We don’t know exactly why Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel didn’t sign with teams during the winter and early spring like the other prominent free agents did. It’s possible that early posturing around large contract demands pushed some teams away and caused them to explore other options. It’s possible there were just too many teams that weren’t sufficiently interested in adding good players at a reasonable cost, even if Keuchel and Kimbrel’s demands had come down. We do know that neither signed before the season, or in April, and that coming up on the end of May, both players are still looking for a team.

What we might have heard over the last few months is that teams are waiting until after the draft in June to sign Keuchel or Kimbrel so as to avoid losing a draft pick. Over the last decade, as the game has gotten younger and younger players have gotten cheaper relative to veterans, teams have placed greater emphasis on draft picks. Ahead of the last CBA, one of the bigger issues for players was the free agentcompensation system, in which teams made qualifying offers to free agents and then received a first round pick (or something close to it) when those free agents signed elsewhere. One of the major changes in the new CBA was a change to that system designed to make free agents more attractive by lessening the penalty for signing free agents attached to a qualifying offer. While Keuchel and Kimbrel aren’t ironclad proof the system didn’t work, they are a couple of key pieces of evidence. A breakdown of the penalties provides further reasoning.

To understand why the system hasn’t worked, it helps to look at the penalties. Here are the rules from MLB:

Any team that signs a player who has rejected a qualifying offer is subject to the loss of one or more Draft picks. However, a team’s highest first-round pick is exempt from forfeiture, which is the most notable change that went into affect with the new system. Three tiers of Draft-pick forfeiture — which are based on the financial status of the signing team — are in place to serve as a penalty for signing a player who rejected a qualifying offer:

• A team that exceeded the luxury tax in the preceding season will lose its second- and fifth-highest selections in the following year’s Draft, as well as $1 million from its international bonus pool for the upcoming signing period. If such a team signs multiple qualifying-offer free agents, it will forfeit its third- and sixth-highest remaining picks as well.

Examples: A team with one pick in each round of the 2019 Draft would lose its second- and fifth-round picks. A team with two first-round picks and one pick in each subsequent round would lose its second-highest first-round pick and its fourth-round pick.

• A team that receives revenue sharing will lose its third-highest selection in the following year’s Draft. If it signs two such players, it will also forfeit its fourth-highest remaining pick.

Examples: A team with one pick in each round of the 2019 Draft would lose its third-round pick. A team with two first-round picks and one pick in each subsequent round would lose its second-round pick.

• A team that neither exceeded the luxury tax in the preceding season nor receives revenue sharing will lose its second-highest selection in the following year’s Draft, as well as $500,000 from its international bonus pool for the upcoming signing period. If it signs two such players, it will also forfeit its third-highest remaining pick and an additional $500,000.

Examples: A team with one pick in each round of the 2019 Draft would lose its second-round pick. A team with two first-round picks would lose its second-highest first-round pick.

Determining exactly which picks can be forfeited is a little tricky, as essentially all picks count when determining a team’s second, third, or fourth pick, but compensatory picks from not signing a player the previous season, as well as the market/revenue picks at the end of the first and second rounds, are not subject to forfeiture. That said, since the market/revenue comp picks can be traded, if one of those picks is traded to another team, it is no longer protected. For example, Oakland was awarded the 40th pick in this year’s draft. That pick would have been a protected pick for the club, but since they traded it to Tampa Bay in the Jurickson Profar deal, it becomes subject to potential forfeiture for the Rays if they were to sign Dallas Keuchel or Craig Kimbrel.

To provide concrete examples, the table below shows the pick every team would give up for signing Keuchel or Kimbrel right now, along with the slot value for that pick (which can be found here), and the present value of the pick based on my research. Also included is the value of the international money penalty based Kiley McDaniel’s research, with one dollar of international spending estimated at five times that amount in value.

A note about this table: Houston and Boston are assumed to sign their own free agent, and thus not get a compensatory pick, which is the value listed below. In reality, that pick is now worth considerably less, as it is far less likely to happen. If Boston or Houston were to sign the other team’s free agents, the cost would be significantly higher.

For no team is the extra cost greater than the amount guaranteed to Matt Harvey this offseason and for half the teams, the cost is around what Daniel Descalso or Jordy Mercer received. These are not large sums. This list isn’t meant to provide a justification for a team signing or not signing any particular free agent, but it does show that there are pretty significant differences in the penalties teams face. The amounts of money we are talking about shouldn’t be the deciding factor in determining whether or not to sign a free agent, and “We are unwilling to forfeit a draft selection to sign Player X” is actually a prohibited phrase under the CBA, whether on or off the record. Teams can and do factor in the value of a draft pick when making an offer. The argument that teams horde draft picks as things to be held at all costs rings false when Cleveland, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Oakland, and St. Louis have all traded early-round draft picks in the current draft alone.

A handful of teams would incur additional penalties if they signed another free agent in the form of competitive balance taxes. An extra $18 million in salary would result in only a few million in penalties for teams like the Yankees and Cubs, though the Red Sox would pay an additional $15 million if they added the same amount to their roster. As for why the new qualifying offer system didn’t provide the improvements players expected, we can look at how the old rules applied compared to the current system. Under the old system, teams gave up their first pick so long as it wasn’t in the top 10. For teams picking in the middle of the first round, this constituted a pretty sizable amount of potential value lost, particularly under a system with a hard draft cap and the inability to pay more for greater talent later.

Using this year’s draft as an example, here is the value teams would give up under the old system versus the new system. Some of the penalties above might not match those below, as trades, qualifying offers, and free agent signings weren’t assumed below so we could get a better theoretical understanding of the differences.

The penalty was lessened, but for teams picking in the top 10, it was virtually unchanged, and for teams paying the competitive balance tax, it was the same or worse. The gap would be even smaller if the Cubs, Yankees, and Dodgers were over the competitive balance tax as they have been fairly recently. While the most substantial improvements in terms of lessening the penalty come right in the middle of the draft, those teams generally still have the biggest penalties, with teams at the end of the draft not seeing much of a change. If draft picks played a big role in free agency prior to the current CBA, there isn’t that much reason to think the new CBA constitutes a big step forward, as the number of teams significantly affected isn’t that great and most of those teams were still left with penalties approaching eight figures.

Whether or not it is a sound decision to sign Dallas Keuchel or Craig Kimbrel at their current asking prices, it is important to understand the exact cost of signing either at this point in the baseball calendar. There is certainly a credible argument to be made that for the teams that might need those players now, the cost of their missed production over two months of the season outweighs the penalties above, and perhaps by a significant margin. There is always a need for starting pitchers and relievers, and most teams had a pretty good idea if they would be contending this season. If these players were available for the same price now as they were at the beginning of the season, which we don’t know, then not signing them then was a poor choice for most teams. Now the missed production is a sunk cost, and the penalties for the draft pick, when signing a player only gets you another week of their services, weigh more heavily. Even still, the costs aren’t great and shouldn’t be too difficult for any team to justify whether it is for this season or into the future.

The height of fashion in baseball analysis three years ago was finding a reliever who could pitch multiple innings. Some people called it the Andrew Miller role, though Miller was never a perfect example of it — aside from the memorable 2016 playoffs, Miller was more of a setup man who occasionally threw the seventh in his tenure on the Indians. Chris Devenski and Chad Green were trendy examples in 2017, and Mets swingmen Seth Lugo and Robert Gsellman both performed admirably in long relief in 2018.

Whichever example you turn to, the value of having a reliever who can perform over multiple innings of work is clear to see. As starters throw fewer innings across baseball, having relievers who can handle larger workloads is increasingly important. A two-inning reliever might have been a luxury in 2009, when a seven-man bullpen would cover two or three innings a night, but 2019 bullpens go eight deep and pick up nearly four innings a game. Using relievers to cover more innings naturally results in weaker relievers getting into games, so getting extra frames out of good relievers has never been more valuable.

That’s the theory, anyway. In practice, the role isn’t easy to fill. If you’re looking for someone to throw a few innings of relief, they have to be a decent pitcher. There’s not really much point in filling bulk innings with replacement-level stuff — you could just use the back of the bullpen for that. There’s just one problem with that: a good pitcher who can throw multiple innings mostly describes a starter, and getting rid of a good starter to create a good reliever doesn’t make that much sense. Blake Snell, for example, would probably make a great reliever, but that would be a waste of his talent. Read the rest of this entry »

Generally speaking, doing more of one thing means doing less of another. A positive development can come at the expense of some other attribute and unintended consequences can make that positive thing decidedly less so. It’s one thing to strike out less often. Putting more balls in play provides the potential for positive outcomes. It’s another thing to strike out less often and walk more often. Doing those things in concert can have a great effect on getting on base and not making outs, which is almost always the point of every plate appearance from a hitter’s perspective. Sometimes, doing both doesn’t lead to positive results, and Rafael Devers found that out the first month of the season. Instead of going back, though, he’s moved forward and is hitting better than ever.

The 2018 season wasn’t a great one for Devers statistically. He wasn’t terrible, posting a slightly lower than average 8% walk rate and 24% strikeout rate, as well as better than average power with a .193 ISO, but a .281 BABIP meant a .240 batting average a sub-.300 on-base percentage and a below-average 90 wRC+. In his 2017 debut, Devers’ numbers were mostly the same, but a .342 BABIP meant a 110 wRC+. The Statcast data indicates that the difference between 2017 and 2018 was mostly luck, and Devers’ batted ball profile in terms of ground balls, line drives, and pulled balls were all pretty similar in 2017 and 2018, giving credence to Devers being a bit lucky in 2017, with 2018 his natural level if all else remained the same.

Devers wasn’t content with remaining the same, so he spent the offseason working on his weight and now focuses more on not striking out and incorporating video of pitchers in his preparation. While all those changes are admirable, they failed to make a difference the first month of the season. On April 25, Devers had completed 101 of his 201 plate appearances this season. True to his word, Devers struck out a lot less, lowering his strikeout rate down to 16% on the season and saw his walk rate rise to 12%. Devers also saw his BABIP rise to .338 so the lowered strikeouts and increased walks caused his batting average to stand at a healthy .276 with a very good .370 OBP. Unfortunately, Devers had yet to hit a home run and only had six doubles, leaving his ISO at a meager .069 and his wRC+ right at 90, the same as where it was the previous season. Read the rest of this entry »

The book on Luke Weaver was written before he had played a game of professional baseball. Great changeup, good fastball, no third pitch. I mean “the book” metaphorically here, but I also mean it literally. Here’s Eric Longenhagen on Weaver before the 2017 season:

“Those who have questioned Weaver’s upside (myself included) did so because, in college, he lacked a good breaking ball. Weaver’s fringey curveball remains so today, but he’s a good athlete who has developed plus command and added an average cutter to his repertoire in pro ball.”

Cardinals fans got two years of data to back up that assessment — a scintillating 2017 (3.17 FIP, 28.6% K-rate) and a frustrating 2018 (4.45 FIP, fewer strikeouts and more walks) were worth a combined 2.7 WAR, but between underperforming his FIP and losing his rotation spot in the second half of 2018, Weaver felt like a surplus arm. The changeup and sneaky good fastball were as good as advertised, but batters consistently teed off on his curve. When Weaver and top catching prospect Carson Kelly were sent to the Diamondbacks in exchange for Paul Goldschmidt, it felt like a needed change of scenery for both of them.

If the book on Weaver was written while he was still in college, it’s a safe bet that he’s had time to read that book. He has worked towards developing a better breaking ball more or less every offseason of his pro career, and 2019 was no exception. This time, though, he had technological help. He bought a Rapsodo, a portable pitch-tracking camera, and used it to work on his curve. He took his cutter (or is it a slider?) out of mothballs, telling David Laurila he was picking up the hybrid pitch after years of being mainly fastball/change/curve.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets were one of the more active clubs this offseason, pulling off a big trade for Robinson Cano and Edwin Diaz while signing Wilson Ramos, Jeurys Familia, and Jed Lowrie to free agent contracts. Through 46 games, the team is just 21-25, and multiple reports calling manager Mickey Callaway’s job “safe” have been issued, including a team meeting with GM Brodie Van Wagenen, which is never a good sign. The team had lost five straight games before their win last night, including a three-game sweep to the lowly Marlins despite both Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard pitching in the series. The final two games saw the team shut out offensively. There’s something wrong with the Mets, and a lot of people are at fault.

During the course of a 162-game season, there are going to be stretches where teams don’t play well. The Mets getting swept by the Marlins looks pretty bad because it just happened, but bad teams sweep good teams a fair amount during the season because three games represents less than two percent of the season. The Mets are at 21-25 — fewer wins than they would like — but keep in mind, what the Mets are doing now isn’t a massive departure from the team’s projections at the beginning of the season. This is what our playoff odds projections looked like before the season started.

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Freeze baseball at the end of last year, and Josh Bell fit into an ignominious archetype. A former top prospect, he’d fallen into the power-light first base role previously occupied by the likes of James Loney and Sean Casey. The good power vibes from a homer-happy 2017 (26 dingers, .211 ISO) had faded after his slap-hitting 2018 (12 home runs and a .150 ISO). FanGraphs’ Depth Charts projections penciled him in for a .172 ISO and a wRC+ around 113 — roughly average offensive production for a first baseman.

If that projection was surprising, it was only because Bell looks the part of a slugger. At 6-foot-4 and 235 pounds, he’s an imposing presence at the plate. His minor league numbers had never showed great thump — his best showing was a credible .173 ISO with 14 homers in 2016. After that 2016 season, Eric Longenhagen graded him as having 50 game power — dead average, with the chance to improve to a 55 eventually. Bell’s frame always carried the promise of greater power numbers, but neither scouts nor projection systems thought it was a likely outcome.

That’s all well and good, but uh, have you seen Josh Bell’s 2019? He’s recorded a ludicrous .364 ISO, fifth-best in the majors. He already has 14 home runs and 14 doubles (and, perplexingly, two triples), besting last year’s home run output in only 188 plate appearances. This prodigious power, along with a .366 BABIP, has propelled him to a 185 wRC+, third-best in baseball. The power that was promised by Bell’s physical gifts has finally come in, and it’s come in all at once.

When someone puts up a line like Bell’s (an ISO that looks like a BABIP, a season-long wRC+ higher than any previous month of his career), my natural inclination as an analyst is to look for flukes. Maybe he’s hitting an unsustainable number of line drives, or 75% of his fly balls are turning into home runs. Perhaps he’s faced abysmal pitching in hitters’ parks. Surely any of those explanations is more likely than a sudden, real power spike that dwarfs his previous career. Read the rest of this entry »

It remains one of the game’s unsolved mysteries. A batter hits a pop-up near the mound and the person closest to it — a professional athlete wearing a glove — isn’t expected to catch the ball. Moreover, he’s not supposed to catch the ball. That job belongs to any one of several teammates, all of whom has traversed a greater distance. As often as not they’re climbing a slope to get under the descending baseball.

Chaos can ensue as the infielders and the catcher converge. The multiple “I’ve got its,” are drowned out by crowd noise and suddenly what should be a routine out becomes an adventure. We’ve all seen it. A bumper-car-like collision occurs and the catch is made clumsily… or not at all.

Just last week, Red Sox right-hander Rick Porcello was charged with an error when he failed to catch a pop up in front of the mound. Not because of ineptitude, but rather because he was veritably mugged by his catcher as the ball was about to arrive comfortably in his glove.

Why aren’t pitchers expected to handle simple pop-ups? They’re perfectly capable, so it makes sense that they should be catching them. Right?

“I don’t know why, and yes, they should be,’ said Seattle’s Perry Hill, whom many consider the game’s best infield instructor. “They’re on on the field of play when the ball is in play, so they should be able to make a play. It’s practiced in spring training. That little short pop-up that nobody can get to. The third baseman is playing way back. The first baseman is way back. The pitcher is the closest guy to the ball. He’ll catch that ball.”

Scott Servais sees it somewhat differently than his first base coach. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the San Francisco Giants. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from our own (both Eric Longenhagen’s and Kiley McDaniel’s) observations. 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 the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a new feature at the site that offers sortable scouting information for every organization. That can be found here.

Other Prospects of Note

Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.

Power Bats
Diego Rincones, OF
Zach Green, 3B/1B
Sandro Fabian, OF
Jacob Heyward, OF
Kwan Adkins, OF

Rincones, 19, is a plump corner outfielder with quick, strong hands. He’s posted two consecutive years of strong offensive statistics (AZL and NWL) and has plus raw power, but he’s a corner-only guy with a high-maintenance build, so he’ll need to keep doing that. Green was a minor league free agent who had an average exit velo of about 95 mph through this season’s first month. He has plus-plus power and barely hits the ball on the ground (25% GB%). Fabian looked like a potential contact/power corner outfielder but his approach is just too aggressive and he’s posted sub-.300 OBPs for two years. Heyward, 23, is a bit older than most prospects at Double-A but he has plus raw power and athleticism. He needs to keep walking a lot to balance the strikeouts. Adkins was a two-sport athlete at Northwestern State (he played wide receiver as a junior) who didn’t have statistical success in college, but has so far flashed all-fields power against younger pro pitching.

Relief Potential
Sam Coonrod, RHP
Garrett Williams, LHP
Franklin Van Gurp, RHP
Kervin Castro, RHP

Coonrod touches 99 and has a pretty good cutter and curveball. Williams is a low-90s lefty with a plus curveball but he’s quite wild. Van Gurp could be a traditional sinker/slider reliever if he develops above-average command. Castro is a projectionless 20-year-old who throws hard (93-96 this spring) with flat, up-in-the-zone plane that’s suited for missing bats. His secondaries are raw, but he missed most of the last two years with injury.

Younger Sleepers
Ismael Munguia, OF
Ghordy Santos, INF
Andrew Caraballo, INF

Izzy Munguia is a tiny corner outfield prospect with great feel to hit. His power is limited. He’ll likely need to be a 7 bat to profile. Santos and Caraballo are each built like Jorge Polanco. Santos has plus bat speed and some low-ball ability. Caraballo has plus infield hands and actions and Eric thought he saw him breaking in a catcher’s mitt on the backfields.

System Overview

This rebuild could take a while. There’s probably a dominant, homegrown bullpen in this system but most of the pitchers who’ll be part of it are already in their mid or late-20s. There’s a huge timeline gap between that group and the more exciting, potentially impactful group of teenagers (mostly bats) who are, by and large, currently in rookie and A-ball. Parlaying current big leaguers and upper-level prospects into long-term assets will be an important part of accelerating a return to competitiveness. That means nailing a seemingly imminent Madison Bumgarner trade. Scouts from opposing clubs are already deviating from their normal coverage to get extra looks at the left-hander so their teams have as much info as possible as we approach June and July.

Now that the org is under new leadership, the way talent is acquired and developed will change, but we’re not yet sure exactly how. It seems as if early priorities involve throwing fringe roster guys like Connor Joe, Aaron Altherr, and Breyvic Valera at the wall to see who sticks. Expect the Giants to try to find diamonds in the rough on the waiver wire who they’ll likely look to flip for long-term help rather than keep around.

We’ve seen Giants personnel at amateur games with the same model camera we’re using to take high-speed video, so they’re proactively entering that space. It’s likely their new Ops leader, Farhan Zaidi, will bring Dodger player dev concepts with him to San Francisco because the Dodgers have been so good at improving their players, but some of LA’s more prominent scouting tendencies (injured arms, toolsy college hitters with contact red flags, talent from Mexico) will be harder to replicate effectively because the Dodgers still exist in those spaces, too.

It is 2019, and Edwin Jackson is making his first major league start of the season.

As far as games in mid-May go, this is not a particularly compelling one. The Blue Jays are not very good, and neither are the Giants; it is a sleepy grey afternoon in San Francisco, cool and windy. The Giants do have Shaun Anderson making his major league debut, and the Jays have the constant allure of Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. There is little promise, though, of fireworks on the pitching side.

Jackson is a veteran right-hander filling in a vacancy in a weak rotation. There is no expectation of transcendence here. He opens the frame by hitting Joe Panik with a cutter; he follows that up with a four-pitch walk to Steven Duggar, he of the 5.0% walk rate. Two men on, nobody out.

Jackson doesn’t seem frazzled. He gets ahead of Evan Longoria, and then, on a 93.6 mph fastball, induces a double play ball. And though he doesn’t emerge from the inning unscathed thanks to a Pablo Sandoval double, the damage is minimal. One run comes across; the game is tied.

When the third out is recorded, Jackson walks back to the dugout, having finished his first inning on a new team for the 14th time. Read the rest of this entry »

Just as we all predicted in spring training, Tommy La Stella has taken over the Angels’ lead in home runs, surpassing Mike Trout. Wait, what?

You’re forgiven if you haven’t been paying much attention to the Angels, who are 20-22, haven’t been more than a game above .500 all season, and are now more than a month removed from their last time at that plateau. Trout was impossibly hot to start the season, but he cooled off, and Shohei Ohtani only made his 2019 debut last week, albeit without the novelty of double duty due to his Tommy John surgery. The Ohtani-less rotation has been dead-last dreadful, with practically everybody carrying ERAs and FIPs in the 5.00s, 6.00s, and 7.00s, or else on the injured list, and there’s been no heroic career turnaround for Matt Harvey, to say the least. Albert Pujols just passed the 2,000 RBI milestone, but he’s a shadow of his former self, and who cares about RBI, right?

Into this less-than-compelling spotlight has stepped La Stella, a 30-year-old lefty-swinging infielder who entered this season best known for his pinch-hitting prowess (.278/.397/.386 in 193 PA) and the Cubs’ gentle handling of his mid-2016 walkabout, the kind of thing that could have ended his career. The Angels acquired him last November 29 in exchange for a player to be named later (lefty reliever Conor Lillis-White) who has yet to throw a competitive inning in 2019, and are paying him all of $1.35 million. In our preseason Positional Power Rankings, we forecast La Stella to receive just 77 plate appearances as the Angels’ second baseman behind David Fletcher, with another 105 at third base behind Zack Cozart, and 14 at designated hitter. Given that he’d hit just 10 homers and produced a 96 wRC+ (.264/.345/.366) and 2.0 WAR in 947 career plate appearances — including just one homer and an 86 wRC+ in 192 PA last year — he wasn’t on anybody’s radar as a potential impact player.

Read the rest of this entry »