For the first time since 2006, candidates from the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues Black baseball are being considered for placement on a Hall of Fame ballot. While the 10-candidate slate to be voted upon later this year by the Early Baseball Era Committee has not yet been finalized, those who were previously shut out by baseball’s shameful color line, and then again by the Hall of Fame following the election of 17 players, managers, and executives by the Special Committee on the Negro Leagues in 2006, are eligible once again.

In a statement to FanGraphs, Jon Shestakofsky, the Hall’s vice president of communications and education, said, “The Hall of Fame’s Early Baseball Committee, which is scheduled to meet for the first time this December, will consider 10 candidates comprised of players, umpires, managers and executives/pioneers who made their greatest impacts in baseball prior to 1950. Negro Leagues candidates will be eligible for consideration as part of this ballot.” Shestakofsky later clarified that the eligibility applies to pre-Negro Leagues Black baseball candidates as well.

At a time when Major League Baseball is in the midst of a long-overdue reckoning with regards to Negro Leagues history, branding and symbolism, and the representation of Black Americans at all levels within the sport, this is good news. It comes a year after the Negro Leagues Centennial Celebration, which has helped to introduce new generations of fans and media members to some often-overlooked greats, an effort that has met with such success that Shohei Ohtani is drawing comparisons not just to Babe Ruth but to Bullet Rogan and Martín Dihigo. It stands to reason that the renewed spotlight on Black baseball would extend to Cooperstown. Read the rest of this entry »

Francisco Urbaez wasn’t sure what to expect when he reported to spring training. Signed by the Cincinnati Reds as a non-drafted free agent in June of last year, the 23-year-old infielder knew only that he was being given an opportunity. To say he’s made the most of it would be an understatement. In 275 plate appearances with the High-A Dayton Dragons, Urbaez is slashing an eyebrow-raising .332/420/.454.

A native of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Urbaez didn’t come to the United States solely to play baseball. The son of a mechanical engineer and a psychologist, he came to earn a degree.

“That was my family’s plan,” explained Urbaez, who spent two years at Chipola Junior College, and two more at Florida Atlantic University. “They were like, “Go to the States and play ball, and whatever happens happens, but you need an education first.”

Already fluent in English when he arrived in the U.S. at age 18, Urbaez was initially an Accounting major, but then changed to International Business, and ultimately to Business. And while baseball wasn’t the priority, it did serve as a catalyst. Former Toronto Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista is involved with a foundation that helps Latin American student-athletes come to the U.S. via scholarships, and Urbaez was one of the beneficiaries.

Unlike many Dominicans currently playing professional baseball, Urbaez hadn’t attracted a lot of attention while on the island. He received only one offer from an MLB organization, and that was after he’d committed to come Stateside to begin his studies. Teams didn’t exactly knock down his door during his JC tenure, either. It wasn’t until his junior year at FAU that scouts began to take notice. Prominent among them was Andrew Fabian, whose familiarity with Urbaez dated back to his time as a coach at Hillsborough Community College. Now an area scout with the Reds, Fabian saw potential in the under-the-radar second baseman. Read the rest of this entry »

Just as the Joey Gallo trade ended an era of Rangers baseball, the Cubs’ flurry of moves at this year’s trade deadline closed the door on Chicago’s championship core. While Kyle Hendricks, Willson Contreras, and Jason Heyward still remain from the 2016 team, the trades of Javier Báez, Kris Bryant, and Anthony Rizzo send things out with an exclamation point rather than the Texas comma. Five games below .500 and with a much weakened roster, we now project Chicago to finish 74-88; the last time the franchise finished with a worse record was 2014.

In a very real way, the 2010s Cubs did accomplish one very important feat: they won a championship. While I don’t subscribe to the notion that a great run for a team must involve a title, I also have not yet been placed in the role of some brutal autarch who determines how the history books are written. The Cubs won the World Series, and the Rangers did not, and both teams will be remembered differently as a result.

Still, the way it ended leaves a curious dissatisfaction about the Cubs. The dizzying heights of 2016 faded quickly, and the subsequent single NLCS appearance and pair of wild card losses were not the stuff of legend. The sudden turning-off of the cash spigot didn’t help, either; after spending $217 million in free agency after the 2017 season, Chicago has spent a total of $21 million in the offseasons since, or roughly half what the Rays have paid out in that span. (The mid-June 2019 signing of Craig Kimbrel to a three-year, $43 million contract is one of the lone splurges.) In the end, the farm system and those low-key signings couldn’t make up for the attrition elsewhere, and the Cubs’ domination of the NL Central was a brief affair.

Before last winter, team president Jed Hoyer talked about the Cubs going into a retooling phase rather than a full teardown, which left me skeptical. But Chicago still has some advantages that suggest a return to playoff relevance might not be that far away.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bo Bichette is one of the best young hitters in the game. Just 23 years old, the Toronto Blue Jays shortstop has a .299/.345/.509 slash line to go with a 128 wRC+ and 35 home runs — 19 of them coming this season — in 795 big-league plate appearances through Tuesday’s action. Drafted 66th overall in 2016 out of a St. Petersburg high school, the 2021 American League All-Star is the son of former major-league slugger Dante Bichette.

Bichette talked hitting prior to a recent game at Fenway Park.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with one of my favorite Talks Hitting ice-breaker questions: Do you view hitting as more of an art, or more of a science?

Bo Bichette: “That’s an interesting question. I’d say it’s a combination of both, but I would lean more toward it being an art. I think hitting is more mental than anything, and science kind of equates to mechanics and all that. So I would say art.”

Laurila: Hitting analytics have obviously become a bigger part of the game…

Bichette: “Yes, but for me, no. I think the analytics are more how we’re evaluated as players. Everybody has their own things that click in their head. I haven’t really looked at the analytics all that much. The one thing is that pitchers pitch up in the zone more often, so you definitely practice hitting that pitch a little bit. But I don’t pay attention to my launch angle, exit velocity, and stuff like that.”

Laurila: Is your stroke conducive to hitting the elevated fastball? Read the rest of this entry »

On Sunday, the Mets announced that they would not offer a contract to Vanderbilt ace Kumar Rocker. New York had selected the right-hander with the 10th overall pick in the draft just a few weeks earlier, but backed out of a deal upon seeing his medicals. Rocker’s camp was understandably upset. Scott Boras released a statement on his client’s behalf, declaring that Rocker is healthy, ready to pitch, and set to embark on his professional career. It’s a gut-wrenching situation, particularly since no other team is allowed to sign Rocker. He plans to enter the 2022 draft, but for now, he’s in purgatory.

However disappointed Rocker and Mets fans justifiably are, there’s a larger, structural issue at play here, one that overshadows Rocker’s medicals, or even the Mets’ approach to handling them. Steve Cohen violated Rule No. 1 (never Tweet, Steve) but New York isn’t dangling Rocker’s big league dreams for sport: They picked Rocker in good faith and must have really disliked what they saw in his file, particularly since they didn’t have the foresight to take an overslot guy late in the draft as backup. After signing all of their other selections, the Mets wound up leaving more than $1 million in bonus pool money on the table. Nobody wins here.

Like Barret Loux and Brady Aiken before him, Rocker deserves better than to get the rug yanked out from under him like this. I’m sure he has many gripes with how this all played out, but his biggest shouldn’t be with the Mets, but rather with the draft itself. Read the rest of this entry »

What a ride this year’s deadline was. All told, we had 75 prospects move in the last month. They are ranked below, with brief scouting reports written by me and Kevin Goldstein. Most of the deals these prospects were a part of were analyzed at length on this site. An index of those pieces can be found here, or by clicking the hyperlink in the “Trade” column below. I’ve moved all of the players listed here to their new orgs over on The Board, so you can click through to see where they rank among their new teammates. Our farm rankings, which now update live, also reflect these changes, so you can see where teams’ systems stack up post-deadline.

A couple of quick notes before I get to the rankings. We’ve included a few post-prospect players here (those marked in blue) so you can get an idea of where we value them now as opposed to where we had them at their prospect peak. Those players, as well as the Compensatory pick the Rockies will receive after they extend Trevor Story a qualifying offer and he signs elsewhere, are highlighted below. We had closer to 40 prospects (and 23 Players to be Named Later) traded last year, with the PTBNL number inflated by 2020’s COVID-related transaction rules. The backfields are not well-represented here, with just four prospects who have yet to play in full-season ball. Two of those are currently in the DSL and have no official domestic pro experience, though Alberto Ciprian has played stateside for instructs/extended spring training. Now on to the rankings. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s sad to say farewell to what I think was the best trade deadline in the years I’ve been covering baseball, but at least there’s still an autopsy to do! With the league moving to a single trade deadline after eliminating the August waiver-trade shenanigans, this was the last, best opportunity for teams to make changes as we head into the season’s closing chapters.

So who won, who lost, and who finished in the murky middle? To aid us in answering those questions, I ran two sets of ZiPS projections. First, I ran the projections as of Monday morning with each team’s post-deadline roster. Then I ran ZiPS again with today’s standings and current injuries, but having undone all the additions over the two weeks before the trade deadline (including differences in WAR between players). I then compared the pre- and post-deadline projections. Some differences surprised me. Others … did not. Read the rest of this entry »

This past week was one of the most action-packed trade deadlines in recent history. A perfect storm of motivated sellers with strong cores and contenders looking to avoid a one-game play-in led to a pile of big names changing teams, with marquee prospects coming back. With the caveat that instant reaction pieces like this one are educated guesses at best — we don’t know how any of the players traded will turn out, or what other offers teams made — let’s assign some winners, losers, and overall head-scratchers.

Winners

Los Angeles Dodgers
The Dodgers got the best pitcher and the best hitter traded at the deadline, and they did it in one trade. The NL West will be the hardest-fought division in baseball, regardless of who wins; all three contenders are in the top eight in baseball by actual record, Pythagorean record, and BaseRuns record. This is a Glengarry Glen Ross situation; first place is hugely important, and the prize for second place is a single-elimination game against your fellow divisional loser, with one of the best teams in baseball heading home with only one playoff game in the books.

By adding Max Scherzer and Trea Turner, the Dodgers accomplished two things. First, they managed to upgrade a roster that already had very few holes. The more talent you start with, the harder it is to find an upgrade, and many of the available players would have been marginal upgrades at best in Los Angeles. With Scherzer in the fold, no other starter who moved could have cracked their playoff rotation, and Turner lets them put All-Stars at every position on the field when the team is fully healthy.

Just as important, however, was the blocking value of the move. When it looked like Scherzer was on the way to San Diego, I wrote a transaction analysis of that deal that focused on how much of a boon adding Scherzer for a one-game playoff would be — it would be worth, per my rough math, a three percentage point better chance of winning that game as compared to starting Yu Darvish. If the Giants had acquired Scherzer, the upgrade from Kevin Gausman would have been even steeper. If the Dodgers end up in the Wild Card game despite their best efforts, they won’t have to face one of the best pitchers of our generation there — and both rivals will have to turn to lesser starters rather than Scherzer as the regular season wears on. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past two weeks, the FanGraphs staff has written over 50 pieces dedicated to analyzing the 2021 trade deadline, from Jay Jaffe’s Replacement-Level Killers series, which previewed teams’ positions of need, to Eric Longenhagen’s breakdown of the teams with impending 40-man roster crunch, to our analysis of every deadline move, to Ben Clemens and Dan Szymborski’s recaps of the deadline’s winners and losers. It’s a lot to sort through, so to assist you in finding anything you may have missed during the flurry, I’ve rounded up all of our deadline pieces in one place. You’ll find the broader preview and summary pieces (of which we’ll have a few more today, so stay tuned) listed first, followed by a team-by-team listing of the transaction analyses that involved your favorite squad, either as buyers or sellers. In instances where we dissected a transaction across multiple pieces — hello, Max Scherzer/Trea Turner trade! — you’ll see them grouped together.

As always, all of the pieces linked below are free to read, but they took time and resources to produce. If you enjoyed our coverage of the trade deadline and are in a position to do so, we hope you’ll sign up for a FanGraphs Ad-free Membership. It’s the best way to support our work and experience the site. Now, on to the roundup! Read the rest of this entry »

Eric Haase is having a breakout season with the Tigers. Acquired from Cleveland in January of last year, the 28-year-old catcher has a 128 wRC+ and a team-leading 18 home runs. Opportunity has helped fuel the production. Coming into the current campaign, Haase had appeared in just 26 games at the big-league level.

As impressive as Haase has been with the bat, it’s his background that drove a conversation that took place at Comerica Park on Thursday. I began by asking the Detroit-area native about his old organization’s well-earned reputation as a pitching-development machine.

“I think it starts with the guys you’re taking the draft,” opined Haase, who was in the Cleveland system from 2011-2019. “Obviously, there some are high-upside guys, and some organizations pick those top guys and kind of say, ‘Go out there and pitch.’ They think they’ve got themselves more of a finished product. With Cleveland, it was more about picking guys that already had a good feel for pitching, and then implementing things that would give them little spikes in velocity. They were big on weighted balls, big on strength and conditioning. Basically, they’d take guys who already had good command and give them some more legitimate weapons to get hitters out.”

Haase cited Shane Bieber, Aaron Civale, Mike Clevinger, and Zach Plesac as prime examples, and technology played a big role in their respective development paths. Drafted out of Dearborn Divine High School in 2011, Haase was there when the organization began transforming itself. Read the rest of this entry »