Every July, FanGraphs releases our annual Trade Value Series highlighting the top 50 players in baseball, taking contract status and performance into account. For the past four years, I’ve been in charge of this exercise, with liberal amounts of help from the rest of the FanGraphs staff and some contacts on the team side. This year, I’ve got company. For the first time, FanGraphs readers will be creating their own trade value list. Read the rest of this entry »

Today we turn our attention to some chilly performances at the hot corner. While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of a contender (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of roughly 10%) and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far (which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season), I have also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. That may suggest that some of these teams will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because their performance at that spot thus far is worth a look.

Cubs

The Cubs began the season with 2023 first-round pick Matt Shaw — no. 13 on our preseason Top 100 Prospects list as a 55-FV prospect — as their starter at third base, but he struggled out of the gate, hitting just .172/.294/.241 (62 wRC+) from Opening Day through April 14 before being optioned to Triple-A Iowa. Jon Berti did the bulk of the work in his absence, with Gage Workman, Vidal Bruján, Nicky Lopez and even Justin Turner spotting there as well before Shaw was recalled on May 19. The 23-year-old rookie got hot upon returning, but struggled in June before starting July in a 1-for-27 funk; he is now batting just .198/.276/.280 (61 wRC+) with two homers, 11 steals, and 0.0 WAR. While he’s underperformed relative to his expected stats (including a .350 xSLG), his 83.3-mph average exit velocity places him in the first percentile, and his 26.8% hard-hit rate in the fifth. Notably, he rode the pine in the days leading up to the All-Star break, making one start and two late-inning appearances over the Cubs’ last five games. Manager Craig Counsell called Shaw’s absence from the lineup “just a little breather here.” Read the rest of this entry »

As the draft comes to an end, I find that even after writing a number of articles about this class, I still have more to say. So now that the tables are being folded up and the bartender is cleaning out the taps, here’s an offering of potpourri from draft season: Stray anecdotes and quotes from the combine, or bits of analysis, that never found a home in an article.

Last week, I wrote about the top of this draft being loaded with Tennessee players, and sure enough: Three Vols went off the board in the first round, with four more going between picks no. 33 and 72.

But you could argue that the real school of the draft was Corona High School of California, which had right-hander Seth Hernandez go to the Pirates sixth overall, shortstop Billy Carlson go to the White Sox at pick no. 10, and third baseman Brady Ebel go to Milwaukee at pick no. 32. (In an amusing coincidence, Carlson is committed to Tennessee, though after he went in the top 10, I doubt we’ll ever see him in Knoxville except as a tourist.) Read the rest of this entry »

Below is a team-by-team analysis of last night’s draft activity. Remember that you can find more detailed scouting reports and tool grades for the players drafted yesterday over on The Board. The positions below are what I have them projected as on The Board, not necessarily what the player was announced as. For pitchers, I have a role designated below: starter (SP), or single-inning or multi-inning reliever (SIRP and MIRP). Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball players can be pretty big. I knew this going in. Even so, I was not prepared for Noah Yoder. The 18-year-old pitcher from Mechanicsville, Virginia, draped himself onto the chair I’d set out for him, and then he started to overflow his container, like an overproofed bread dough liberating itself from a too-small pan.

Yoder explained that, having little showcase experience other than an eye-catching performance at East Coast Pro, he was enjoying his fancy surroundings at the MLB Draft Combine. Having a shuttle bus from the hotel to the ballpark was a particularly nice surprise.

As he settled into his seat and stretched out his legs, I was quickly coming to the realization that I had not left nearly enough space between his chair and my own. My previous interview had been with a compact college relief pitcher, and I hadn’t thought to rearrange the furniture for my next guest. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Day One of the amateur draft kicks off this evening, and I’ve done a top-to-bottom refresh and expansion of my draft prospect rankings, which you can see on The Board. Please go read those blurbs and explore the tool grade section to get a better idea of my thoughts on the players. The goal of the draft rankings is to evaluate and rank as many of the players who are talented enough to hop onto the main section of the pro prospect lists as possible, so they can be ported over to the pro side of The Board as soon as they’re drafted. Players for whom that is true tend to start to peter out in rounds four and five of the draft as bonus slot amounts dip below $500,000. Over-slot guys are obvious exceptions. By the seventh round, we’re mostly talking about org guys who are drafted to make a team’s bonus pool puzzle fit together, or players who need significant development to truly be considered prospects. That usually means ranking about 150 players, and this year’s class is right in that range; right now, I have 152 guys on there. Read the rest of this entry »

Jose Altuve is having a Cooperstown-worthy career. Since debuting with the Houston Astros in 2011, the 35-year-old second baseman has logged 2,329 hits, including 246 home runs, while putting up a 129 wRC+ and 59.2 WAR. A nine-time All-Star who has won seven Silver Sluggers and one Gold Glove, Altuve captured MVP honors in 2017.

Turn the clock back to 2008, and the 5-foot-6 Puerto Cabello, Venezuela native was 18 years old and playing stateside for the first time. His manager with the rookie-level Greeneville Astros was Rodney Linares.

I recently asked the now-Tampa Bay Rays bench coach for his memories of the then-teenaged prospect.

“One guy that doesn’t get a lot of credit for Altuve is [current St. Louis Cardinals first base coach] Stubby Clapp, who’d been my hitting coach the year before,” Linares told me. “He always talked about Altuve, because he’d had him in extended spring. He was like, ‘You’ve got to watch this kid; this kid is going to be really good.’ I used to tell Stubby, ‘You think that because you’re small and played in the big leagues, anybody who is small can play.’”

Linares recalls the Astros organization’s wanting him to play 20-year-old Albert Cartwright at second, prompting him to tell Altuve ‘Go to short, go to third, go to left field. I’m going to make sure that you get your at-bats.” Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Houston Astros. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fifth 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 we 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 »

If you’ve ever sent in a mailbag question, you may have noticed that we sometimes wait a bit to answer it. We can’t get to all of your great questions each week, but many of them remain relevant and interesting enough that we can respond to them later on. Other questions require some reporting on our part, and it may take us longer than a week to check with various sources to gather the information necessary to address them.

I thought this was all worth mentioning, because three of the four questions featured in today’s mailbag were submitted more than an a week ago and a few deal with stats that have changed since the questions were submitted. We have updated the stats you’ll see in each question because those are the ones we are citing in our answers.

One last thing before we get to your questions: I’d like to remind all of you that while anyone can submit a question, this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »