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The major-league phase of Thursday’s Rule 5 Draft began with its annual roll call of clubs confirming the number of players currently on their 40-man rosters and ended with a total of 14 players being added to new big-league clubs. Dan Szymborski offered ZiPS projections here for the players taken earlier today. Below are brief scouting reports on the players selected, with some notes provided by Kiley McDaniel.

But, first: Our annual refresher on the Rule 5 Draft’s complex rules. Players who signed their first pro contract at age 18 or younger are eligible for selection after five years of minor-league service if their parent club has not yet added them to the team’s 40-man roster. For players who signed at age 19 or older, the timeline is four years. Teams with the worst win/loss record from the previous season pick first, and those that select a player must not only (a) pay said player’s former club $100,000, but also (b) keep the player on their 25-man active roster throughout the entirety of the following season (with a couple of exceptions, mostly involving the disabled list). If a selected player doesn’t make his new team’s active roster, he is offered back to his former team for half of the initial fee. After the player’s first year on the roster, he can be optioned back to the minor leagues.

These rules typically limit the talent pool to middle-relief prospects or position players with one-dimensional skillsets, though sometimes it involves more talented prospects who aren’t remotely ready for the majors. This creates an environment where selections are made based more on fit and team need than just talent, but teams find solid big-league role players in the Rule 5 every year and occasionally scoop up an eventual star. Let’s dive into the scouting reports on this year’s group.

First Round

1. Baltimore Orioles
Richie Martin, SS (from A’s) – Martin was a 2015 first rounder out of the University of Florida, drafted as an athletic shortstop with some pop who was still raw as a baseball player. Martin had really struggled to hit in pro ball until 2018, when he repeated Double-A and slashed .300/.368/.439.

He has average raw power but hits the ball on the ground too often to get to any of it in games. Houston has been adept at altering their players’ swings, so perhaps the new Orioles regime can coax more in-game pop from Martin, who is a perfectly fine defensive shortstop. He should compete with incumbent Orioles Breyvic Valera and Jonathan Villar, as well as fellow Rule 5 acquisition Drew Jackson, for middle infield playing time. But unless there’s a significant swing change here, Martin really only projects as a middle infield utility man.

2. Kansas City Royals
Sam McWilliams, RHP (from Rays) – McWilliams was an overslot eighth rounder in 2014 and was traded from Philadelphia to Arizona for Jeremy Hellickson in the fall of 2015. He was then sent from Arizona to Tampa Bay as one of the players to be named later in the three-team trade that sent Steven Souza to Arizona. McWilliams is pretty raw for a 23-year-old. He spent two years in the Midwest League and posted a 5.02 ERA at Double-A when the Rays pushed him there after the trade.

He has a big fastball, sitting mostly 93-94 but topping out at 97. He’ll flash an occasional plus slider but it’s a rather inconsistent pitch. The industry thought McWilliams had a chance to grow into a backend rotation arm because his stuff is quite good, but he has a much better chance of sticking as a reliever right now.

3. Chicago White Sox (Traded to Rangers)
Jordan Romano, RHP (from Blue Jays) – Romano is a 25-year-old righty who spent 2018 at Double-A. He’s a strike-throwing righty with a fastball in the 91-93 range and he has an average slider and changeup, both of which reside in the 80-84 range. His command is advanced enough that both of his secondaries play up a little bit. He likely profiles as a fifth starter or rotation depth, but the Rangers current pitching situation is quite precarious and Romano may just end up sticking around to eat innings with the hope that he sticks as a backend starter or swingman when they’re competitive once again.

4. Miami Marlins
Riley Ferrell, RHP (from Astros)- Ferrell was a dominant college closer at TCU and was consistently 93-97 with a plus slider there. He continued to pitch well in pro ball until a shoulder aneurysm derailed his 2016 season. Ferrell needed surgery that transplanted a vein from his groin into his shoulder in order to repair it, and the industry worried at the time that the injury threatened his career. His stuff is back and Ferrell is at least a big league ready middle reliever with a chance to be a set-up man.

5. Detroit Tigers
Reed Garrett, RHP (from Rangers)
Garrett’s velo spiked when he moved to the bullpen in 2017 and he now sits in the mid-90s, touches 99 and has two good breaking balls, including a curveball that has a plus-plus spin rate. He also has an average changeup. He’s a fair bet to carve out a bullpen role on a rebuilding Tigers team.

6. San Diego Padres
No Pick (full 40-man)

7. Cincinnati Reds
Connor Joe, 3B (from Dodgers) – The Reds will be Joe’s fourth team in two years as he has been shuttled around from Pittsburgh (which drafted him) to Atlanta (for Sean Rodriguez) to the Dodgers (for cash) during that time. Now 26, Joe spent 2018 split between Double and Triple-A. He’s a swing changer who began lifting the ball more once he joined Los Angeles. Joe is limited on defense to first and third base, and he’s not very good at third. He has seen a little bit of time in the outfield corners and realistically projects as a four-corners bench bat who provides patience and newfound in-game pop.

8. Texas Rangers (Traded to Royals)
Chris Ellis, RHP (from Cardinals)- Ellis, 26, spent 2018 split between Double and Triple-A. One could argue he has simply been lost amid St. Louis’ surfeit of upper-level pitching but his stuff — a low-90s sinker up to 94 and an average slider — did not compel us to include him in our Cardinals farm system write up. The Royals took Brad Keller, who has a similar kind of repertoire but better pure stuff, and got more out of him than I anticipated, so perhaps that will happen with Ellis.

9. San Francisco Giants
Travis Bergen, LHP (from Blue Jays)- Bergen looked like a lefty specialist in college but the Blue Jays have normalized the way he strides toward home, and his delivery has become more platoon-neutral in pro ball. He has a fringy, low-90s fastball but has two good secondaries in his upper-70s curveball and tumbling mid-80s change. So long as he pitches heavily off of those two offerings, he could lock down a bullpen role.

10. Toronto Blue Jays
Elvis Luciano, RHP (from Royals)- Luciano turns 19 in February and was the youngest player selected in the Rule 5 by a pretty wide margin. He was acquired by Kansas City in the trade that sent Jon Jay to Arizona. Though he’ll touch 96, Luciano’s fastball sits in the 90-94 range and he has scattershot command of it, especially late in starts. His frame is less projectable than the typical teenager so there may not be much more velo coming as he ages, but he has arm strength and an above-average breaking ball, so there’s a chance he makes the Jays roster in a relief role. He has no. 4 starter upside if his below-average changeup and command progress. If he makes the opening day roster, he’ll be the first player born in the 2000s to play in the big leagues.

11. New York Mets
Kyle Dowdy, RHP (from Indians)
Dowdy’s nomadic college career took him from Hawaii to Orange Coast College and finally to Houston, where he redshirted for a year due to injury. He was drafted by Detroit and then included as a throw-in in the Leonys Martin trade to Cleveland. He’s a reliever with a four-pitch mix headlined by an above-average curveball that pairs pretty well with a fastball that lives in the top part of the strike zone but doesn’t really spin. He also has a mid-80s slider and changeup that are fringy and exist to give hitters a little different look. He could stick in the Mets bullpen.

12. Minnesota Twins
No Pick (full 40-man)

13. Philadelphia Phillies (Traded to Orioles)
Drew Jackson, SS (from Dodgers)- Jackson is a plus runner with a plus-plus arm and average defensive hands and actions at shortstop. He’s not a great hitter but the Dodgers were at least able to cleanse Jackson of the Stanford swing and incorporate more lift into his cut. He had a 55% ground ball rate with Seattle in 2016 but that mark was 40% with Los Angeles last year. He also started seeing reps in center field last season. He projects as a multi-positional utility man.

14. Los Angeles Angels
No Pick (team passed)

15. Arizona Diamondbacks
Nick Green, RHP (from Yankees)- Green has the highest present ranking on The Board as a 45 FV, and we think he’s a near-ready backend starter. Arizona lacks pitching depth, so Green has a pretty solid chance to make the club out of spring training. He induces a lot of ground balls (65% GB% in 2018) with a low-90s sinker and also has a plus curveball.

16. Washington Nationals
No Pick (team passed)

17. Pittsburgh Pirates
No Pick (team passed)

18. St. Louis Cardinals
No Pick (full 40-man)

19. Seattle Mariners
Brandon Brennan, RHP (from Rockies)- Brennan is a 27-year-old reliever with a mid-90s sinker that will touch 97. He has an average slider that relies heavily on it’s velocity more than movement to be effective. The real bat-misser here is the changeup, which has more than 10 mph of separation from Brennan’s fastball and dying fade.

20. Atlanta Braves
No Pick (team passed)

21. Tampa Bay Rays
No Pick (full 40-man)

22. Colorado Rockies
No Pick (team passed)

23. Cleveland Indians
No Pick (team passed)

24. Los Angeles Dodgers
No Pick (full 40-man)

25. Chicago Cubs
No Pick (team passed)

26. Milwaukee Brewers
No Pick (team passed)

27. Oakland Athletics
No Pick (team passed)

28. New York Yankees
No Pick (full 40-man)

29. Houston Astros
No Pick (team passed)

30. Boston Red Sox
No Pick (team passed)

Second Round

San Francisco Giants
Drew Ferguson, OF- Ferguson is a hitterish tweener outfielder with a good combination of bat-to-ball skills and plate discipline. He has a very short, compact stroke that enables him to punch lines drives to his pull side and he’s tough to beat with velocity. Ferguson doesn’t really run well enough to play center field and lacks the power for a corner, so his likely ceiling is that of a bench outfielder.

With the end of the Winter Meetings comes the Rule 5 draft, where every team dreams about acquiring Johan Santana for a token sum of cash and often ends up with…less, or possibly nobody at all.

The highlights from the list of players taken in Rule 5 drafts, or its predecessor-drafts, is mighty impressive. On the sunny side, you have two Hall of Famers (Hack Wilson, Roberto Clemente), a couple of players who should have gotten more Hall of Fame attention (Johan Santana, Darrell Evans), and more than two dozen All-Stars. But that isn’t the likely result and getting those types of players involved a GM who didn’t understand the rules (Syd Thrift/Bobby Bonilla), predating of minor league affiliations (Wilson), or an older “bonus baby” rule that is no longer in effect (Clemente). Teams do pay attention to this kind of thing, so you see more teams protecting young, low-level players with upside rather than older, minor-league journeymen who may give a team a larger short-term boost.

But value can still be found. Brad Keller has a 3.08 ERA in multiple roles for the Royals and any of the playoff teams would have been happy to have him on their roster. Odubel Herrera, Delino DeShields Jr., Joe Biagini, Justin Bour, and Tommy Kahnle are all fairly recent picks and all have had some success in the majors. Here are the ZiPS projections for the players taken in this year’s Rule 5 draft; we’ll have full scouting reports on them soon.

The Orioles aren’t playing for 2019 of course, but I’m not sure that Jonathan Villar is actually the preferable candidate to be starting even if they were. Martin has a reputation as a glove man and the rudimentary, craptacular defensive measurements available for minor leaguers generally agree with this, while Villar is extremely stretched as a shortstop and isn’t part of Baltimore’s future. Martin did hit .300/.368/.439 for double-A Midland, but ZiPS is still going to need to see him to be sold. It would be a shame if in a rebuilding year, the O’s carried both Martin and Drew Jackson, and didn’t let either get full-time at-bats. Both are more interesting than Steve Wilkerson, who the Orioles can actually send down to the minors.

Connor Joe, who you may have seen erroneously listed as a catcher, still has some versatility, with experience at third, second, and first base, as well as in the outfield, though he’s not a plus defensive player at any of those positions. He may stick as a 25th-man in Cincinnati, a team that is short on experienced role players and would likely prefer players like Nick Senzel or Shed Long to play full-time when they’re called up. Drew Ferguson gets the best projection of the hitters and is a welcome as an additional spring training option given San Francisco’s paper-thin outfield, which will probably begin the year with three of Steven Duggar, Mac Williamson, Austin Slater, Chris Shaw, and Mike Gerber if the season started tomorrow.

The Royals picked up Sam McWilliams and Chris Ellis, the latter by way of the Texas Rangers. Ellis’ projection as a starter is not good, but as a fastball-slider pitcher, he’s long been expected to end up in relief if he ever makes it to the majors, and if that happens with the Royals, he’ll likely be the last pitcher on the roster. If Josh Staumont’s control ever improves, I think Ellis would find himself on the bubble fairly quickly. McWilliams has a more starter-friendly repertoire of pitches — Eric will surely have more on this — and he gets what amounts to a fairly impressive projection, relatively-speaking. I don’t want to predict that he’ll be Brad Keller, but the Royals may use him as a swingman in 2019.

Texas is doing more of a rebuild-lite than a full teardown, but the back of their bullpen might be able to squeeze in Romano; I don’t expect that the team will seriously look at him as a starter in 2019. Three of the four pitchers are genereally already used as relievers in the minors: Reed Garrett, Travis Bergen, and Brandon Brennen all project to be above-replacement level, though safely below-average (average ERA+ for a reliever tends to be somewhere around 108). Garrett throws a good deal harder than he did back in the days when he was a sorta starting prospect, but I think his lack of exploitable platoon splits gives him less of an obvious role in the majors right now than the other relievers. Bergen is the most interesting pitcher to me in that he missed most of the three seasons going into 2018 due to injuries, so his dominating 2018 in the minors is essentially all we have. He’s not a hard thrower and the limited data means his outcome is volatile, but you want volatile in a Rule 5er in most cases, given that the mean projections are never going to be exciting. Plus: left-handed!

Elvis Luciano is a rarity among this group, a throwback to other very young pitchers snagged from the low minors. He’ll be 19 in February, throws hard, and there’s enough projection there that the Blue Jays may be happy to just keep him and play with more-or-less a 24-man roster. This plan is subject to change if Toronto is actually good, something I think they will not be. Given his complete lack of upper minors, even that limited projection is likely crazy-optimistic.

One great thing about the baseball Winter Meetings is that you have access to all 30 managers (this year that number is 29, as the Baltimore Orioles are currently sans a manager). A formal media session is held for each, and with 30 minutes of allotted time, a multitude of questions are asked by the collection of writers on hand.

I asked the following question, using roughly the same words, to a dozen of the managers: “We’ve seen some non-traditional coaching staff hires as of late, with pitching and hitting analytics being the driver. What are your thoughts on that?”

Here is what they had to say (answers edited slightly for concision and clarity):

———

David Bell, Cincinnati Reds: “I love having different perspectives in everything we do in this game. Having different opinions and perspectives, from people with different backgrounds and expertise, helps the decision-making process. You’re creating an advantage for yourself. I think it’s an exciting time in the game because of that. And it’s a great time to be a player, because you have all these different resources to pull from to make adjustments a lot faster. You can maximize who you are as a player.

“I do see it as a balance. There are certain parts of this game we all love that aren’t going away. The competition. The hard work. The teamwork. We just have more resource to make all of that work better. It’s important to communicate, and to work together with all departments, and really have no ego, and be able to work really well together.”

Bud Black, Colorado Rockies: “I like the creativeness of thinking from the people who were making hires. I think it shows that it’s not a closed box; it’s opened for whoever might have a skill set that a certain team is looking for, to give it a shot. I think that’s great. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Atlanta Braves. 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.Likely Reserve Position Players
A.J. Graffanino, SS
Drew Lugbauer, C
Justin Dean, CF
Andrew Moritz, CF
Travis Demeritte, LF

Graffanino is the son of Tony, and is an advanced defender with contact skills and feel for the game; he’s likely a reserve but was injured in college and is still adding weight, so there’s low-end regular upside. Lugbauer was a nice find in the 11th round and is at least third catcher quality behind the plate with 60 raw power and 55 arm strength, but he may end up being a primary first baseman and the contact skills come and go. Dean was another late-round find in the Carolinas for the Braves and is a true 80 runner, but is still raw enough that the realistic upside is a speed-oriented reserve. Moritz is a 55 runner who is hit-over-power and can play all three outfield positions, with one scout comparing him to Sam Fuld as a potential instinctual reserve. Demeritte still has easy plus power and is passable at multiple positions defensively, but will need to make some offensive adjustments to have a big league future.

Likely Relievers
Corbin Clouse, LHP
Wes Parsons, RHP
Thomas Burrows, LHP
Victor Vodnik, RHP
Gabriel Rodriguez, LHP
Troy Bacon, RHP
Jeremy Walker, RHP
Odalvi Javier, RHP

The other pitchers here are a mix of pure middle relief prospects and chance no. 5 starters who are more likely to slip into long relief territory if we’re being realistic. Clouse and Burrows are similar lefty relievers, with Clouse having a little more velo and Burrows more deception/feel; they share a similar breaking ball. Parsons and Javier are starter types with solid average stuff but nothing is plus, so you’re hoping for a no. 5 starter and will probably get a multi-inning depth arm if things work out. Walker flashes above average stuff from a frame/arm action that scouts like, but his delivery, command, and changeup haven’t progressed, so he’s a likely reliever but with more ceiling than Parsons or Javier. Vodnik and Rodriguez are relief-type arms from the 2018 draft class. Vodnik is a smallish righty who was 87-90 for some of the spring, but was 92-95, touching 98 mph with solid average offspeed in instructs. Rodriguez was a junior college position player who threw a handful of innings in the spring. The Braves saw them all, and stuck him on the mound in pro ball; he also topped at 98 mph, though he’s a project. Bacon can run it up to 96 mph and flashes a 55 breaker along with two other usable pitches and average command at times, but he’s a smallish righty reliever and isn’t always that good.

System OverviewThe top 10 of the Braves’ system is still among the best in the game, which is why they still rank highly in our org rankings; Top 100 caliber players are so much more important than the depth pieces. Given some recent trades, graduations, and league sanctions, the depth in the system is down considerably, with something like 15 fewer prospects having trade value (between the list and the Others of Note section) than the list had before those issues. Once you get beyond the 50 FV prospects, this system is very ordinary or even below average. The weaknesses are at the lower levels, though, as the trades and sanctions affected players mostly aged 17-20, so the big league team won’t feel these losses for years and there’s still plenty of ammunition for trades, along with near-ready prospects for the big league team.

Their competitive window is securely open now and will likely stay that way for at least 4-5 years, even if the organization opts to move all their chips in for the short-term. The Braves have a rare group of talent in their core and should add a few more pieces to it from this list in 2019, with a trade of a few of the top dozen on this list for an established star with multiple years of control seemingly likely as well. The NL East could go a few different ways this winter, but it looks like every team but the Marlins is trying to win in the short-term and will have a chance at the division. Having a stable of young, optionable power arms should be a useful talent infusion in the second half for the Braves’ rotation and bullpen, constituting a built-in midseason trade of sorts, as payroll is always a factor for mid-market clubs.

Around this time last December, the Phillies reached a three-year agreement with free agent Carlos Santana. The contract included a fourth-year club option, and it was worth a total of $60 million. Santana was headed into his age-32 season, and between the ages of 29 and 31, he’d been worth 8.2 WAR, with a wRC+ of 117. Because of the qualifying offer Santana had attached, the Phillies lost their second-round draft pick, along with half a million dollars in international bonus-pool money. The Phillies thought it was a great deal at the time. Santana turned into a salary dump.

Now, this time this December, the Phillies have reached a three-year agreement with free agent Andrew McCutchen. The contract includes a fourth-year club option, and it’s worth a total of $50 million. McCutchen is headed into his age-32 season, and between the ages of 29-31, he’s been worth 7.4 WAR, with a wRC+ of 116. There is no qualifying-offer penalty to consider here, as McCutchen was traded last summer. The Phillies presumably think this is a great deal at the time.

The parallels are spelled out right there. If you feel like being negative, you could accuse the Phillies of making the same mistake two years in a row. Yet for a variety of little reasons, McCutchen seems like a more suitable get. This isn’t a bargain — McCutchen’s getting paid real money. But how this can work out is more clear, as McCutchen returns to Pennsylvania.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Braves winning the NL East wasn’t really that big a surprise, as the questions surrounding the team generally centered on “when” rather than “if.” Perhaps a year ahead of schedule, 2018 saw some of the team’s prospect dividend started paying off richly.

The Setup

Tanking may be what the cool kids do when they rebuild these days, but back in 2014, it wasn’t quite as de rigueur as it is now. Atlanta was unusually aggressive about trading their players with value, even those who were still young, must notably Jason Heyward and Andrelton Simmons, who were traded after their age-24 and age-25 seasons respectively.

But they didn’t trade all of them. Staying in Atlanta was Freddie Freeman, who signed an eight-year, $135 million contract before the 2014 season, a deal that looks like it’ll be excellent right until the very end, which is a relative rarity for nine-figure deals with players on the easy end of the defensive spectrum.

Also remaining was Julio Teheran, who the Braves signed to a very reasonable six-year, $32.4 million contract with an option that would keep him in Atlanta through 2020. The team’s unofficial stance was that Teheran would anchor the rotation throughout the rebuilding process, though I also felt he might have been traded if his post-2014 performances had been more impressive.

In terms of competing in 2018, I’m still of the mind that this past season’s success caught the organization somewhat by surprise. If they had thought they were positioned to win 90 games, Atlanta’s biggest offseason signing probably wouldn’t have been Anibal Sanchez. Even the team’s trade involving big-in-2011 names, which sent Matt Kemp to the Dodgers for Adrian Gonzalez, Scott Kazmir, Brandon McCarthy, Charlie Culberson, and cash, was mostly about competitive balance tax implications. Gonzalez and Kazmir didn’t play a single game for the Braves; McCarthy was basically replacement level and retired by the end of the season; only Culberson was really left to contribute much to the team.

The Projection

While ZiPS was a big believer in both the Braves and Phillies in the long-term, the computer generally saw 2018 as a “too soon” kind of thing. ZiPS projected them well enough that I listed the Braves (and the Phillies) in the top two in a piece on stealth contenders in 2018. (The less said about the last two teams, the better!) ZiPS projected them for a 79-83 record in the final, official projection going into 2018, with a 1-in-7 chance of making the playoffs.

The Results

The team didn’t come out of the gate roaring, but they took most of their early series, and eventually took the divisional lead for the first time in early May after winning two out of three against the Phillies and sweeping the rapidly fading Mets. The team traded first with the Phillies over the next few months, never falling to second by more than a few games, before seizing first place for good in August.

Oddly enough, the Braves initially got to first without their eventual NL Rookie of the Year and best prospect, phenom Ronald Acuña, who was recalled at the end of April. Instead, it was some of the surprisingly good veterans, like Nick Markakis, Kurt Suzuki, and Ryan Flaherty, with wRC+s of 144, 136, and 126 respectively, leading the charge when they caught first place.

Markakis went on to make his first All-Star Game at age 34, long after anyone had considered him anything but a stopgap option in the outfield. It was not to last, with Markakis hitting .258/.332/.369 with only four homers after the midseason break. But the addition of Acuña to the roster more than compensated for the drop off; he was just as good as adding a Manny Machado or a Bryce Harper.

ZiPS already saw Acuña as a three-win player coming into 2018, hitting a perfectly respectable .269/.321/.425, a damn good line for a 20-year-old who would also be fully capable of playing centerfield if not for the existence of Ender Inciarte.

He was better than that. Reminiscent of Trout getting ZiPS best ever rookie projection and still eviscerating it by July, Acuña’s cromulent projected 101 wRC+ was mocked and beaten by the actual 143 he put up. For a time in July, when Acuña had slumped to a .249/.304/.438 line and missed significant time with a leg injury, it looked like Washington’s explosive Juan Soto would capture the Rookie of the Year award. But Acuña hit .322/.403/.625 while Atlanta put away the rest of the NL East and he won the award in a walk, taking 27 of the 30 first-place votes.

The postseason didn’t go quite as well for the Braves; the team was shutout in the first two games in Dodger Stadium by Hyun-Jin Ryu and Clayton Kershaw. After the bullpen failed to hold the line in Game 4, a two-run single by David Freese in the sixth and a three-run homer by Manny Machado in the seventh ended Atlanta’s season.

What Comes Next?

While it would have been fun to knock off the reigning NL champions in the NLDS, this also wasn’t a team fighting against a closing window; rather they were still in the process of opening one.

The inability to sign international prospects and the declared free agency of Kevin Maitan and others as a result of the Braves playing with fire vis-à-vis the international signing rules was an enormous loss. But hiring Alex Anthopoulos to run the team was still a silver lining.

Anthopoulos, since joining the Braves in November 2017, has focused on staying the course and even if it wasn’t one he personally set, he’s served as a terrific caretaker of Atlanta’s rebuild, electing not to carelessly fritter away long-term value to improve the Braves in the moment.

That’s not to say the team stood-pat in 2018. They did make significant moves, most notably picking up Kevin Gausman and Darren O’Day from the Baltimore Orioles, pickups that weren’t just about 2018. And they did it without giving up any of the crown jewels.

People are sometimes too quick to trade prospects who aren’t a great roster fit. Even if you don’t have an immediate slot for a Luiz Gohara or a Mike Soroka full-time, trading them now costs you the ability to trade them for a player who might be even more crucial later.

This winter, the Braves are blessed with both financial and roster flexibility, and are arguably one of the teams least constrained by various issues. They’ve already made their first move, bringing in Josh Donaldson for 2019, a move that is both win-now and will not block Austin Riley long-term. Atlanta doesn’t appear to be in on Bryce Harper, but they have the ability to go after just about anyone else. And with a team on the rise, they could be a real lure for free agents (as they were for Donaldson).

ZiPS Projection – Ronald Acuña

We’ve already spent a lot of digital ink on the merits of Atlanta’s young outfielder, so let’s just dump some projections on you; it’s almost fanservice at this point.

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for more than half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Boston Red Sox.

Batters

Obviously, the top of the offense is extremely strong, with reigning MVP Mookie Betts and one of the most dangerous hitters today, J.D. Martinez, who can be forgiven for being relatively one-dimensional when that one dimension involves a 170 wRC+ and an OPS over 1.000. But there were some cracks in the back-end in 2018, with Eduardo Núñez a stretch as a full-time second baseman and Mitch Moreland inevitably cooling off after a hot start to finish with the Usual Mitch Moreland Stats. The team brought in Steve Pearce and Ian Kinsler to dampen these issues. Pearce’s tenure was much more successful, but he also remains a role player heading into his late-30s, albeit a very good one. I remain hopeful about Rafael Devers‘ future given that most players his age are still in the minors, but you can’t just wave away the fact that he regressed significantly both at the plate and in the field in 2018. Boston’s three-headed catcher-beast contributed defensively, and did a better job framing than dirty cops in a Brian De Palma movie, but you’d still like their bats to improve to a more normal version of terrible than we saw last season.

The good news is that when your highs are high and your lows are low, it’s easier to make a significant addition than it is if you have a team that’s fairly average from top to bottom. J.T. Realmuto would be just about the perfect fit for the team if the Marlins were motivated to make a reasonable trade. I suspect the Red Sox will be content with Moreland and Pearce at first as they more pressing needs on the roster. And Pearce probably was the best first baseman available in free agency, unless you’ve received some weird news from the future about how 2019 was the The Summer of Duda.

Pitchers

There’s not a lot to complain about in the rotation, so long as everyone is healthy. All five starters are projected to have ERAs better than league-average, and ZiPS, like Steamer, is cautiously optimistic about Nathan Eovaldi’s future, even though 200 innings shouldn’t be the default expectation for a pitcher with his injury history. Some depth would be nice, but Steven Wright is likely a perfectly capable emergency option and the bullpen, as constituted, is probably a below-average group. Even a diminished Craig Kimbrel is a tough reliever to lose. ZiPS thinks a lot of the no-name relievers can be adequate, especially Colten Brewer, a hard cutter/curve hurler picked up from the Padres a few weeks ago.

Bench and Prospects

The problem with the Red Sox farm system is that while it’s far from empty, trades and successful graduations have depleted the upper minors considerably, to the point that if the team is looking for a mid-season reinforcement, they’re more likely to call up a prospect rather than trade them for a more veteran solution. Sam Travis now has a .713 OPS in nearly a thousand Triple-A plate appearances; ZiPS has almost written him completely off as a prospect at this point. And there are no starting pitching prospects that are all that interesting for 2019. That Rusney Castillo has one of the best projections of the players currently at Triple A at .269/.304/.370 is a pretty good example of just how thin the high minors currently are. The big exception here is Michael Chavis, who ZiPS sees developing into an average third baseman with power upside, though not intriguing enough to be a better option than Devers in 2019, or a good enough hitter in the short-term to make Moreland and Pearce uncomfortable.

One pedantic note for 2019: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth chart playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here at site.

Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors — many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2019. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production — a .240 ZiPS projection may end up being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future.

Players are listed with their most recent teams, unless I have made a mistake. This is very possible, as a lot of minor-league signings go generally unreported in the offseason.

ZiPS’ projections are based on the American League having a 4.29 ERA and the National League having a 4.15 ERA.

Players who are expected to be out due to injury are still projected. More information is always better than less information, and a computer isn’t the tool that should project the injury status of, for example, a pitcher who has had Tommy John surgery.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR — which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

Alex Kirilloff grew up hitting baseballs. A lot of baseballs. His father owns an indoor hitting facility, and having been home-schooled for much of his life, the top prospect in the Minnesota Twins system not named Royce Lewis would often accompany dad to work. He didn’t sit around reading comic books while he was there.

“I was blessed to have access to a cage, and I took advantage of that,” Kirilloff told me prior to suiting up for this summer’s Futures Game. “We had these big Iron Mike machines that would hold something like 600 balls in the hopper and I would hit two or three of those a day.”

This past season, he banged out a steady stream of hits against Florida State League and Midwest League pitching. Playing 65 games each in Fort Myers and Cedar Rapids, the left-handed-hitting outfielder stroked 107 singles, 49 doubles, seven triples, and 20 home runs. His slash line was a scary .348/.392/.578.

In terms of hands-on molding, Kirilloff isn’t Frankenstein’s monster. His hitting-instructor father didn’t skimp on pointers, but he also understood that a swing has to come naturally. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Chicago Cubs. 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.All This Pitching Depth

Erich Uelmen, RHP
Paul Richan, RHP
Matt Swarmer, RHP
Javier Assad, RHP
Michael Rucker, RHP
Bryan Hudson, LHP
Ryan Lawlor, LHP

Uelmen has the best velo of this group (a low-90s sinker) and his changeup might be enough to offset potential platoon issues caused by his low arm slot. He could be a 40 on this list at some point during the year. Richan throws a ton of strikes with five fringy pitches. Swarmer has a trick pitch changeup and might end up like Trevor Richards. Assad is a maxed-out righty with advanced pitchability for his age. His stuff is average. Rucker can really spin a curveball and has a weird delivery that helps him fool hitters; it might work in short bursts in the bigs. Hudson was a 6-foot-8 midwest projection arm who hasn’t really developed much, but he’s a ground ball machine. Lawlor was signed after a few Independent ball outings. He sits 90 mph but has a plus curveball.

Latin Americans with Upside

Rafael Morel, SS
Yonathan Perlaza, SS
Jose Lopez, CF
Joel Machado, LHP
Fabian Pertuz, SS
Luis Vazquez, SS
Fernando Kelli, CF

Morel signed for $800,000 in July. He has a plus arm, quick actions, a good frame, and his swing has good foundation. Perlaza is a stocky, try-hard spark plug who ignited the AZL Cubs lineup during the summer. His ceiling is probably that of a max-effort utility guy. Lopez signed for $1.5 million in July. He’s a 55 runner with a 55 arm, and he has bat speed but his swing needs an overhaul. Machado is athletic and has a great arm action. He was only sitting in the mid-80s the last time we got an update on him, but we think he’s going to throw pretty hard in the future, and he really gets off the mound well. Pertuz is a somewhat mature Colombian shortstop with some present pull pop and feel for the zone. Vazquez projects as a glove-only utility man. Kelli is a 70 runner with bat speed but everything else about him is fringy right now.

Bench Bats

Wladimir Galindo, 3B
Mark Zagunis, OF
Jhonny Pereda, C
D.J. Wilson, OF

Galindo has 6 power. He has below average contact skills and a below average glove. Zagunis is on the 40-man and projects as a perfectly fine fifth outfielder who can take a walk and pinch run. Pereda might get popped in the Rule 5 draft because he’s an okay catcher with an approach. Long term, he projects as a third catcher. Wilson’s speed has gone backwards and his bat hasn’t really developed, due at least in part to bad injury luck.

System Overview
Several positions players in this system had rough years due to assignments beyond their capabilities. Aramis Ademan, Jose Albertos, Chris Morel and Nelson Velazquez are all examples of this. Most of the college pitching the Cubs have drafted lately is developing as expected, which is to say that several of those players are already viable depth options if the big league staff has several injuries, but none of them have much upside. Overall, this system still appears to be below average due to recent trades that siphoned star power from the very top of the farm, but there’s enough here that the Cubs have the ammo to make some trades without totally gutting the system, so long as some of the younger guys on this list take a step forward next year.

I’d like to ask your permission to depart from my normal subject. Usually, I tell you what the law says on a given matter. It may not seem like it, but the law doesn’t really account for what I think. Some of what I tell you is what I think is right, and some of the law I tell you about is the sort of thing that, were I able, I would strike as immoral, or stupid, or both. But the law generally doesn’t care what Sheryl Ring thinks of it, and while I do, in some of my cases, advocate for changes in the law, I’m not going to do that here.

This time, with your permission, I’m going to talk about feelings. My feelings. About why I love baseball. About why I have always loved baseball. And about how it impacts me when baseball doesn’t quite love me back. This piece is about the human cost of major league baseball teams employing alleged domestic abusers. This isn’t about policy; what MLB should do about the issue, I will leave for another day. This is about my stakes.

At its best, baseball can transport us to the place of hopes and dreams, where impossibly high barriers no longer seem insurmountable and mortal humans become giants. Baseball writing can do much the same, done well. Earlier this year, in a piece that still resonates with me, Meg Rowley said this:

Communities are home to all kinds of folks engaged in different bits of sin and kindness, all experiencing different stakes. We’re knit together by our sins and our kindnesses, sometimes quite uncomfortably. One such sin is the everyday kind, the sort of casual meanness and lack of care we all wade through all the time. It’s a smaller kind, but we still find ourselves altered by it.

It’s a passage I’ve found myself reflecting on this week after the Cubs made the decision to tender troubled and suspended shortstop Addison Russell a contract; earlier in the offseason, it seemed as if Russell wouldn’t be back with the team in 2019. Following the decision, both Russell and the Cubs’ President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein released statements to explain their decisions. To define the path forward. Russell spoke of being responsible for his actions, using words like “therapy” and “progress.” Epstein spoke of accountability, and partnership, with Russell and organizations committed to domestic violence prevention. They spoke of the future. But the discussion left me unsettled. And as I thought about it, I came back to Meg’s piece.

That was the everyday sin, the sin of disrespect and unfeeling. It is what makes our community less than perfect and less than perfectly welcoming. It is troubling, this lack of care.

I fell in love with baseball when I was a little girl. But back then, it wasn’t from watching games. I didn’t watch my first baseball game until the Yankees’ short-lived 1995 playoff run. The next year was when I came out to my mother for the first time. My mother didn’t want a trans daughter, and so she hid me away. I became the family secret, kept in my room for days at a time and brought out at night, after my sisters were asleep, for my mother to try the latest “de-transing” technique she had learned. Sometimes they were physical. Sometimes they were worse. She’d hit me, or have my father hold me down whilst she held a towel over my head and poured vinegar on it – yes, that is what we now call “waterboarding.” She chose vinegar because the fumes made it hard to breathe. One of my mother’s favorite games was to have my father hit me with a belt. But not by starting off that way; that wasn’t her style. She would hold me down at the kitchen table, and start by hitting the table with the belt. And then again, a little closer. Again, a little closer. Again, a little closer. I’d flinch, each time, as the belt drew closer, until the impact finally came.

Afterwards, confined to my room again in the early hours of the morning, my father would sneak in after my mother was sleeping. He’d regale me with stories about the game the Yankees had played the previous day, telling me about pitcher’s duels and mammoth home runs. And he’d always end the same way: “Don’t tell your mother.”

I became a Yankees fan because of my father – because of what those stories did for me. As the years passed, my father’s stories became my lifeline. He would, on occasion, talk my mother into letting me watch a baseball game on television. Usually, he would slip me box scores without her knowing, or leave the newspaper’s baseball pages underneath my pillow. And when he persuaded my mother to let me go outside, I would spend hours with a yard-sale softball bat and a tennis ball, throwing up a ball and hitting it, over and over again, pretending I was the first woman on the Yankees.

I started to write my own stories and tell them to myself, about players I’d read about in the newspaper clippings my father left for me. When I was 13, my father arranged for me to help Bob Socci, the play-by-play announcer for the local minor league team, the Frederick Keys (the Orioles’ High-A affiliate), with his radio broadcast. Bob let me announce a couple of innings, which was the high point of my childhood. (My father convinced my mother to allow this by agreeing that my birthday would thereafter go unacknowledged.) I announced the game like it was another of my stories. I announced that game over and over to myself in the months that followed.

When I was 16, broken from years of abuse, I became actively suicidal. I went to my mother and begged her for help. She told me she hoped I did kill myself, because then she would be rid of her family shame. And then she told me to be sure I left no marks on my body, because it would make her look bad at my funeral. She recommended that I hang myself, because she could hide the marks with a collared shirt. It was in that moment that I realized that if I was going to be saved, I would have to save myself. I did it by telling myself a different baseball story every day, over and over. I made teams, spent hours projecting fictional triple-slash lines and standings, doing all the math by hand. That was my life between the ages of 8 and 16, when I started college. There was no school, there was no outside world. But there were the stories.

So when the Yankees acquired Aroldis Chapman — who was the first player suspended under baseball’s domestic violence policy — when they acquired him not once, but twice, it felt, oddly, like a personal betrayal. It felt, as Meg so aptly stated when describing our community’s sins, like disrespect and unfeeling. I felt unwelcome. The Yankees had gone from an escape from my pain to a reminder of the same. It felt as if the Yankees didn’t care about that pain, or the pain of other survivors. I don’t mean to compare myself to Chapman’s victim, nor to claim that our experiences, what we went through, are the same. But I do know what it’s like to have a member of your family inflict physical pain. I know what it’s like to have a family member try to kill you, on purpose. I know what it’s like to be smaller, weaker, unable to fight back except by simply staying alive. I know what it’s like to want to end it all, and have a family member hate you so completely that she openly wished for you to die.

There are an untold number of Cubs fans who understand the pain I’m talking about. It’s the type of pain that only comes from having a spouse, a domestic partner, a loved one, a parent, treat you like you are unworthy of love and deserve nothing, nothing but that pain and hardship. There’s something Melisa Reidy-Russell, Addison Russell’s ex-wife, wrote on her Instagram that captures this feeling.

But, somehow he could ALWAYS find a way to make me feel like it happened because of me, or because I wasn’t listening to him. It was ALWAYS my fault – You don’t realize it, but its a sick mind game that you get sucked into – All your source of happiness somehow is controlled by that one person, depending on how they decide to treat you on a daily basis. Feeling the need of affirmation from him became the main source of how I felt happiness. Always trying to please him to show him I was good enough, strong enough, worthy enough… it consumed me & before I realized it, I was so far gone from the person I used to be.

She might as well have been describing how I felt as a little girl about my mother. It is the feeling an abuser creates in their victim. Bruises heal, and scars fade. The emotional pain can last a lifetime. And, like an old wound that aches when it rains, it crops up every so often. The Cubs’ decision to retain Russell did that for me.

It’s easy to forget sometimes, but there’s a human side to baseball. Not just that players are human beings – they are, of course – but also that we, the fans, are human. We don’t watch baseball because we have to. We watch baseball because it brings us joy. It brings us happiness. It mimics life, yes, but it’s also an escape from that life. Baseball doesn’t owe Addison Russell a job. But it does owe us, the fans, a game that takes us away from our pain and into a better world, one where everything is possible, even 100-mile per hour fastballs and frisbee sliders. Keeping Addison Russell elevates the push to create the perfect baseball team over the perfect baseball experience.

When I was a little girl, baseball loved me when no one else did. For that, I will forever love baseball back. But I wonder sometimes if baseball still loves me. It’s a difficult feeling. It’s a hard question to ask. I’d like to be able to stop asking it. Russell and Chapman, Roberto Osuna and Derek Norris – they remove me from the stories. They turn the stories dark, and remind me of the monsters that can people them. I’d like to have my stories back. But more than that, I’d like to have baseball think my stories matter.