If he never played another game, Mike Trout would waltz into the Hall of Fame. With three MVP awards, 10 All-Star appearances, and the number five ranking among center fielders in JAWS — all complied in fewer than 1,500 games spread across 13 seasons — he’s already accomplished more than most enshrinees. Hell, he recently surpassed Ken Griffey Jr.’s 83.8 career bWAR, in over 1,200 fewer games (he did so in fWAR early last year). So far this season, however, Trout is off to one of the worst starts of his career, and it’s fair to wonder if we’re seeing the tail end of his time as one of the game’s elite players.

Trout, who’s two months shy of his 32nd birthday, had a big night in Anaheim on Wednesday against the Cubs. In the top of the fourth, he robbed Ian Happ of a home run, then followed up by homering off Jameson Taillon in the bottom of the frame, his 14th dinger of the season. He added to his highlight reel via back-to-back pitches in the seventh inning, making impressive running catches on flies off the bats of Miguel Amaya and Matt Mervis.

Mike Trout is still pretty damn good at baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

The prospect ranks are as high as an elephant’s eye at Castellini Farms. The Reds may have entered this rebuilding cycle with all the grace of an angry cat trying to get a cereal box off its head (as opposed to the awkward toe-dipping of the last go-around), but through trades and their own scouting, they’ve accumulated an impressive amount of talent in the minors. By our in-progress farm system rankings, only the Baltimore Orioles place higher for the 2023 season. Mean ol’ Grandpa ZiPS agrees; the Reds had seven prospects on the preseason ZiPS Top 100, a total that trailed only the Guardians and the O’s. Baltimore and Cincinnati combined seem to have about 80% of the shortstop prospects in baseball.

Whether you go by human or machine, no Red ranked more highly this winter than Elly De La Cruz, who was no. 6 (60 FV) on the prospect team’s Top 100 and no. 15 on the ZiPS list. After an impressive 2021 full-season debut, De La Cruz cranked things up a notch in 2022, hitting 28 homers and slugging .586 combined across High- and Double-A despite only being 20 years old. Questions still remain about his long-term defensive position, but his bat has proved to be even more potent for Triple-A Louisville, as he hit 12 home runs in a mere 38 games and is already two-thirds of the way to last year’s walk total. He’s responsible for the International League’s ERA going up by nearly half a run a game from 2022! OK, I made that last bit up, but you had to actually think about it for a full second before you smelled burning khaki. Read the rest of this entry »

Intending no disrespect to the Minnesota Twins, a lovely team with plenty of commendable players, but the AL Central is a bit of a joke this year. I guess that’s not too surprising — the Central champion has either had or shared the lowest win total among the American League division winners every year since 2017. But as of this writing, the Twins are just one game over .500, a record that would put them in a battle for fourth place (at best) in four of the five other divisions in baseball; nevertheless Minnesota is securely in first place.

Maybe 30 Rock was right, everything is easier in the Midwest. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Washington Nationals. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the third year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but I use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in mid-April, I took the opportunity to gawk at Luis Arraez’s hot start — he’d gone 24-for-51 in his first 15 games — under the assumption that he’d cool off and stop being so interesting fairly soon. Well, Arraez has cooled off, but not as much as you’d think. On Saturday, the Marlins second baseman went 5-for-5 with three doubles to break out of a slump: He’d gone 1-for-6 with one strikeout across the previous two games. Before that, he’d had multiple hits in his previous three games.

Sunday against Oakland, Arraez added two more hits to bring his seasonal batting line to .392/.445/.485. After that hellacious 15-game start to the season, Arraez has hit .362 in his cooldown period and has struck out just seven times in his past 40 games.

Nothing has really changed about Arraez as a hitter since the last time I wrote about him. He’s still making more contact than anyone else in baseball and spraying soft line drives around the diamond like Carlos Alcaraz in spikes. But over the past week, while Arraez was taping “kick me” signs to opposing pitchers’ backs, we passed two important milestones on the baseball calendar: Memorial Day and the start of the NCAA Tournament. That means we’re no longer in the fluky part of the season, and what you’re seeing might actually be real.

So let’s get down to it: Can Arraez hit .400? Read the rest of this entry »

Taj Bradley has had an up-and-down rookie season with the Rays, but only in terms of promotions and demotions. The 22-year-old right-hander has twice been optioned to Triple-A, and three times he’s been summoned back to the big leagues. He might be in Tampa Bay to stay. Over six starts comprising 30 innings, Bradley has logged a 3.62 ERA and a 2.82 FIP, with wins in three of five decisions. Moreover, he’s fanned 42 batters while issuing just five free passes.

The level of composure he’s displayed belies his age and inexperience. While many players performing on the big stage for the first time have a fast heartbeat, his has been borderline bradycardia. In a word, Bradley is chill.

“I’m not the kind of person to get too caught up in anything,” the 2018 fifth-round pick out of Stone Mountain, Georgia’s Redan High School told me on Friday. “If I were to meet a celebrity, or pitch in a big game, I wouldn’t be making too much of a moment of it. I always downplay things. I mean, you do get your nerves, but I don’t build it up. Someone might say, ‘Oh, you made your debut,’ or ‘Oh, you got a win against the Red Sox,’ but I just go about my day.”

Bradley’s debut, which came at home in a spot start against Boston on April 12, did elicit emotions. Being unflappable may be in his DNA, but it’s not as though he’s an unfeeling cyborg. Nearly two months later, the game remains a blur. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Minnesota Twins. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the third year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but I use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this year, Diamond Sports Group declared bankruptcy. That dry corporate action, precipitated by a huge debt burden, is starting to have real world consequences. This Tuesday, DSG missed a payment to the San Diego Padres, as Alden Gonzalez first reported for ESPN. That terminated the contract between Bally Sports (a Diamond subsidiary) and the Padres. By Wednesday, the Padres were off of Bally and broadcasting their own games via Major League Baseball.

That’s a pretty big escalation in what until now felt like a slow-moving situation. In fact, in bankruptcy court, Rob Manfred testified that the league received less than one day’s notice of this missed payment. “[They told us] less than 24 hours before they were going to go off the air that they were going to stop broadcasting Padres games,” he said. (Diamond’s lawyers have contested that timeline.) That led to the Padres terminating their contract with Bally Sports, naturally enough, and to MLB stepping in to broadcast games.

It’s no accident that the league was ready to wade into daily game production. They hired Billy Chambers, formerly a Fox Sports and Diamond Sports executive, as executive vice president of Local Media earlier this year. Hiring a regional sports network executive is a pretty good way to start building your own regional sports capabilities, and the league appears to have moved quickly here. Read the rest of this entry »

Spencer Steer is emerging as a solid big league hitter. One of three prospects acquired by the Cincinnati Reds from the Minnesota Twins at last August’s trade deadline in exchange for Tyler Mahle — Christian Encarnacion-Strand and Steve Hajjar were the others — Steer is slashing .289/.356/.498 with a 124 wRC+ over 225 plate appearances. One year after homering 23 times between two minor league levels, and twice more after a September call-up, he’s gone deep eight times in 2023.

Eric Longenhagen has been bullish on his bat. Back in January, our lead prospect analyst wrote that the 25-year-old corner infielder has “a well-rounded hit/patience/power toolkit,” adding that he is “a good hitter who will stabilize an infield spot in Cincinnati for the next half decade or so.” Longenhagen ranked the 2019 third round pick out of the University of Oregon no. 2 in Cincinnati’s system; he was no. 47 on the preseason Top 100.

Steer sat down to talk hitting prior to Tuesday’s game at Fenway Park. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Miami Marlins. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the third year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but I use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »