Yesterday, Meg Rowley introduced this year’s rankings, and Dan Szymborski examined the state of the league’s first basemen. Today, we turn our attention to second and third basemen, starting with the denizens of the keystone.

Second base is always a great time here at Positional Power Rankings Inc., an opportunity for us to answer the age-old question: If contact hitters were different, how different would they be? The answer is, of course, quite different, which is why we must rank them. Some, like the players at the top of this list, are contact hitters whose skills expand beyond that limited scope, taking them to critical plate appearances in the postseason, to pennants and championships. Some, with their abilities dwindling over time, are forced to adopt a different style of hitting. Some have never been successful big-leaguers; some are decade-long veterans. Some are young and on the rise; others are old, and sort of on the rise anyway. But they all occupy second base, and these are their rankings. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier today, Meg Rowley introduced this year’s positional power rankings. As a quick refresher, all 30 teams are ranked based on the projected WAR from our Depth Charts. Our staff then endeavors to provide you with some illuminating commentary to put those rankings in context. We begin this year’s series with first base.

In last year’s positional rankings, Jay Jaffe wrote that first base just “ain’t what it used to be.” The diminished status of what was once one of baseball’s premier positions went unchanged in 2020. Even worse, one of the few young players near the top of those rankings, Pete Alonso, took a step back. First base has almost become baseball’s oldies station, chock-full of memories of the early hits of Albert Pujols or Joey Votto or Miguel Cabrera, but never airing their newest singles.

So what’s caused the collapse in the Q Score of the game’s first basemen? Offense is still sexy, but the truth of the matter is that home runs are cheap and plentiful. In baseball’s last full season, 135 players qualified for a batting title, and only five of them failed to finish with double-digits home runs. In 2009, there were 31 such players. There were 27 single-digit sluggers in 1999; in 1989, before the early-90s offensive explosion, there were 47. There aren’t just more home runs in baseball, they’re spread more widely among its players. Teams finding more guys who could play shortstop and hit home runs didn’t magically result in the game’s first basemen also thumping more round-trippers.

What’s more, it sometimes seems like there aren’t any actual first base prospects anymore, just prospects at other positions that teams eventually settle for playing first. The Jays haven’t totally given up on Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at the hot corner, and one of the few genuine phenom first basemen to come up in recent years, Cody Bellinger, has turned out to be a dynamite center fielder instead. The Tigers have made no secret of the fact that they would prefer that last year’s number one overall pick, Spencer Torkelson, play at third, a position he didn’t even play in college. It makes one wonder whether Jim Thome and Pujols, both third basemen in the minors, would have been moved to first so quickly if they had been born later.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment that baseball fell out of love with the position, but I’d highlight November 28, 2016 as a key date in the story. That was when reports came out that the Milwaukee Brewers weren’t going to tender Chris Carter, the National League’s home run leader, a contract for the 2017 season. And no one seemed especially shocked! The AL’s home run leader, Mark Trumbo, was also a free agent that offseason and neither he nor Carter attracted significant interest in free agency. Trumbo eventually settled for going back to the Orioles in late January; Carter signed a one-year deal with the Yankees and was done as a major leaguer by midseason.

Will first basemen ever return to prominence? Not everything is cyclical after all, and I think you’d need a change in how the numbers work in baseball to make first basemen desirable again. Perhaps a deadened ball will hurt the less-impressive power hitters at some point, resulting in first basemen reemerging as the game’s princes of power. Or maybe ball or rule changes will result in more balls in play for first basemen to field, giving a top player at the position the potential to post truly significant value on defense. But for 2021 at least, look for more of the same, with lots of familiar names and only a few players who excel enough at every aspect of the game, like Freddie Freeman, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with baseball’s elites. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the 2021 positional power rankings! As is tradition, over the next week and a half, we’ll be ranking every team by position as we inch closer to Opening Day. This is always something of a funny exercise. You read FanGraphs regularly, after all — a fact for which we are supremely grateful — and are well-versed in the goings on of the offseason. You know that Nolan Arenado now plays for the Cardinals (though the Rockies are still paying him for some reason) and that George Springer is a Blue Jay and that J.T. Realmuto found his way back to Philly. You might not remember that Mitch Moreland signed with Oakland, or that Collin McHugh is a Ray, but then, I sometimes forget those facts, which is surely more embarrassing for me than it is for you. All of which is to say, after an offseason spent reading transaction analysis and peeking at projections, you generally know what’s going on. And yet after a difficult, draining year (one you likely spent busy with many things in addition to baseball), you’re still keen to know more about the game and what it might look like between now and October. The positional power rankings are our answer to that impulse.

This post serves as an explainer for our approach to the rankings. If you’re new to the exercise, I hope it helps to clarify how they are compiled and what you might expect from them. If you’re a FanGraphs stalwart, I hope it is a useful reminder of what we’re up to. If you have a bit of time, here is the introduction to last year’s series. You can use the handy nav widget at the top of that post to get a sense of where things stood before Opening Day 2020, oddity and all.

Unlike a lot of sites’ season previews, we don’t arrange ours by team or division. That is a perfectly good way to organize a season preview, but we see a few advantages to the way we do it. First, ranking teams by position allows us to cover a team’s roster from top to bottom. Stars, everyday staples, and role players alike receive some amount of examination, and those players (and the teams they play for) are placed in their proper league-wide context. By doing it this way, you can easily see how teams stack up against each other, get a sense of the overall strength of a position across baseball, and spot places where a well-deployed platoon may end up having a bigger impact than an everyday regular who is merely good. We think all of that context helps to create a richer understanding of the state of things and a clearer picture of the season ahead.

We will have a post for each position, with starting pitchers and relievers divided into two posts each to allow us all the many words we need to do the league’s rotations and bullpens justice without taxing your patience. Each post will start with a brief summary of the position, then rank each team’s group of players from the best down to the worst based on projected WAR. Those WAR numbers are arrived at using a 50/50 blend of ZiPS and Steamer projections and our manually maintained team depth charts (courtesy of Jason Martinez), which include playing time estimates for every player. Read the rest of this entry »

Ethan Small’s success comes largely from his heater. Which isn’t to suggest he throws smoke. As Eric Longenhagen wrote when profiling the 23-year-old southpaw for our 2020 Brewers Top Prospects list, Small is “blowing fastballs with mediocre velocity past opposing hitters because he hides the ball well and creates pure backspin.” Velocity-wise, the former Mississippi State Bulldog typically sits in the low 90s.

Professional hitters haven’t seen much of him due to the pandemic — Small’s curriculum vitae comprises 21 A-ball innings — but Southeastern Conference opponents are another story. They had plenty of opportunity to be impressed with the 28th-overall pick in the 2019 draft, particularly in his junior year when he went 10-2 with a 1.93 ERA, and 176 strikeouts in 107 innings.

A pair of fellow 2019 first-rounders sang Small’s praises when I asked which SEC pitchers they’d faced stood out the most.

Braden Shewmake, whom the Atlanta Braves drafted 21st overall out of Texas A&M, began by citing Casey Mize. The second pitcher he mentioned was Small. Read the rest of this entry »

Given their blockbuster trade for Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco, their additions of James McCann and Taijuan Walker, and their projected first place NL East finish, the Mets already had plenty of buzz about them this spring. As if they needed more, their best player, Jacob deGrom, has provided some during the Grapefruit League season by reaching triple digits with his fastball velocity. On Tuesday against the Astros, his heater reportedly reached 100 mph 11 times on the stadium scoreboard, topping out at 101 on a pitch to Alex Bregman.

This is nothing new for the 32-year-old righty, who hit 100 in his first outing of the spring on March 6, the same day he was named the team’s Opening Day starter. Statcast wasn’t available for that outing or his March 11 one (both of which also came against the Astros in a spring where travel restrictions limit the pools of exhibition opponents). Here’s a look at deGrom’s upper-level readings from Tuesday:

Read the rest of this entry »

Hot takes are famously a huge part of the sports industrial complex, but here at FanGraphs, we’re not very good at them. I took a crack at some American League bold predictions yesterday, but honestly, they were pretty bland. Picking the relative fortunes of a bunch of good-but-not-great teams? Boring. A top prospect might be Rookie of the Year? Boring.

Today, I’m going a little further. If the last takes were jalapeños with some seeds removed, these are serrano peppers. I said I’d be ecstatic hitting half of my predictions from yesterday; today I’d be pleased with one in the first three (the fourth one is relatively unadventurous). As always, these aren’t my median predictions, merely corner cases that I think are being undervalued. Will they happen? Probably not. But they could, and I don’t think people are giving them enough credence. Onward! Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Detroit Tigers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. As there was no minor league season in 2020, there are some instances where no new information was gleaned about a player. Players whose write-ups have not been meaningfully altered begin by telling you so. Each blurb ends with an indication of where the player played in 2020, which in turn likely informed the changes to their report if there were any. As always, we’ve leaned more heavily on sources from outside of a given org than those within for reasons of objectivity. Because outside scouts were not allowed at the alternate sites, we’ve primarily focused on data from there, and the context of that data, in our opinion, reduces how meaningful it is. Lastly, in an effort to more clearly indicate relievers’ anticipated roles, you’ll see two reliever designations, both on team lists and on The Board: MIRP, or multi-inning relief pitcher, and SIRP, or single-inning relief pitcher.

For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed, you can click here. For further explanation of Future Value’s merits and drawbacks, read Future Value.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It can be found here.

Prospect writers Kevin Goldstein and Eric Longenhagen will sometimes have enough player notes to compile a scouting post. This is one of those dispatches, a collection of thoughts after another weekend of college baseball and week of spring training. Remember, prospect rankings can be found on The Board.

Eric’s Notes

Marcos Castanon, 2B, UC Santa Barbara: 4-for-12, 2B, HR, 5 BB, 5 K

Entering the year, Castanon had played in more games during a dour freshman season (42 games, .214/.278/.321) than he had in two good ones (.308/.357/.488, 38 games) interrupted by a hamstring injury and the pandemic. He’s out of the gate really hot in 2020 (.358/.500/.642) and now has eight home runs in his last 30 games. Castanon doesn’t have huge raw power but he does good pull-side pop for a second baseman and can barrel velocity. He’ll make some slick plays at second, some of which help enable a lack of bend and flexibility, and overall he’s an average second baseman with a below-average arm. Though his swing doesn’t have playability all over the zone (he’s vulnerable up and in), I think the performance and near average hit/power combo put him in the early Day Two mix.

Cade Doughty, 3B, LSU (2022 eligible): 5-for-14, 4 HR, 3 BB, 3 K

Doughty was the star of a roller coaster three-game set against UT-San Antonio, during which he hit several dramatic home runs, and he already has six on the year. Doughty indeed has plus pull power and is getting to it in games when he get extended and clubs pitch on the outer half. He appears to track pitches well and has squared up a mix of fastballs and breaking balls. Let’s see how he fares in conference play. Doughty likes to swing, and SEC pitching has the best chance to expose what have been some early struggles against fastballs in on his hands. Read the rest of this entry »

The Pittsburgh Pirates have a lot of questions to address regarding their pitching staff. With the regular season just two-plus weeks away, final decisions have yet to be made on starter and bullpen roles alike. Candidates abound on both fronts, particularly the latter, with an addition and an injury-induced subtraction further muddying the waters in recent days. Here are snapshots from four conversations — three recent, and one somewhat older — with pitchers who could figure prominently in the team’s plans.

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Left on the cutting room floor from an interview I did with JT Brubaker at the conclusion of last season was what he said about his two breaking balls. The 27-year-old right-hander considers his slider his best secondary. He’s thrown it since his senior year of high school, and it’s firm. At 86.7 mph (per StatCast), it registered as the 11th-hardest among the 58 pitchers who worked at last 40 innings and had the pitch in their arsenal. Brubaker told me that while it sometimes registers as a cutter, he always considers it a slider.

Eric Longenhagen had written in his 2020 prospect profile that Brubaker’s “relatively new” curveball was his best secondary pitch. I asked the righty what might have prompted that opinion.

“Possibly the analytical side of it,” surmised Brubaker. “It’s something I’d put in the back pocket, then brought back out. I’m always been able to throw a curveball, but I’ve never been fully consistent with it.”

The pitch had actually gone into his back pocket at the bequest of the organization, as they wanted him to focus on his slider. He eventually pulled it back out in need of “something with a little more velocity separation between my changeup and slider, something in the lower lower spectrum to slow the batters down more.” Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Colorado Rockies. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. As there was no minor league season in 2020, there are some instances where no new information was gleaned about a player. Players whose write-ups have not been meaningfully altered begin by telling you so. Each blurb ends with an indication of where the player played in 2020, which in turn likely informed the changes to their report if there were any. As always, I’ve leaned more heavily on sources from outside of a given org than those within for reasons of objectivity. Because outside scouts were not allowed at the alternate sites, I’ve primarily focused on data from there, and the context of that data, in my opinion, reduces how meaningful it is. Lastly, in an effort to more clearly indicate relievers’ anticipated roles, you’ll see two reliever designations, both on my lists and on The Board: MIRP, or multi-inning relief pitcher, and SIRP, or single-inning relief pitcher.

For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed, you can click here. For further explanation of Future Value’s merits and drawbacks, read Future Value.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It can be found here.