On Wednesday, I tackled my picks for 2021’s breakout hitters, so now it’s time to look at the pitchers who feel like good bets to reach a new level of performance this season. Pitchers are inherently volatile creatures, so while there’s the potential for looking smart, there’s ample opportunity to end up sitting in the analytical dunce corner with that pointy hat that I’m not sure was actually ever a real thing. Let’s get straight into the names!

Jordan Montgomery, New York Yankees

The Yankees were cautious with Montgomery in 2020, a smart thing to do for a pitcher who was returning from Tommy John surgery in a season in which every good team made the playoffs. The 5.11 ERA in his 10 starts wasn’t impressive, but many of the underlying numbers were. A .320 BABIP meant that his FIP was a much sunnier 3.87, but the good stuff doesn’t end there. Compared to his promising rookie season of 2017, Montgomery walked fewer batters, struck out more, and induced more soft contact. A lot of soft contact, actually; Monty’s average exit velocity of 84.6 mph was the third-lowest in baseball, behind Ryan Yarbrough and Max Fried. Not bad for a pitcher coming off two lost seasons! I don’t think it would be the nuttiest thing in the world if Montgomery ends up playing Andy Pettitte to Gerrit Cole’s Roger Clemens in 2021.

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Earlier this week, when I examined the potential landing spots for center fielder Jackie Bradley Jr., the Brewers stuck out as a team that didn’t appear to have a glaring need, particularly with center fielder Lorenzo Cain returning to the roster after opting out early in 2020. Yet FanSided’s Robert Murray, who previously covered the Brewers for The Athletic, had recently reported that the team was in the mix for them, and a week and a half later, they landed him via a two-year, $24 million deal that includes an opt-out after this season. The question is, how’s this going to work?

To these eyes, the bigger surprise than the Brewers adding to their stockpile of outfielders is that Bradley landed a multiyear deal in March, and at a healthy AAV at that. Aside from Bryce Harper‘s 13-year, $330-million megadeal, which was announced on March 2, 2019, in my research for the Bradley piece I was unable to find another multiyear position player deal that was completed in March during the past decade, with Manny Ramirez’s two-year, $45 million return to the Dodgers in 2009 the last one that came to mind. It’s just not a month for lasting commitments.

Given that slim history, plus Dan Szymborski’s less-than-glowing ZiPS projection for Bradley — WARs of 1.6 and 1.3 in the first two seasons over about 1,000 total plate appearances, a serviceable return if accompanied by a solid platoon partner — I figured it might be a stretch for him to approach the three-year, $27 million deal from the ZiPS contract model, to say nothing of the reports that he was seeking a contract of at least four years. Bradley (and agent Scott Boras) didn’t get the years, and his total guarantee is less than that of the model but not by much; with his opt out after the first season, he’s exchanged that for a good amount of control.

Brewers president of baseball operations David Stearns, who’s been on the job since October 2015 (initially as general manager) has a history of overstuffing the roster and letting manager Craig Counsell figure out the playing time, and it’s helped the team to three straight postseason appearances for the first time in franchise history. On back-to-back days in late January 2018, Stearns traded for Christian Yelich and signed Cain to a five-year deal, that despite corner outfielders Ryan Braun and Domingo Santana — not to mention first baseman/outfielder Eric Thames — coming off solid seasons; Santana had bashed 30 homers in his age-24 campaign. In late July 2018, he dealt for Mike Moustakas while third baseman Travis Shaw was in the midst of a 32-homer season; Shaw took up playing second base seamlessly and the team came within one win of a trip to the World Series. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, faced with the prospect of an undetermined amount of time with no baseball to watch, I started an experiment: with the help of the FanGraphs reader base, I would crowd manage a team in an online Out Of The Park Baseball league. The OOTP Brewers made a series of crowd-determined decisions throughout the season, with plenty of un-voted upon input by me in the bargain. We fell short of the playoffs, but managed to finish above .500.

That league didn’t end when the season did. Since the virtual 2020 season wrapped up, players have been flying around in free agency, and now that spring training has started, I thought I’d check in on the team and work out some 2021 plans.

The team’s biggest move last year was an in-season trade for Kevin Gausman, a pending free agent. He’s a bigger deal in the game universe than in real life, a borderline top-25 starter with elite control. Rather than let him walk, we signed him to a four-year extension at $23 million per year.

Sounds like a lot, right? Well, our league isn’t a perfect reflection of real life, because most teams are trying to win now. Role playing as a rebuilding team is understandably not everyone’s cup of tea. Take a look at some contracts that notable free agent starters signed this offseason, as well as my scouts’ estimation of them on the 20-80 scale:

The starting pitching market was indeed frothy, and half of those contracts had player options included as well, most notably Stroman, who has three separate chances to get out of the deal. I also left out another 55, because he’s now a Brewer. Collin McHugh signed a two year, $16 million deal with a team option for a third year at $6.5 million. His deal is the cheapest, but he’s the worst of the group; he’s more homer-prone than you’d like in our home bandbox. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I woke up to a bit of a Chicago-area Twitter kerfuffle based on some things Cubs outfielder Ian Happ said on local sports radio about how RBIs are a skill and not based on luck. Let’s face it: When wins and RBIs are praised, somebody somewhere is going to get worked up about it.

Happ said these things on Dan Bernstein and Leila Rahimi’s morning show on 670 AM The Score, and based on the tweets, it sounded like an argument, which surprised me. Dan is a thoughtful guy who has been in fixture in Chicago sports radio since years began with a 1. Like most sports talk hosts, people love him or hate him, but he’s not your standard run-of-the-mill screamer. He’s smart about baseball, exceptionally clever, and doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

After hearing the conversation, it was clearly overblown on social media (as to be expected when Twitter is involved). The most intriguing part of the argument, though, was probably about the 2012 AL MVP voting. Happ insisted that Miguel Cabrera deserved his award based on winning the Triple Crown, with Rahimi agreeing with him; Bernstein went with Mike Trout, based on overall value. I’m with Dan. Cabrera and Trout were roughly equal players offensively, but the latter easily surpasses the former once you factor in defense and base running.

Still, this wasn’t a mud-slinging battle. Dan was respectful throughout the whole conversation, and Happ is a regular on the radio in Chicago. “You can talk wRC+ with [Happ], and he understands it,” said Bernstein. “I think more players understand these kind of numbers now that they know the correlation between the math and how they get paid. A lot of players are past statistics because they’re into so much more measurement now. They want to know about their Rapsodo data and exit velocities.”

The whole situation left me wondering about a couple things — some more serious — in terms of why anyone cares about how players see statistics. But on a more fun and silly level, I wondered if you could make a case where RBIs would matter.

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Jackie Bradley Jr. may or may not be the best defensive centerfielder in the game. Metrics have never loved him quite as much as the eye test suggests they should — accordingly, he’s never been honored with a Fielding Bible award — but there are those who believe he’s without peer among his contemporaries. At worst, the soon-to-turn-31-year-old “JBJ” is on the short list of top defenders at his position.

Those talents will now be display in Milwaukee. According to The Boston Globe’s Julian McWilliams, Bradley, who ranked as the 18th best free agent this offseason per FanGraphs, has agreed to a two-year, $24 million deal with the Brewers that includes an opt-out after the first year, thus ending an eight-season tenure with the Red Sox that included a Gold Glove, an All-Star berth, and a World Series championship. Along the way, Bradley logged a cumulative 93 wRC+ that comprised both peaks and valleys. Notoriously streaky, the personable left-handed-hitter is anything but a sure bet to match last year’s 120 wRC+, .283/.364/.450 line, which came over 55 games.

The Brewers would likely consider it gravy if he did match that level of production. This acquisition was largely about making an already improved defense better — Kolten Wong at second base being another key acquisition — and it unquestionably will. Bradley will be joining an outfield alignment that includes not just Christian Yelich, but also Lorenzo Cain, who is back after opting out last season due to COVID concerns. Cain, who turns 35 next month, is a two-time Fielding Bible winner as a center fielder, and has rated well by the various defensive metrics both over his career and in 2019, when he posted a 7.0 UZR, 22 DRS, and 16.0 Outs Above Average, with BP’s FRAA of -1.6 the exception. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Baltimore Orioles. 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.

While Jake Odorizzi is clearly the top free-agent pitcher still available as March opens, Jackie Bradley Jr. is the market’s top position player still on the shelves, No. 18 overall on our Top 50 Free Agents list. Beyond the fact that they and their agents may have aimed too high with their contractual desires in an industry still feeling the economic pinch of the COVID-19 pandemic and treating the $210 million Competitive Balance Tax threshold as a salary cap, the pair don’t have a ton of similarities beyond their availability. But like Odorizzi, Bradley could provide a clear boost to a contending team.

Bradley, who turns 31 on April 19, spent the past 10 years in the Red Sox organization after being chosen as a supplemental first-round pick out of the University of South Carolina in 2011. It took him awhile to find his footing in the majors: Since he couldn’t keep his batting average above the Mendoza Line over the course of 530 plate appearances in 2013–14, he bounced up and down between Triple-A Pawtucket and Boston and spent nearly half of 2015 on the farm as well before finally sticking around for good.

Since the start of the 2015 season, Bradley has produced at about a league-average level offensively (.247/.331/.438, 102 wRC+) and provided exceptional and often spectacular defense. His +33 DRS in center field is tied for fifth in the majors in that span, and his 19.9 UZR is sixth, though he’s somewhere around 10th or 11th on a prorated basis, depending upon the innings cutoff one chooses. Likewise, his 42 runs via Statcast’s Runs Prevented metric ranks sixth since the start of 2016. In a league where Kevin Kiermaier has dominated the defensive metrics, Bradley has just one Gold Glove to show for his efforts, but he’s nonetheless put together some enviable highlight reels. Here’s one that covers just the last eight weeks of his work:

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Under the low, blue-grey sky in Jupiter, the clouds rolling in low from the sea, the people crowd in the seats, white hats and dark sunglasses on, in the annual ritual of anticipation. The latest in inoffensive country-pop blaring over the speakers, the salty food spilling onto the ground — with handheld video cameras, grainy images criss-crossed by thick netting, they zoom in on the players they’re here to watch. The classic red of the jerseys is loud against the muted landscape; it makes someone like the aging slugger, whom the camera follows with interest, look even bigger and more imposing than he is. And he is, indeed, imposing, much as he has been for the last decade: the Rawlings Big Stick appearing, in his hands, to have all the heft of a piece of driftwood. He is 37 years old, with a right knee that’s gone under the knife; for now, he will not run the bases, nor take the field. He glowers, alone, waiting for his one turn at the plate.

In the rest of the dugout, the bustle: the big grins, pounding gloves. Last year, they lost the pennant. This year, they should make a run for it again. Squint and you’ll see the catcher, who, during last year’s chase, sliced his finger nearly off with a hunting knife — an injury he assures everyone will not affect his ability to throw this year. Watch carefully, and you might catch a glimpse of the prospect. He doesn’t look out of his depth: he is as solid as the slugger ever was, and his demeanor betrays no trepidation. He only has one professional season under his belt; when the slugger debuted almost 15 years ago, he was only a little kid. But he is here, and with a vacancy on the hot corner, he could make the team. It’s a long shot, of course; everyone says it’s a long shot. It was a long shot for a 20-year-old in his first professional season to climb all the way to Triple-A by year’s end, too, but he did it. The chance may be small — but there’s a chance.

The slugger swings — a long, belabored swing, well behind the pitch, and the umpire’s arm punches through the air. The inning is over. The music plays.

***

“He was like a rock,” the team doctor says. He is talking about the prospect. Before a game was even played this spring, when players were reporting and getting their physicals done, they were talking about the prospect. There is such an incongruity between the reality of this young man and what one expects out of a player only two years out of high school, and within that incongruity is space for endless imagining. How quickly he rose in only a year; how quickly might he rise given another? It is spring, and he is with the big-league club — a chance for fans to catch a glimpse, to stoke the fires of their imaginations, before he returns, presumably, to the minors. The games don’t count, but the visions they produce can endure through entire disappointing seasons. If the slugger continues to decline, if the catcher’s near-severed finger hampers him, if they can’t get anything out of third base — they can return, whenever they want, to the low clouds of a passing winter, to a promise of what could soon be. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Philadelphia Phillies. 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.

Tigers manager A.J. Hinch addressed the importance of being aggressive on the base paths during his Saturday morning media session. What he shared included the following, which I quoted on Twitter:

“Your WAR gets dinged whenever you get thrown out on the bases. It’s not valued. People are very aware… players are very aware of that. Winning baseball is good for your WAR too, even if it’s not quantifiable.”

Almost immediately, people began responding critically, opining that Hinch was (pun intended) off base. Feeling that more context was in order — I’d prefaced the original Tweet by noting the subject at hand — I added that Hinch also said that if you’re safe every time, you’re probably not being aggressive enough.

No matter. Commenters went on to suggest that Hinch doesn’t understand the value of an out, sometimes in a snarky, condescending manner. (On Twitter! Imagine that!)

Hinch had a second media session following the team’s workout, so I took the opportunity to bring up the minor foofaraw I’d caused at his expense. Would he like to elaborate on, and clarify, what he’d said, lest a faction of the Twitterverse continue to question his sanity? Read the rest of this entry »