Each week, we publish in the neighborhood of 75 articles across our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
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When the Yankees promoted Gleyber Torres in late April, they envisioned him helping them on both sides of the ball, replacing an underwhelming Ronald Torreyes/Tyler Wade platoon that was admittedly nothing more than a stopgap, a temporary solution to an infield logjam. Even so, they probably didn’t expect the kind of power outburst that Torres has provided. After going homerless in his first 12 games, the 21-year-old rookie second baseman has clubbed eight homers in his most recent 15. His total leads the team in the month of May — and that’s a team on pace to break the major-league record for home runs in a season.
Though he’s listed at 6-foot-1 and 200 pounds, Torres did not show a ton of in-game power coming up through the minors. His season high of 11 homers was set in 2016, when he was 19 years old and playing at the High-A stops of the Cubs and Yankees. To be fair, with seven homers in 55 games last year, he probably would have surpassed that total had he not torn his left UCL and required season-ending Tommy John surgery in June. The prospect hounds at Baseball America and MLB Pipeline both graded his power as a 55 (above average), with the latter suggesting 20-plus homers annually; our own Kiley McDaniel graded his raw power at 55/60 (present/future) and his game power at 40/55. The 55 is here, at the very least.
From Baseball Prospectus senior prospect writer Jarrett Seidler:
Y’all undersold Gleyber’s power because he didn’t dong a lot in bad parks while he was growing into his brick shithouse body
— Jarrett Seidler (@jaseidler) May 24, 2018
Jose Quintana’s season is a little difficult to figure out. In three of his first four starts, he allowed 17 runs combined; in that fourth appearance, he pitched six shutout innings. Over four of his past five starts, meanwhile, he’s conceded one run total; he allowed six runs in the other.
Is he improving as the season goes on? He struck out 16 batters against 11 walks in 19.2 innings in those first four starts and struck out 29 hitters and walked 14 in 28.2 innings over the past five outings. His ERA is much lower in the latter of those two periods, but his FIP hasn’t moved a great deal, going from 5.15 to 4.37. These samples are small enough that it would be fair to conclude little to nothing had changed at all, but given his excellent track record, there has to be something to Quintana’s struggles.
A year ago at this time, there were some questions about Quintana’s trade value for the White Sox after the left-hander started slowly. Over his first 11 outings last season, Quintana had authored a 5.60 ERA and 4.40 FIP. Most of Quintana’s issues in terms of ERA stemmed from an increase in homers and a poor left-on-base percentage. After investigating Quintana’s numbers, I felt that most of Quintana’s issues were probably luck-based and unlikely to continue. Brushing off those concerns looks pretty good in hindsight, as Quintana put up a 3.30 FIP and 3.40 ERA and allowed just under one homer per nine innings the rest of the way, eventually helping a Cubs teams desperate for quality starter innings. This season, Quintana’s issues aren’t as easy to brush off.
While Quintana’s current FIP might resemble last year’s figure at roughly the same point in the season, his 4.68 FIP is nearly 20% worse than league average after accounting for the change in league and park. Additionally, there isn’t a gap in contact quality that suggests perhaps Quintana is just getting unlucky. So far, Quintana is giving up home runs because he has deserved to give up home runs. He’s striking out fewer batters than he did a year ago while his walks have gone way up. These are all bad things.
If there’s any cause for hope, it is twofold. One, Quintana has shown some flashes of being the very good pitcher he was before the season started, putting up four starts of at least six innings and zero or one run with at least five strikeouts. The second reason for optimism is that Quintana is still tinkering.
The following three figures correspond to measurements for which objective data exists. One of them is the height above the ground at which the average major-league pitcher releases the ball. Another is the height at which a particular mystery pitcher releases the ball. Finally, the third is the height of this author’s three-year-old son.
(a) 2.18 feet
(b) 3.25 feet
(c) 5.75 feet
Here, with a minimum of suspense, are the corresponding answers:
(a) Mystery pitcher’s release point.
(b) The height of this author’s son.
(c) The average vertical release point of major-league pitchers.
Between 2012 and 2014, the Cardinals had six first-round picks. They spent five of those picks on pitchers, three from college and two from high school. The strategy — overseen by scouting director Dan Kantrovitz, now assistant general manager in Oakland — is an interesting one, as most franchises attempt to load up on cornerstone bats to contend. Of the five pitchers selected, though, only Rob Kaminsky — traded for Brandon Moss — has failed to reach the majors thus far. Marco Gonzales is also gone from the Cardinals organization, departing in a trade last season for “a dense pillar of meat” in Tyler O’Neill. The other three picks are current employed as members of the Cardinals rotation.
Not included in the group above, but acquired during that time period for a near-million dollar bonus, is Alex Reyes, who was signed out of the Dominican Republic at the end of 2012 after moving from New Jersey to avoid the draft. With those four pitchers, plus Carlos Martinez (currently on the disabled list) and the surprising Miles Mikolas, the Cardinals have enviable depth and maybe the right situation for a six-man rotation. While acknowledging the influence of recency bias on such a claim, Flaherty’s dominant 13-strikeout performance on Sunday nevertheless suggests the great potential possessed by the 22-year-old.
What does it mean to be “underrated?” The label suggests public perception is not in line with actual value, which for whatever reason is obscured. The term gets tossed around often and recklessly, like many labels. But in the case of Brandon Belt, there is some merit in making the claim.
Since the start of the 2015 season, Belt ranks 11th in the majors in walk rate (13.6%). He’s tied with Carlos Correa and Edwin Encarnacion for 17th in wRC+ (135). Over the last three-plus seasons, Belt also ranks 16th in on-base percentage (.375).
Since 1990 (in which year, Rich Garces represented the season’s only teenage debutante), only 14 hitters have debuted in the big leagues shy of age 20. With his appearance pinch-hit appearance on Sunday for the Nationals, Juan Soto just did it less minor-league time than nearly all of them. Soto’s 2017 season was buried under injuries (a fractured ankle, a broken hamate bone that required surgery, a hamstring issue), which limited him to just 32 games. When he stepped into the batter’s box this weekend, he did so having played just 122 minor-league games before his debut, the fewest for a teenage hitter since Alex Rodriguez debuted as an 18-year-old in 1994 after just 114 games.
| Year | Player | Position | Team | Debut Age (Y.D) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1991 | Ivan Rodriguez | C | TEX | 19.205 |
| 1994 | Alex Rodriguez | SS | SEA | 18.346 |
| 1995 | Karim Garcia | OF | LAD | 19.308 |
| 1996 | Andruw Jones | CF | ATL | 19.114 |
| 1996 | Edgar Renteria | SS | FLA | 19.277 |
| 1998 | Adrian Beltre | 3B | LAD | 19.078 |
| 1998 | Aramis Ramirez | 3B | PIT | 19.335 |
| 2001 | Wilson Betemit | SS | ATL | 19.320 |
| 2003 | Jose Reyes | SS | NYM | 19.364 |
| 2004 | Melvin Upton Jr. | SS | TB | 19.347 |
| 2007 | Justin Upton | RF | ARI | 19.342 |
| 2011 | Mike Trout | CF | LAA | 19.335 |
| 2012 | Jurickson Profar | SS | TEX | 19.195 |
| 2012 | Bryce Harper | RF | WAS | 19.195 |
| 2018 | Juan Soto | RF | WAS | 19.207 |
Edgar Renteria was pushed to the Midwest League as a 16-year-old and, by the time he was in the majors, had three times as many games under his belt than Soto. Justin Upton was drafted out of high school in 2005 and held out until January. (I guess there’s one good thing about the new CBA.) Then he tore through the minors and debuted in August of 2007 after seeing action in about 200 games. Trout signed quickly after he was drafted and played in the AZL that summer, then split his first full pro season at Low- and High-A, after which he was already at 175 games, and he needed 75 more and a Peter Bourjos injury the following year to debut.
Each week, we publish in the neighborhood of 75 articles across our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
Read the rest of this entry »
Justin Verlander had himself a night in Anaheim on Wednesday, throwing his first complete-game shutout since August 26, 2015 and becoming the 33rd pitcher to notch 2,500 strikeouts. What’s more, he did it in a game where the Astros’ sole possession of first place in the AL West was on the line. It’s just the latest chapter of the now 35-year-old righty’s rebirth, one that has returned him to the upper echelon of the game’s starters and positioned him for a run at the Hall of Fame. The pitcher famous for finding another gear with his fastball late in the game has done just that with his career.
Verlander collected his milestone strikeout against none other than Shohei Ohtani, who foul-tipped a 96 mph heater in the ninth inning:
That was one of seven strikeouts Verlander notched on the night, and yes, he was still Bringing It late. He threw his six fastest four-seamers of the night, and nine of his top 11, in the eighth or ninth innings, all 97.5 mph or above according to Brooks Baseball.
Three of his strikeouts came against Ohtani (the second silver sombrero of his brief MLB career), who while avoiding a strikeout in the fourth inning — and even getting the call on this 87 mph slider — nonetheless wound up with his ankles repurposed into a pretzel, with Verlander supplying the mustard:
We know the Aaron Judge story. He was a prospect whose contact ability was questioned. Would his 80-grade power play in games? After working on a swing adjustment in the winter of 2016-17, however, he dramatically improved his contact rate, posting a remarkable 173 wRC+ last season while nearly winning the AL MVP award.
In the 21st century, there have been only 31 completed or ongoing seasons with a wRC+ better than Judge’s mark. And what’s remarkable is that one of those — though, just a partial season — is Judge’s 2018 campaign, in which he has a wRC+ of 178.
After making one of the most dramatic year-to-year improvements in major-league history, Judge has actually improved through the first quarter of this season, which is amazing in a different way. While making gains is one thing, consolidating them is another, with the wealth of scouting information available.
