregorius
6. CF Jacoby Ellsbury
7. 1B Gregory Bird
8. RF Aaron Judge
9. 3B Chase Headley

Not bad, right? Let’s take a look at the projected wOBAs for all of the AL teams, according to our current depth charts.

The Yankees are in the middle of the pack, but there are a few caveats here. First, the projections may be conservative on Bird and Sanchez, which is understandable in both cases. Certainly, we shouldn’t expect Sanchez to repeat his blistering .425 wOBA from last season, but the .348 wOBA for which he’s pegged for seems like it could be a little conservative. The early returns from our FANS projections seem to agree, pegging him for a .355 wOBA.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Seattle Mariners made a pair of moves yesterday, the first of which featured the acquisition of OF Mallex Smith from Atlanta in exchange for pitching prospects Thomas Burrows and Luiz Gohara. They then turned Smith around and sent him to Tampa along with teenage INF Carlos Vargas and LHP Ryan Yarbrough for LHP Drew Smyly. Below are scouting reports on the prospects involved — as well as for Smith himself.

Read the rest of this entry »

In my introduction post last week, I mentioned how I had given Yasmani Grandal an MVP vote. When voting totals were finally released, it turned out I was the only writer to grant Grandal a place on a ballot. I ranked him as the seventh-most valuable player in the NL. It’s an interesting feeling to stand out there all alone. I’m the reason Grandal will be forever credited with a 22nd-place finish in the 2016 NL MVP race.

I’ve been asked by some FanGraphs readers why I voted for Grandal, who was certainly not a name-brand candidate. So for accountability and transparency purposes, I will answer that question.

As for my vote, I’m not the first person (or projection system) to suggest Grandal is really, really valuable.

Last May, Grandal thought the idea of his name appearing on an MVP ballot was “absurd” when LA Times reporter Bill Shaikin asked him about a PECOTA forecast suggesting he would be one of the best players in the NL.

In October, ESPN’s Sam Miller asked Grandal about his fancy-stats candidacy. Grandal, again, was not inclined to cast a ballot for himself.

Much of Grandal’s candidacy centered on pitch-framing statistics.

According to the methodologies employed both by Baseball Prospectus and StatCorner, Grandal was the game’s second-best pitch-framing catcher after Buster Posey. (Posey was also on my ballot.) The drop off to third place was steep.

Think Zack Greinke missed Grandal last season?

I understand some view framing as “cheating,” but as a voter, I viewed it as a skill that added real value in 2016. I chose not to ignore the value it created. The teams themselves certainly haven’t ignored the power of framing, as evidenced by a number of transactions in recent years.

But a conversation about Grandal’s value doesn’t end with his defensive contributions.

Read the rest of this entry »

To keep us entertained during this lull of baseball activity, Seattle Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto keeps making trades — and he acquired an interesting bullpen arm in Shae Simmons on Wednesday.

In the trade, Seattle dealt one of its top prospects, Luiz Gohara, to Atlanta for center fielder Mallex Smith and Simmons.

Simmons doesn’t headline the trade, but he’s an intriguing component of it at a time when the industry is paying premium prices for relief help.

A 22nd-round pick by the Braves in 2012 out of Southeast Missouri State, Simmons rose from obscurity to become the Braves’ second-best prospect by WAR prior to the 2015 season.

Prior to that 2015, former FanGraphs prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel ranked Simmons as the Braves’ No. 15 prospect and was given a “poor man’s Craig Kimbrel” comp on Simmons.

Wrote McDaniel:

“Simmons shot through the upper levels in 2014 and posted 21.2 quality innings in the big leagues on the strength of his 93-96 mph fastball that hits 97 mph. Simmons also has a 55 curveball and 50 splitter, but they can waver at times when his delivery and command get out of whack. There’s setup potential here and Simmons may get there early in 2015.”

Did “poor man’s Kimbrel” grab your attention?

Simmons employed his fastball-slider combo to strikeout 12.9 batters per nine innings over the course of his four years in the minors, allowing just 76 hits in 120 career minor-league innings en route to a sparkling 1.80 ERA. (Kimbrel averaged 14.4 strikeouts per nine in the Braves system, posting a 1.85 ERA and 75 hits allowed in 151 innings.)

All those nice things were said and written of Simmons in January of 2015.

In February of 2015, however, Simmons had Tommy John surgery.

For many pitchers, TJ is simply a bump in the road thanks to modern medicine and strength and conditioning programs. Fellow right-handed reliever Bruce Rondon had Tommy John a spring prior to Simmons, and he was as good as he had ever been when he returned to the Tigers late last summer, striking out 11.8 and walking 3.0 batters per nine — the latter figure representing an improvement for Rondon — in 26.2 second-half innings. Rondon pitched last season at 25; Simmons is entering his age-26 season.

Daniel Hudson had a second Tommy John surgery at age 26 in the spring of 2013, and he’s posted FIPs of 3.49 and 3.81, respectively, in 2015 and 2016. In a market paying a premium for relief pitching, the small-market Pirates signed Hudson to a two-year, $11 million deal last month.

Hunter Strickland had Tommy John at 24 in 2013 and has been a quality reliever for the Giants since returning.

Of course, not every reliever returns successfully. Bobby Parnell has struggled mightily since his spring 2014 procedure, though Parnell had the surgery as a 30-year-old. Jonny Venters could never catch a break. And it’s important to note: a return from Tommy John surgery is not the same as a successful return. Perhaps success rates have been overstated, as Jon Rogele’s research for the Hardball Times indicates.

In trading for a player with a limited track record coming off surgery, risk factors increase. But Simmons is still in his mid-20s and the early signs following his return have been encouraging.

We have two small samples of Simmons’ work at the major-league level.

In 21 innings with the Braves in 2014, Simmons recorded an average fastball velocity of 94.9 mph, which he threw nearly 70% of the time. He also featured a breaking ball (which is classified alternately as a curveball and slider) and rare split-finger fastball.

In a seven-game major league sample after returning from surgery last season, Simmons’ fastball velocity was up a full mph to 95.9.

See Simmons’ fastball in action here:

According to our PITCHf/x data, he threw his breaking pitch 32% of the time last summer in his brief showing with the Braves.

This is evidence of his lone swinging strikeout with the pitch as he back-footed a breaking ball against left-handed hitting Danny Espinosa last September:

The Mariners hope he can hone his delivery and command, which have been inconsistent. He walked more than six per nine during two minor-league rehab stops last season. But he’s limited opponents to 11 walks in his brief 28 innings of major-league work to date, and his stuff appears to be intact, if not improved, following his injury.

Dipoto offered some thoughts on the trade to the Seattle Times. “Shae has had success pitching at the back end of games in the minors and has shown strikeout ability at all levels,” Dipoto said.

Dave Cameron wrote earlier this week about how the Mariners are perhaps trying to model their outfield defense after the Royals. And every team is trying to assemble a Royals-like bullpen. So perhaps trying to identify a future quality back-end arm before it becomes a present quality back-end arm is a smart play in a market that will pay a premium for it.

On Monday, I wrote about how the Mariners were transitioning back to a speed-and-defense team, looking to cover up the weaknesses of their pitching staff with elite athletes in the outfield. In comparing them to the Royals of recent years, I ended the piece with a little bit of skepticism.

And, of course, another part of the recent Royals success was some magic, as they significantly outperformed their BaseRuns win expectations. If the speed-and-defense plan was a primary reason for that success, then perhaps the Mariners can copy some of that, but if the bullpen was the key to helping the Royals to win more close games than expected, then that’s probably bad news for Seattle’s ability to recreate that part of the formula. And that’s why we currently have the Mariners projected as an 82-80 team heading into 2017, putting them in line with other fringe contenders who need a bunch of things to go right to snag a playoff spot.

The outfield defense is probably going to be great, and the team will run the bases a lot better than they have in recent years. But winning with a thin line-up and a mediocre rotation isn’t the easiest thing in the world, and especially with a bullpen of one good guy and a bunch of random arms, the Mariners probably can’t count on repeating the Royals success. But given the moves of this winter, that’s clearly what they’re trying for.

48 hours later, and that description of the Mariners pitching staff is already obsolete, because this morning, Jerry Dipoto made two more trades, and in the process, made the team’s stockpile of arms a lot more interesting than they were on Monday.

Read the rest of this entry »

Since this decade began, the home-run leaders among players who’ve recorded at least two-thirds of their games in center field are (in order) Adam Jones, Mike Trout, and Andrew McCutchen. Coming not too far after those three is Colby Rasmus, who’s authored 140 homers over the past seven seasons. Rasmus is coming off a pretty miserable 2016 season, during which he hit well below average while playing mostly in a left-field platoon before ending the season with a groin/hip injury that required surgery. As a result, the Houston Astros declined to make a qualifying offer to Rasmus like they did after his 25-homer, 117 wRC+ 2015 campaign, and the winter action on Rasmus seemed to match his own health: poor. The Tampa Bay Rays appear to have signed Rasmus for a very reasonable $5 million, with $2 million in incentives.

Coming up through the minors, Rasmus was at least a four-tool player, with maybe a knock on his ability to hit for average. While ranking him the third-best prospect in baseball ahead of the 2009 season, Baseball America had this to say about Rasmus’ tools and his future:

Rasmus oozes big league talent and exhibits fluid athleticism at the plate and in the field. He has a balanced, potent swing from the left side and his young frame has filled out with strength, which has begun to turn some of his ropes into the gaps into shots launched over the wall. As he showed in big league camp, Rasmus has the plate discipline to be a leadoff man when he arrives in the majors and the extra-base thump to mature into a middle-of-the-order hitter. The same plus speed and instincts he shows on the bases are even more apparent in center field, where he’s a defensive standout. His glove is good enough to keep him in the lineup even when he’s scuffling at the plate.

Eight seasons and four MLB teams later, Rasmus hasn’t lived up to his promise, but he has been a mostly productive player, putting up league-average hitting numbers to go along with solid baserunning and decent defense. His 18.5 career WAR isn’t a terrible outcome before age 30 for just about any prospect. Per 600 plate appearances, Rasmus has been worth 2.8 WAR during his career. Even with his disastrous 2016 season, he was a 2.9 WAR/600 player in his two years with Astros.

After a contact-heavy, low-power rookie season, Rasmus quickly morphed into the three-true-outcome player we see today. More than 40% of his plate appearances over the last seven years have ended as walks, strikeouts, or home runs. The strikeouts have especially been high the past few seasons. Since 2013, the only players to record as many plate appearances and a higher strikeout rate than Rasmus’ 30.8% mark are sluggers Chris Davis and Chris Carter. Those guys have hit for quite a bit more power than Rasmus, although Rasmus can still make himself valuable running the bases and on defense.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, I wrote about how the Mariners were moving towards the model used by the Kanas City Royals the last few years, putting a heavy emphasis on outfield defense to help prop up a mediocre rotation. GM Jerry Dipoto added Jarrod Dyson to Leonys Martin and Mitch Haniger, giving the team a starting outfield of three guys capable of playing center field, plus a couple of reserves who have some defensive abilities. So, it was pretty weird when the team announced that they’d traded one of their best prospects, lefty Luiz Gohara, to Atlanta for center fielder Mallex Smith and reliever Shae Simmons.

Smith, like Martin and Dyson, is a speed-and-defense center fielder who has some real offensive question marks. As a low-power guy who ran a 73% contact rate in the majors last year, it’s tough to see him ever developing into more than just a below average hitter who tries to make up for his offensive weakness with stolen bases and diving catches in the outfield. It’s the Billy Hamilton profile, just with a 10 percentage point reduction in contact rate and normal earth-person speed, instead of whatever Hamilton got his ability to run from from.

On a team without a real center fielder, Smith would probably be a useful piece, a flycatcher who could hit at the bottom of the order and hold down his spot while making the league minimum. On the Mariners, though, he made little sense, because he’s not good enough to supplant any of the team’s three starters, and because the team’s starters are already good defenders, there isn’t much room for a late-game defensive replacement. So why would Dipoto trade one of the team’s best young arms for another copy of what he already has? Well, there’s this.

Jerry Dipoto isn't done yet. He's working on another deal that could include Mallex Smith, the OF he just acquired from the #Braves.

— Jerry Crasnick (@jcrasnick) January 11, 2017

So, apparently, like Friday’s series of trades that went together, the Mariners made a move that allows them to make another move. Speculatively, Cleveland could certainly use a guy like Smith, allowing them to push Tyler Naquin back to a corner outfield spot, or perhaps the Tigers would like Smith as an alternative to Anthony Gose, even though Gose is a warning about getting too excited about speed-and-defense prospects who can’t make contact. There are teams out there who Smith makes sense for; Seattle just isn’t one of them.

Right now, turning a left-handed pitching prospect with premium velocity into a 4th OF and a reliever doesn’t look like a great idea, but we’ll apparently have to wait and see what Smith fetches in this apparent second deal.

If you’re the Braves, though, you have to be pretty thrilled about this. Even if Simmons might have some real value as a potential high-end reliever, turning him and a guy blocked by Ender Inciarte into another high-upside pitching prospect is a pretty nifty move. While we don’t know exactly what the Mariners are doing, it seems pretty clear that the Braves saw a chance to turn a couple of spare parts into a potential core piece, and jumped on it when they could.

Maybe the most painful part of writing about baseball for a living is that your biases — the same biases of which we’re all guilty — are constantly laid bare for everyone to see. Vladimir Guerrero reminded me of that problem most recently.

David Wright and Joey Votto embody my first bias. Plate discipline was a way to find great hitters! I’d read Moneyball and used it to draft Chipper Jones first in my first fantasy league, back in 2001, and I was money. I had baseball all figured out.

Good one, early 2000s dude. Good one.

Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Pittsburh Pirates farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from my own observations. The KATOH statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on thes 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this. -Eric Longenhagen

The KATOH projection system uses minor-league data and Baseball America prospect rankings to forecast future performance in the major leagues. For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, so take these projections with a grain of salt. Due to their purely objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated. Due to sample-size concerns, only players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced last season have received projections. -Chris Mitchell

Other Lists
NL West (ARI, COL, LAD, SD, SF)
AL Central (CHW, CLE, DET, KC, MIN)
NL Central (CHC, CIN, PIT, MIL, StL)
NL East (ATL, MIA, NYM, PHI, WAS)
AL East (BAL, BOS, NYY, TB, TOR)

65 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Slashed .266/.333/.536 between Double- and Triple-A as a 21-year-old.

Scouting Report
Meadows dominated Double-A for 45 games before receiving a promotion to Triple-A Indianapolis in mid-June. Soon after that, he spent a month on the DL with a hamstring injury, the third one with which Meadows has dealt in as many years (he had reoccurring hammy issues in 2014) and never got things going after he returned, slashing .214/.297/.460. Even so, that’s not alarming in any way for a 21-year-old, especially in a small sample.

Read the rest of this entry »

Carlos Gonzalez is good theatre.

He hit baseball’s most impressive home run last season, according to Jeff Sullivan. The shot left Gonzalez’s bat with a 117-mph exit velocity and 14.2-degree launch angle. That’s baseball equivalent of a 1-iron from an in-his-prime Tiger Woods.

That’s not a snapshot of a player you’d worry about losing it the near term.

He also hit baseball’s fifth-longest home run last season, according to HitTracker. The 475-foot, third-deck shot at Coors Field featured his signature, and aesthetically pleasing, follow-through and bat drop.

For me, Ken Griffey Jr. had the best swing and home-run pose of the modern era, but Gonzalez’s swing is right there among today’s best left-handed batters. It’s the kind of cut to which you could get emotionally attached. The swing has allowed Gonzalez to distinguish himself as one of the sport’s most productive hitters since 2009.

But time catches up to all of us, and looks – and swings – can be deceiving. Gonzalez was once a tools-laden player who could impact the game a number of ways; now he’s more of a bat-only threat with mixed assessments of his defense. He’s entering the final year of a seven-year deal and is owed $20 million by the Rockies. As pretty as that left-handed swing is, 2018 will represent his age-32 season, and he’ll be arriving at a place on the aging curve where mild declines can accelerate in the wrong direction.

He’s become the type of player for whom the market has over-corrected, according to FanGraphs’ Dave Cameron.

So it’s interesting to see the Rockies remain interested in keeping Gonzalez around beyond his current contract. There’s been buzz about an extension dating back to December, and Rockies general manager Jeff Bridich confirmed to MLB.com’s Thomas Harding on Tuesday that the Rockies are open to a contract extension.

Read the rest of this entry »