We are lucky to live in the time of Mike Trout, whose 186 wRC+ is tops in baseball, but — seemingly like the rest of the world around us — the game’s current crop of center fielders appears to be going to hell in a handbasket. The position’s average wRC+ of 93 is the lowest for the 2002-2019 period covered by our splits, and translates to “literally half as productive as Trout, relative to the league.” Woof.

Given that, it shouldn’t come as too great a surprise that several contenders — which for this series I’ve defined as teams who are above .500 or have playoff odds of at least 10.0%, a definition that currently covers 18 teams (make up your damn minds already, Rangers) — are getting meager production from the middle pasture (less than 1.0 WAR at the spot), making them eligible for a spot among the Replacement Level Killers. As the July 31 trade deadline approaches, there’s an urgency to patch that problem, particularly given that the August waiver period during which they can tweak the roster is no more. Even so, I’m less concerned about these teams’ eventual solutions, whether via trades or internal options, than in pointing out the problems. I’m a real hit at parties.

At the other end of the defensive spectrum, and at the very last stop in this series, we’re in an age where relatively few teams have devoted the designated hitter spot to a single batter. Just three teams have given their DHs enough plate appearances at the position to qualify for the batting title (3.1 PA per team game), and just three contenders have given a single player even 200 PA at DH. With the position’s production from AL teams at a modest 103 wRC+, eight points below last year and the third-lowest mark of the 2002-19 period, it shouldn’t be too surprising that several contenders are enduring Killer-type situations. Given that defensive competence doesn’t matter a bit, this shouldn’t be too hard to fix, and yet here we are.

Note that I’m waving off the Nationals here. Rookie Victor Robles has been a mild disappointment with the bat (90 wRC+), but even so, he’s been worth 1.1 WAR overall even considering his modest -0.8 UZR, and even better than that if we swap in his 10 DRS. It’s Michael Taylor’s -0.5 WAR in 69 PA at the spot that’s pushed them below the threshold, and given that he’s safely stashed in the minors, this is one area the Nationals don’t have to worry too much about. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, I’ve been pondering the strange way I think about HR/FB ratio. On one hand, it’s a way to explain away a hot or cold stretch from a hitter. When Joc Pederson got off to a blazing start this year, I looked at his HR/FB, a spicy 33.3% through the end of April, and told myself it was a small sample size phenomena. That’s the first way I use HR/FB for hitters — as a sanity check.

At the same time, HR/FB is something we’ve all used to explain someone’s power. Joey Gallo is powerful, obviously. How do we know that? Well, he hits the ball really hard, which gets expressed by more of his fly balls turning into home runs. Gallo had a 47.6% HR/FB at the end of April, and even though I didn’t expect that to continue, I was willing to accept high numbers for Gallo’s HR/FB much more easily than I was for Pederson.

This leaves HR/FB in a weird spot. It’s a number we use to see if players are getting lucky or unlucky relative to average, but it’s also a number we use to look for underlying skill. Problems arise when it’s unclear what is noise and what is signal. Is David Fletcher unlucky to have a 5.4% HR/FB? Surely not — he’s a contact hitter. Is Jose Ramirez unlucky to have a 6.5% HR/FB? I assume so, but I only assume so because he hit 39 home runs with a 16.9% HR/FB last year. What if last year was the outlier, not this one?

Another way to think about this conundrum is that HR/FB contains an inherent contradiction we have to work around mentally. Putting fly balls as the bottom of the ratio implies that all fly balls are created equal, and that’s clearly untrue. Gallo is unloading on the ball, crushing many of the fly balls he hits into orbit. Fletcher, meanwhile, sports one of the lowest average exit velocities in the game. Even though a home run counts the same for each, the population of fly balls is tremendously different. How do we handle this contradiction? Read the rest of this entry »

Traditionally, the outfield corners are home to heavy hitters. This year’s crop of right fielders has combined for a 110 wRC+, one point ahead of first basemen for the current major-league high as well as the highest mark at the position since 2011. The left fielders’ collective mark of 106 is the majors’ third-highest, one point ahead of that of third basemen, and the position’s second-best mark since 2011.

Even so, several contenders — which for this series I’ve defined as teams who are above .500 or have playoff odds of at least 10.0%, a definition that as of today currently covers 17 teams — are getting meager offensive production at one corner or another, by which I mean receiving less than 1.0 WAR at the spot, which makes them eligible for a place among the Replacement Level Killers. As the July 31 trade deadline approaches, they may want to do something about that, particularly since there’s no August waiver period during which they can tweak the roster. Having said that, I’m somewhat less focused on these teams’ eventual solutions, whether via trades or internal options, than I am in pointing out the problems.

Also, note that I’ve ruled out including the Angels among the left fielders, since the mid-June return of Justin Upton, who had been sidelined for nearly three months by turf toe, has already provided the team a substantial upgrade; even while slumping lately, he’s accounted for 0.3 of the team’s 0.6 WAR in 25 games, a 2.0 WAR pace over 162.

Read the rest of this entry »

Spend any time in a big-league ballpark in the hours before first pitch, and you’ll likely see a pitcher standing in short right or left field, throwing a flat ground. He’ll start his delivery just inside the foul line, feet planted on green grass. His catcher will be around 45 or 50 feet away, half-crouched in the shallow part of the outfield usually reserved for soft line drives. The pitcher will wind and deliver eight or nine times, usually at something like 80% effort, before huddling with his catcher and perhaps a coach or two. Then, gloves loose in their hands, the men will walk back to the dugout to continue their pregame routines.

That scene plays out hundreds of times a day in ballparks across the country. But the practice of throwing flat grounds has come under scrutiny recently, as coaches and front office personnel increasingly worry about the risk of an injury. Over the last few months, I asked a dozen or so players, coaches, and executives about flat grounds and how they’re used. After those conversations, I’m confident in two things: One, most teams who’ve thought hard about the practice have concluded that it has a neutral effect at best and could potentially be harmful. And two, that flat grounds probably aren’t going away anytime soon.

First, the case for flat grounds. For the most part, pitchers I asked told me that they just want to get a better sense of how individual pitches feel coming out of their hands. For that, they insisted, it doesn’t matter whether you’re throwing off a mound or on the field, and faced with the choice between schlepping out to a bullpen mound or simply stepping from the dugout into short right or left field, they prefer the latter. Many discounted immediately my theory that the lack of a drop-down from the mound interrupts upper-half timing based on the moment the front foot hits the ground. “I’ve been throwing flat grounds all my life,” said Marco Gonzales, “and I’ve never noticed a difference.”

But a number of coaches I spoke to expressed variations of the same concern: That practicing pitches on flat ground when they will eventually need to be thrown off a mound gives players bad information about what their repertoire will actually look like in-game.

“We’ve found that the feel guys get for the plate isn’t accurate [while throwing flat grounds],” said the Mariners’ Brian DeLunas. “For sliders and split-fingers especially, you’re just not going to get the same break. I have guys out there who’ll try to throw those pitches, and they’ll be like, damn, this pitch isn’t working! But if your slider isn’t breaking on a 50-foot throw, that’s actually good, because it really should be breaking in the last 15 or so feet.”

There are also elements of standard pitching deliveries that have in-game consequences but simply can’t be practiced on flat ground. “With a flat ground,” said Carl Willis, the Indians’ pitching coach, “the risk is that because you’re not able to get as much extension [on the front half], the consistency of work can suffer. Sometimes you’ll see a guy lose his posture as he comes down the slope, and you want to be able to maintain that posture throughout games. The only way you can really know it, and feel it, is to practice it on the mound.”

But the argument for flat grounds has never been that they replicate an in-game environment. The case is that they’re convenient, and require substantially less effort — and therefore presumably create less wear-and-tear for tired arms — than throwing full-speed off a mound. But is that last claim actually true?

In 2017, Driveline Baseball released a study (building off of a 2014 article in the American Journal of Sports Medicine) that suggested that, holding velocity constant, flat ground pitching generates about 6% more stress on elbows and shoulders than throwing off the mound. Critically, the study also found that stress does not decrease linearly with reduced effort, which means that if pitchers are throwing at 80-90% velocity on flat ground, the stress on their arms is likely about the same as it would be throwing full speed off the mound. Internal studies reaching similar conclusions have led the Mariners, at least, to try eliminating the practice altogether throughout their system (though with limited effect). Other teams have not gone quite as far, despite acknowledging the public evidence.

“If you’re talking about these guys throwing high-effort, it’s a proven fact that flat grounds can be more harmful at the same rate of speed than on the mound,” said Oakland’s pitching coach Scott Emerson. “But if you slow it down, it’s ok. They mostly just use it for target practice. And I’m just using it to see how the pitches look coming out of their hands. Nothing more than that.”

“In my experience, the flat ground can take a little bit of stress off of the arm for guys who are trying to recover,” said Willis. “That’s simply because they’re not working down the slope. That foot plant [which comes 4-6 inches above where it would off the mound] does hinder some extension a little bit, but if you can maintain that delivery, sometimes it tends to help with the recovery, coming back to make your next start.”

To my ear, the persistence of the practice league-wide in the face of reasonably sound evidence that its main theoretical benefit (the lower effort required) isn’t actually a benefit at all seems less about arm stress than convenience.

Most big-league teams carry 12-13 pitchers, and most big-league parks are equipped with just five outdoor mounds: two in the bullpen for each team, and one in the center of the diamond. If teams insisted that their pitchers throw exclusively off of mounds, they’d still only have two mounds to use (the mound on the field being, of course, in use for batting practice, and the remaining four divided between two teams). That would add an element of coordination to a pre-game period already rife with competing priorities for players’ time. “Besides,” one coach told me, “most of our players just aren’t going to walk their asses the 150 yards from the dugout to the bullpen to do their work.”

There’s also a degree of inertia: flat grounds persist because they’re something players have always done. This starts in amateur leagues, where the imbalance between mounds available and players using them is even more stark than in the pros, and where there is even less knowledge of the potentially harmful effects. Gonzales’s response to my question, quoted above, was typical of player responses for this story. Most reacted to my questions about flat grounds as if I had asked them if they put their pants on one leg at a time in the morning, or why they eat breakfast before lunch; they just do, and don’t think much about it. “I’d love it if we had six or seven mounds so we could do all our work there,” said Emerson. “But we don’t. For a lot of our guys this is just a part of their daily routines.”

But as conservative as baseball can be about its traditions and routines, the last two decades of constant self-evaluation and reinvention by coaches and front offices demonstrates that even long-held practices can change when they’re no longer deemed useful. “I don’t think that clubs have really thought hard enough about the risks to flat grounds,” said Bobby Evans, the former Giants’ general manager. “I think the assumption is that it’s just a warmup, when it might really be something that can put players at risk of injury. I want to know more.”

I do, too. There’s a benefit to allowing players to continue long-established routines, to be sure, and it’s probably one I underrate as an external observer of the game. But the evidence for flat grounds as a practice seems flimsy, and I’m not sure I’d be all that invested in it even if the evidence were good. At the very least, I’d welcome the opportunity to learn more about its biomechanical effects. For now, I’m with DeLunas: “Can you imagine a golfer going to the range and spending their afternoon hitting the ball with the back of the club over and over? They would never, ever do that. So why do we?”

The wonderful David Laurila contributed reporting by interviewing Cleveland’s Carl Willis.

With just a week to go before the trade deadline, it still isn’t entirely clear which teams will endeavor to make additions for a pennant run, and which teams will cash in their 2019 chips to play for another year. In the American League, nine of 15 teams have at least an outside shot at the postseason, with seven clubs having a legitimate chance. The National League is even more competitive, with every team but the Marlins possessing some chance at the playoffs, and eight clubs having a reasonable path to the postseason.

Below, we’ll go through the trade scenarios for the teams considering moves. Keep in mind, much of these proposed swaps are simply a framework for how a deal might look. Also important to keep in mind? Most of these predictions will be completely incorrect! Please consume the deals below responsibly, and use this as a preview of what teams need, want, and might do over the next week. Unless any of the predicted deals happen; in that case, I expect to receive full credit.

First, some things that won’t happen:

Star Pitchers Are Staying Put

The Tigers aren’t likely to get the kind of offer they want for Matthew Boyd, who has given up 15 homers in his last eight starts. The Mets aren’t going to get the young stars they want for Noah Syndergaard. Cleveland seems less likely to deal Trevor Bauer now that they are back in the race. Zack Greinke and Robbie Ray probably aren’t going anywhere. Even Caleb Smith of the Marlins, or Brad Keller and Jake Junis of the Royals, seem destined to stay put.

The big question remaining is San Francisco, which brings us to a few things that will (maybe) happen: Read the rest of this entry »

Going into the trade deadline last year, I put on my Dictator of MLB hat and made some trade deadline moves of my own. Upon further review, it turned out that my declarations while wearing a magical, virtual hat were not binding on any team; I was unable to force those trades to actually happen. While I have not obtained the desired legal authority over the last calendar year, it was a fun exercise, so I am reviving it ahead of next week’s deadline.

The basic rules are simple. I can’t guarantee that every trade will be thought of as fair by every reader — indeed, I can guarantee the opposite — but I did make a real effort to at least construct trades that were plausible. That is, except for the very last section, where I am explicitly trying to make wild trades, spitballing how a team could pull off a trade that ought to be impossible.

The Milwaukee Brewers acquire P Marcus Stroman from the Toronto Blue Jays for SS Mauricio Dubon, OF Trent Grisham, P Aaron Ashby, and 2B Travis Shaw

Brandon Woodruff’s injury throws a monkey wrench into the works for the Brewers, and with one of the weaker rotations among first-tier playoff contenders, something’s gotta give. While Stroman has expressed a desire to go to the Yankees, the Brewers ought to have more motivation, unless James Paxton is secretly injured. Brice Turang is the shortstop horse to bet on in the Brewers system, and Dubon is sufficiently close to the majors to tempt the Blue Jays, who have seemed to prefer near-major league ready prospects for reasons that elude me. Grisham would give Toronto a near-future bat who is increasingly intriguing, and Ashby would fulfill the team’s need to have every player in the minor league system related to a former major leaguer. Shaw isn’t here to actually add much, but instead to give Toronto an opportunity to rehab his value, and clear the way for Keston Hiura for good. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Nick Kingham, Mark Prior, and Adam Wainwright — on how they learned and developed their curveballs.

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Nick Kingham, Toronto Blue Jays

“I’ve been throwing a curveball since ninth grade, or maybe around 13 years old. I guess my dad originally taught it to me. But I never really had a good one. I threw a one-finger curveball for a little while. It was like a suitcase, you know? It kind of just spun and slowed down, and gravity would take it. Then someone told me to try spiking my finger. I’ve been throwing it that way ever since, probably for the last 15 years.

“It’s a standard spike. This is the horseshoe, the tracks go this way, and it’s right on there. Spike it up. There’s nothing… actually, I dig my nail into it. I set my index finger there and make sure that it has enough pressure. That’s comfortable to me. I like to have a secure grip on the ball. Read the rest of this entry »

In a race for a playoff spot, every edge matters. And yet all too often, for reasons that extend beyond a player’s statistics, managers and general managers fail to make the moves that could improve their teams, allowing subpar production to fester at the risk of smothering a club’s postseason hopes. In Baseball Prospectus’ 2007 book It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over, I compiled a historical All-Star squad of ignominy, identifying players at each position whose performances had dragged their teams down in tight races: the Replacement Level Killers. It’s a concept I’ve revisited on several occasions, both at BP and beyond; last year, I brought it to FanGraphs in an expanded format. With the July 31 trade deadline looming, it’s once again time to point out some of the bigger holes at each position among contenders, and it’s worth noting that this time, there’s no August waiver period for teams to fall back on.

When it comes to defining replacement level play, we needn’t be slaves to exactitude. Any team that’s gotten less than 1.0 WAR from a position to this point might be considered fair game, even if in some cases that means an above-average starter and ghastly backups. Sometimes, acceptable or even above-average defense (which, of course may depend upon which metric one uses) coupled with total ineptitude on offense is enough to flag a team. Sometimes, a team may be well ahead of replacement level, but has lost a key contributor due to injury; sometimes, the reverse is true, but the team hasn’t yet climbed above that first-cut threshold. As with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of hard-core pornography, I know replacement level when I see it. Read the rest of this entry »

A few bumpy outings aside, Shaun Anderson has had a solid rookie season with the San Francisco Giants. Since debuting in mid-May, the 24-year-old right-hander has won three of five decisions, and on six occasions he’s gone at least five innings while allowing just a pair of runs. Overall, he has a 4.87 ERA and a 4.37 FIP in 12 starts.

Anderson is comfortable on a big stage. He pitched in the College World Series while at the University of Florida, and last summer he took the mound in the All-Star Futures Game. The former Gator came into this year ranked eighth on our Giants Top Prospects list.

He was originally Red Sox property. A third-round pick in 2016, Anderson was shipped to San Francisco thirteen months later, along with now-19-year-old righty Gregory Santos, in exchange for Eduardo Nunez. The days-before-the-trade-deadline deal brought Boston a player who helped them win a World Series — Nunez has since been DFA’d — while San Francisco got an up-and-comer who doesn’t fit a conventional mold.

College relievers rarely become big-league starters, and this is an era where pitchers typically pump gas and miss a lot of bats. Anderson is an anomaly in both respects. The erstwhile closer has a pedestrian 92/93mph heater, and he’s punching out just 5.7 batters per nine innings.

Asked about his approach, Anderson described it as “attack.” Undaunted by big-league hitters in the box, he’s all about mixing and matching, and working down in the zone. Read the rest of this entry »

As is the annual tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using a week around the All-Star Game — when the industry pauses to take a metaphorical breather — to take stock of the top-50 trade chips in the sport. For more context on exactly what we’re trying to do here, see the Honorable Mentions post linked at the top of the page.

For this post, I’ll present a graphic (by way of the wizard Sean Dolinar) breaking down each player’s objective skill level (represented, in this case, by a five-year WAR projection from ZiPS), contract/team-control details, rank in last year’s series, and then year-by-year details of age, WAR, and contract through the end of 2023, although a couple players have control beyond those five years, and some, you’ll notice, show projections for fewer years to reflect when those players reach free agency. For those readers who are partial to spreadsheets rather than blocks of text, I’ll also include all of the players we’ve ranked so far in grid format at the bottom of the post.

It should be noted that the ZiPS WAR forecasts influenced the rankings a bit. For players who were bunched together, it acted as an impartial tiebreaker of sorts, but the industry opinions I solicited drove the rankings.

With that said, let’s get to the final 10 spots on this year’s Trade Value list.

Vladito hasn’t been the otherworldly hitter many were hoping for or expected during his first taste of the big leagues, but no one I spoke with is worried. First of all, he’s running a .270 BABIP and underperforming his xwOBA by 17 points, suggesting he “deserves” to have a wRC+ over 100, which is still below his lofty pre-season projections, but not by much. And also, it’s been 66 games and he’s 20 years old.

Given his size and eventual move to first base, Vlad needs to mash, so his profile will be more sensitive to offensive performance than others might be, but the track record of the “that guy looks like a generational hitter” and “gets to the big leagues at 20” profiles is really strong. Vlad has an extra year of control over Gleyber Torres and Walker Buehler, so the projected five-win peak seasons are a push, and I lean to the extra year. Interestingly, there were concerns raised by executives about how all three of these guys will age; history tells us (I mean it feels like it does?) that at least one of them will turn out a good bit worse than we’re expecting. Read the rest of this entry »