Archive for Featured

What follows is my best guess for the first round of the 2017 amateur draft. I’ll update it the day of the draft itself (June 12), perhaps several times. Players have been assigned to teams based on multiple factors: rumors I’ve heard from various industry sources, the presence of front-office members at certain games (especially lately), each club’s own particular modus operandi, etc. Be sure to check out our draft rankings here.

1. Minnesota – Kyle Wright, RHP, Vanderbilt
It sounds like Louisville LHP/1B Brendan McKay is also under heavy consideration here and that Minnesota would evaluate him both ways in pro ball for a while. Hunter Greene and MacKenzie Gore are dark horses but less likely than the Wright or McKay.

2. Cincinnati – Hunter Greene, RHP, Notre Dame HS (CA)
The Reds had about a half-dozen scouts at the ACC tournament in Louisville and watched Brendan McKay’s middling start, though I think they prefer him as a bat. He’s a possibility, but Greene is more likely and, in my opinion, the better prospect.

3. San Diego – MacKenzie Gore, LHP, Whiteville HS (NC)
I think the Padres would take Greene if he were available here and would be fine with JSerra shortstop Royce Lewis, too, but Padres decision makers have seen some of Gore’s best starts all year.

4. Tampa Bay – Brendan McKay, 1B/LHP, Lousiville
I think this is where McKay stops and that the Rays take him as a bat. If McKay goes at No. 1, I think Wright goes here, though the Rays had multiple high-level executives at MacKenzie Gore’s last start, too.

5. Atlanta – Royce Lewis, SS, JSerra HS (CA)
There have been a lot of crazy rumors about the Braves and they can’t all possibly be true, but of course the Braves haven’t been afraid to do things differently in order to maximize the overall talent they get in a single class before. As such, we have to at least consider the possibility they might get creative here. I think they’d like McKay or Gore and there’s a chance they cut an underslot deal (it would have to be at a huge discount and would still be risky), but Lewis is the best player on the board in this scenario.

Royce Lewis: going to Atlanta? (Photo: Bill Mitchell)

6. Oakland – Austin Beck, OF, North Davidson HS (NC)
Beck had a private workout in Oakland over the weekend and has the kind of tools the A’s can’t buy on the open market.

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Manny Acta was managing the Cleveland Indians when I first interviewed him, in 2010. He’s now the third base coach for the Seattle Mariners, and while many things change over the course of seven years, others will stay the same. Acta continues to embrace analytics as much as anyone who wears a baseball uniform to work.

When the Mariners visited Fenway Park last week, I asked Acta what he’s been observing as the club hopscotches across the league.

“Everybody has the same access to all the analytics,” answered Acta. “It’s about who has the courage to actually use it to their advantage, and to push the envelope. Some teams are still a little bit more old-school than others. You can notice the difference when teams come through town. Some are more aggressive with shifting, and some do different things against different players. Everybody in the league knows which teams are the more proactive with how they use analytics.”

Playing devil’s advocate, I proposed that in some cases it may not be a lack of courage, but rather a belief that traditional strategies are more sound. His response suggested that while that may be true, it isn’t particularly smart. Read the rest of this entry »

This is Michael Lortz’ first piece as part of his June residency at FanGraphs. Lortz covers the Tampa Bay baseball market for the appropriately named Tampa Bay Baseball Market and has previously published work in the Community pages, as well. You can find him on Twitter, as well.

By most accounts, Tampa Bay is a growing region. There is job growth, revenue growth, housing growth, and billions in development happening throughout both Tampa and St. Petersburg. But one number that is not growing, despite an increase in expendable income, is attendance at Tropicana Field.

Fortunately, the main reasons why the Rays continue to struggle at the gate have become somewhat well known. Most knowledgeable Tampa Bay residents and baseball fans know Tropicana Field is too far from the population center and the gridlock too tangled for enough fans to see the Rays on a daily basis. This media appears to have become aware of these particular challenges: we’ve seen fewer national editorials of late blaming the Rays’ fanbase for lack of attendance. There’s still the occasional tweet, but published commentary criticizing Tampa Bay sports fans for lack of Rays attendance is rare.

Regardless of how often the problem is covered, there aren’t many articles offering solutions. That is a problem. From the outsider’s perspective, it seems the Rays are running out of ideas to get people to the ballpark. While they can only put so much lipstick on the pig that is Tropicana Field, they’ve altered prices, involved their people in the community, and offered a smorgasbord of various promotions with varying results.

The lack of attendance is putting the Rays in a bind: without revenue from attendance and with lower-than-average broadcast revenue, they have to rely on revenue sharing to stay competitive in one of the more affluent divisions in baseball. And there’s skepticism from baseball owners and front-office personnel throughout the sport as to whether Tampa Bay can ever be a successful major-league market — despite the fact that four franchises spring train in Tampa Bay, two others train just over an hour away, and four minor-league teams call the region home.

At my website, I’ve covered Rays attendance since 2007, the last year the Rays had the Devil in their name. Over the history of the franchise (excluding the inaugural season), there have been four different eras of Rays attendance.

• 1999-2007: The Phantom Ownership (avg 1.3 million)
• 2008-2010: A New Fandom (avg 1.8 million)
• 2011-2013: Indifference Strikes Back (avg 1.5 million)
• 2014-Present: Return of the Empty Seats (avg 1.3 million)

As you can see, even with more recognition and more active ownership, the Rays now draw as many people to Tropicana Field as they did during the Dewon Brazelton years. That’s not a good thing.

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Joey Votto might have the most discerning eye in all of baseball, and this season he’s somehow made his own approach something even closer to perfect. Votto has swung at just 19% of pitches out of the strike zone, a rate which counts as especially low. At the same time, Votto has swung at 70% of pitches in the strike zone, a rate which counts as unusually high. When running discipline analysis, I like to compare those two rates. Votto has a swing-rate difference of 51 percentage points. It’s enormous. Joey Votto swings mostly at strikes.

Chris Tillman has started five games since coming off the disabled list, and he’s thrown 452 pitches. When he’s thrown a pitch out of the zone, he’s gotten a swing 24% of the time. When he’s thrown a pitch in the zone, he’s gotten a swing 75% of the time. Tillman, therefore, is running a swing-rate difference of 51 percentage points. Hitters who’ve faced Chris Tillman to this point in 2017 have, on average, been about as disciplined as Joey Votto.

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It’s June 1st. The Cubs are supposed to be running away with the NL Central right now, like the Astros and Nationals are doing in their divisions. Instead, the defending champs are 25-27, in third place in the NL Central, and only a game up on the rebuilding Reds. For a team that was being hailed as a dynasty in the making, this isn’t how 2017 was supposed to go. So what’s the deal? Why did last year’s juggernaut turn into this year’s mediocrity?

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After talking recently with Daniel Murphy about launch angles and the like, I walked over to one of my brethren in hair Anthony Rendon and asked for some of his time. “I’m probably the worst person to talk to about this,” said the Nationals third baseman, already laughing. “Worst person ever!” added his next door neighbor Trea Turner. “I change strictly off of feel. Trying to talk to me about this launch-angle stuff…” Rendon said, gesturing with a wave towards Murphy. “I’m going off feel.”

That’s fine. For hitters, sometimes the best means to changing mechanically is simply to change the intention and focus on a different part of the field, like Yonder Alonso did. Very specific cues and jargon-laden research? Those are for the heady few.

But Rendon is a little different for another reason. While other batters are swinging for the fences and changing their approach radically, Rendon has achieved more power this year by adjusting in a very subtle way that allows him to make more of his level swing.

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This past Tuesday night against Oakland — just as there have been at other times this season — Trevor Bauer showed glimpses of the bat-missing strikeout artist he can be, the top-of-the rotation potential he’s possessed since departing UCLA with Tim Lincecum-like Pac-12 numbers and starter-kit stuff.

Bauer set a career high with 14 strikeouts against the A’s on Tuesday, and he has a career-high strikeout percentage (29.2%) and strikeout-walk rate differential (22.1 points) this season — nearly doubling his career rate (12.4-point K-BB%) by that measure.

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“It’s like a boxer who is always trying to lead the guy into his straight. You have to manipulate him with your footwork. Same type of thing in baseball. You have to figure out a way to funnel [the pitcher] into your hot zone. That comes with patience and that comes with accepting or realizing there will be some error on their side.

“It’s almost like as a hitter you have to be a counter puncher. The best way to be a counter puncher is just to sit and wait and absorb and then counter with whatever you think your strength is.”

—Joey Votto to David Manel, last September

CLEVELAND – Baseball is an unusual team sport in that the defense possess the ball. Pitchers have the advantage of dictating the action, the location, and type of pitch. But the idea articulated by Votto in the epigraph above is fascinating, this idea of “funneling,” of batters influencing pitchers. It led me to Votto’s locker in the corner of the visiting clubhouse at Progressive Field last week.

A willing and introspective Votto is a great resource if you’re interested in discussing the art of hitting. I suppose it’s akin to having access to this generation’s Ted Williams. I was curious to learn more about this idea of dictating action from the batter’s box, imposing will from there, to learn more about Votto’s renowned selective aggressiveness. Votto leads baseball in the ratio of swings on pitches in zone compared to swings out of the zone as Ben Lindbergh noted recently. But I was particularly curious to speak with Votto because it seems like several of the game’s best young hitters are following elements of Votto’s approach. With the data-density charts that have become available in recent years, we can now see what maturation, what selective aggressiveness, looks like.

Miguel Sano has become a fearsome hitter because he’s more selective. It appears as though he’s looking in a smaller area to do damage this year. While Bryce Harper declined to discuss his approach, he also appears to be having great success by zeroing in. And there was, of course, the great April surprise that was Eric Thames, who credits his success in part to taking advantage of idle hours in South Korea where he learned to be selectively aggressive, or perhaps and even more refined version of that philosophy that Votto dubbed “funneling.”

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Even though the existence of this piece is based on opinions relayed to me by multiple players, none of those players’ actual name appear within it. Why? Because nobody wants to go on record about the strike zone. They do have feelings about that zone, though. Especially lefties. And there’s evidence that the lefty strike zone is changing.

One lefty slugger was recently telling me about his approach and then made sure that we were off the record to throw in an aside: “… because they’re calling the lefty zone more true on the inside these days.” A catcher was adamant that he’d heard from umpire crew chiefs that there was an added emphasis on those pitches in to lefties. Another catcher echoed the sentiment and added that umpires were looking harder at the bottom of the zone. One lefty hitter called it garbage. A third catcher just shook his head at the whole thing.

Though none of these players would put their name to the complaint — fair, since they have to interact with the umpires going forward and wouldn’t want to poison that conversation and put a bullseye on their backs — there was enough smoke here to investigate the situation for fire.

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This is Alex Stumpf’s seventh and final piece as part of his May residency at FanGraphs. Stumpf covers the Pirates and also Duquesne basketball for The Point of Pittsburgh. You can find him on Twitter, as well. Read the work of previous residents here.

March 24th, 2017

Zach Strecker sat alone in his Florida hotel room. He wasn’t ready to pack. He had a plane to catch and a Sweet 16 game to watch with his dad, but his mind was elsewhere.

After an offseason of preparation and work, the 23-year-old righty reliever thought he was going to be a part of the Twins organization for another year. He had turned a strong senior season with the University of Kentucky in 2016 to a contract as an undrafted free agent with Minnesota nine months earlier, thanks mostly to the testimonial of former coach Brad Bohannon. He even pitched well in Rookie ball, leading the Gulf Coast League Twins in saves.

But today, he heard the same dreaded words every low-level minor leaguer who is losing their job will hear: there just isn’t a spot for you.

It’s a brutal business. He knows that. He wasn’t even expecting to play professional baseball when he graduated from Kentucky. That’s why he has two degrees: one in accounting, the other in finance. He was going to give baseball a shot until there’s no future in it. The day might have come.

Thoughts started to run through his head. “Am I really leaving right now?” “Is this it?” “Am I really ready to go home and join the real world?”

It was the longest 30 to 40 minutes of his life. That was until he got a call from Tony Buccilli, the director of team operations with the Washington Wild Things. Their season was starting in seven weeks, and they were looking for relief pitchers.

“I gave it some thought, but there wasn’t much thought,” Strecker said. “I wanted to play ball, so let’s give it a shot. It’ll be fun.”

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