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In James Paxton’s final start in the month of May, he didn’t have it. Or at least, he didn’t have it like he’d had it before. Nevertheless, over five innings, he allowed just two runs, while striking out five and throwing two-thirds of his 89 pitches for strikes. Paxton has graduated to the point where even his mediocre outings are kind of all right. The four walks in five frames tell a misleading story; Paxton wasn’t wild. Paxton wasn’t wild because Paxton isn’t wild.

Paxton’s month began with 16 strikeouts against Oakland. That game was followed by a no-hitter in Toronto, and then, the next three times out, Paxton issued only one total walk while whiffing 23. Over six starts in May, Paxton went 43 innings and allowed eight runs, with opponents batting .143 and slugging .240. It’s quite possible this wasn’t even the best month of May for any pitcher — Justin Verlander also started six times, and he allowed five runs, to go with a .195 wOBA. But Paxton shook off a roller-coaster April, and established himself as one of the top starters in either league. If, that is, he wasn’t yet established.

Under the hood, as Paxton wrested greater control of his at-bats, he made some changes to his game plan. The month of May saw Paxton throwing a different fastball. And, as well, the month of May saw Paxton throwing a different curve. He does have a third pitch that’s in between the two, but it was the heater and the curveball that drove the bulk of Paxton’s success.

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CLEVELAND — Major-league pitchers threw Matt Davidson 1,855 pitches last season. Of those, 1,014 were thrown outside the confines of the strike zone, according to pitching-tracking data. Davidson swung at 343 of those out-of-zone pitches.

When he went home to his native Southern California this past winter, Davidson didn’t try to forget about baseball or an unimpressive 2017 campaign that included a .220/.260/.452 slash line and 83 wRC+. Rather, he relived his entire season.

Like every major-league player, Davidson has access to an incredible trove of video. On his iPad he could watch every pitch from his 2017 season and he did. Over the course of several days last October, he watched every pitch from his 2017 season — the video edited to erase the dead time between tosses. He was particularly interested in those 1,014 pitches thrown out of the zone against him and how he reacted.

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One of those baseball facts that might stick with me forever is that, after getting traded from the Mariners to the Astros, Randy Johnson put up a 1.something ERA. Specifically, including the playoffs, Johnson appeared in 13 games with Houston, and his ERA was 1.42. To be that dominant, in that era, under those circumstances, after having struggled before the deal — well, I don’t know what else there is to explain. I haven’t forgotten about it for 20 years. I’m sure I’ll remember for at least 20 years more.

We’re living in the middle of a similar fact. One that’s gone on longer, one that must be considered even more impressive. After getting traded from the Tigers to the Astros, Justin Verlander has put up a 1.something ERA. Specifically, including the playoffs, Verlander has appeared in 23 games with Houston, and his ERA is 1.36. In Verlander’s most recent start, against the Yankees, he allowed one run. That’s right on his season average — he’s allowed 12 runs over 12 starts. After allowing seven runs in the season’s first month, he allowed five in the second. Hitting Verlander of late has been more or less impossible.

Verlander was traded last summer, and was immediately good. We’ve already gone through a bunch of stories examining his turnaround, highlighting, especially, the improvement of his slider. That was a common conversation last fall — the one about how Verlander got better by making use of Houston’s slow-motion cameras. Yet Verlander only continues to grow. He remains, you could say, a work in progress, and he’s made a further adjustment in 2018 to get the most out of the pitches he has.

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This is Jake Mailhot’s fourth post as part of his May Residency at FanGraphs. A lifelong Mariners fan, Jake now lives in Bellingham, Washington, just a little too far away from Seattle to make it to games regularly, which is sometimes for the best. He is a staff editor at Mariners blog Lookout Landing. He can be found on Twitter at @jakemailhot. Read the works of all our residents here.

Among the various career arcs in professional baseball, the conversion from starting pitcher to reliever is one of the more common ones. It’s a last resort for aging veterans and a tried-and-true way to get the most out of middling starters. But when a talented prospect is moved to the bullpen, there are bound to be questions. It has been generally understood that a starting pitcher is more valuable than a relief pitcher, so teams are usually more conservative with their prospects, often letting them at least try to work things out as a starter before pulling the plug. But in an era when relievers are throwing more innings than ever before, a high-octane reliever might prove to be more valuable than just another starter.

Back in 2016, the Mariners moved one of their best pitching prospects from the rotation to the bullpen. Edwin Díaz took to the conversion quickly and was in the majors a few weeks later, completely skipping Triple-A. He was soon installed as the Mariners closer and has been one of the best relievers in the majors since. His already excellent fastball velocity received the usual boost from shorter stints on the mound, and his slider has developed into a plus-plus pitch.

It was a risky move for the Mariners. Instead of letting the 22-year-old try to develop his changeup in the rotation, they shifted him to the bullpen and aggressively promoted him because the major-league team needed bullpen help desperately.

I wondered if any other teams had tried something similar. Below you’ll see the results of a very specific query: every relief pitcher who has thrown at least 10 innings in the majors and had been a starting pitcher in the minors as recently as last year. To narrow the field even further, these pitchers all recorded fewer than five innings pitched in Triple-A and have posted an average leverage index greater than 1.25 when entering the game.

It’s an interesting list. Jordan Hicks, the man with the fastest fastball in all the land, sits atop it with almost 27 innings pitched and just 16 strikeouts to his name. Then we have a Rule 5 pick, Brad Keller, who has recently been in the mix for high-leverage innings in the Royals bullpen. Moving on. Justin Anderson wasn’t a highly regarded pitching prospect in the Angels organization, but he has added more than 6 mph to his average fastball velocity out of the pen and given Mike Scioscia another option in his constant closer carousel. This article was almost about Anderson. But the final name on the list is far more intriguing — and not just because of his 80-grade baseball name.

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Today we’ve rolled out the 2018 MLB Draft version of THE BOARD, but rather than just point you to an article explaining how the minor-league version works, we’ll take a second to go over the differences between the draft and minor-league versions.

Obviously, the amount of information we have for these players is different than what we have on minor leaguers, so we think the presentation of our information should reflect that reality. While you can look at a pro prospect’s stat line and get a quick idea of how advanced they are, amateur stats (particularly outside of the top couple college conferences) often don’t tell a coherent story. This, along with the varying types of prospects in the draft, means that we need to be more specific about the indicators of projection rather than just our median tool grades. We capture that, in the minor leagues, with ‘variance’; for amateur players, however, we felt we needed more detail so that it’s not necessary to memorize every report to quickly compare players.

This is manifested in the columns marked Athleticism, Frame, Performance, and Delivery. All four apply to pitchers and the first three apply to hitters. Every player is graded on a five-point scale of either —, -, +, ++ or neutral (blank). In addition to age and some other factors not captured here, these factors are influential for us when attempting to craft the rankings. It should help better establish, at a reader’s glance, the relative strengths and weaknesses of each player. Sometimes that’s necessary, as the tool grades often end up so close to 50 that it’s hard to differentiate these players without breaking down mechanics on video or memorizing all the small separators in our reports. This also more closely mirrors how big league draft rooms work, with selective categories (like 95+ mph fastball, scoring well on a mental skills test, etc.) getting their own stickers put on specific draft magnets so that separating qualities beyond tools can be identified more quickly after the first few rounds.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Chicago White Sox. 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 the numbered prospects here also appear on THE BOARD, a new feature at the site that offers sortable scouting information for every organization. Click here to visit THE BOARD.

65 FV Prospects

Jimenez was largely compared head-to-head with now-Yankees SS Gleyber Torres as the top talents in the loaded 2013 July 2nd class. Both players signed with the Cubs, then later were traded as headliners in blockbuster trades for Aroldis Chapman and Jose Quintana, respectively.

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Since the beginning of the 2016 season, four pitchers who have thrown 100-or-more innings have an ERA under 2.00. Three of them — Zach Britton (1.38), Andrew Miller (1.72), Kenley Jansen (1.75) — rank among the most-accomplished bullpen arms in the game. The other name on the list might surprise you.

Since making his big-league debut on May 30, 2016, Baltimore Orioles left-hander Richard Bleier has boasted a 1.84 ERA in 112-and-two-thirds innings.

Bleier’s under-the-radar effectiveness has come over the course of 103 relief appearances, the first 23 of which came with the New York Yankees. His efforts went unappreciated in the Bronx. Despite a solid showing — five earned runs allowed in 23 frames — the Bombers unceremoniously swapped Bleier to Baltimore for a PTBNL or cash considerations in February of last year.

The 31-year-old southpaw attributes an August 2016 addition to his repertoire for his late-bloomer breakthrough. Read the rest of this entry »

Each week, we publish in the neighborhood of 75 articles across our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
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It’s funny the way little, unpredictable things can change the course of a season. Baseball is about more than BaseRuns, of course, but, according to BaseRuns, the Rays should have a winning percentage of .528. The Mariners, meanwhile, should have a winning percentage of .529, and both team would be looking up at the .539 Angels. It would be a half-game separation from the second wild card. Despite everything the Rays have experienced and encountered, they might say they should be in the thick of the hunt.

BaseRuns sometimes has only a loose relationship with reality. According to what has actually gone on, the Rays have a winning percentage of .479. The Mariners, meanwhile, have a winning percentage of .592. The Mariners are 5.5 games ahead of the Rays, and, in between them, there are also the Angels and the A’s, to say nothing of some other teams in the neighborhood. Thanks to the early standings, the Mariners’ playoff odds have increased from 9% to 30%. The Rays’ playoff odds have decreased from 5% to 1%. As similar as the Rays and Mariners have arguably been, their current circumstances are undeniably different.

The Mariners also found themselves in a recent bind, requiring an outfielder after Robinson Cano was both hurt and suspended. The Mariners want to win, and they’ve been desperate for help. The Rays have become increasingly willing to shed short-term help. Given everything, it makes sense that we have a pre-draft trade. Such deals are uncommon, but when you have these two front offices in these two situations, you should never allow yourself to be shocked.

Mariners get:

• Alex Colome
• Denard Span

Rays get:

• Andrew Moore
• Tommy Romero

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Baseball goes through its trends like about any other industry. Just about everything goes through a constant flow of peaks ebbing to lulls and then back to peaks agains.

Pitch types, for example, go through cycles of popularity. The curveball was out of fashion and now it is back. There are years where different pitches are more prominent than others. Different pitches do different things. They dart left, right, down, and appear to rise. They have different shapes, breaking in different depths. Their usage is tied to the swing plane, philosophies, and ball properties of the day.

You are probably aware that the two-seam/sinker has fallen out of favor in recent years.

While the fastball is generally losing market share in favor of breaking pitches, the four-seam fastball has actually enjoyed an uptick in popularity in recent years as pitchers take advantage of their newly quantified spin rates to better get over the swing planes of batters, who have adapted to hammer the low pitch, as Jeff Sullivan observed prior to last season.

In 2010, two-seam/sinker usage was at its peak of 22.5%, according to Pitch Info data. Four-seam fastball usage was at a pitch-tracking-era low of 34.8%. This season, two-seam/sinker usage is at a pitch-tracking-era low of 17.8%, its sixth consecutive year of decline. Four-seam usage is up to 37.6%.

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