Archive for Featured

CLEVELAND – Like so many others, Chris Devenski watched in fascination last October. He observed, on the flat-screen television of his offseason home in San Diego, as Cleveland continuously elected not to save their best arm, Andrew Miller, for the ninth inning, but rather to utilize him in high-leverage situations earlier in the game.

Unlike the many other major-league pitchers watching, however, Devenski recognized the part Miller was playing: he himself had already assumed a similar new-age bullpen role in the second half of the season with Houston. He had, in fact, become accustomed to entering games at unlikely spots much earlier than that, from his experience as a piggy-back tandem starter in the Astros’ farm system. As Cleveland advanced through the playoffs, Devenski watched as the movement to rethink bullpen usage and role — a movement of which he’s a part — advanced. The revolution was televised.

“I saw my role, man,” Devenski told FanGraphs last week. “I saw what they were doing with Miller here [in Cleveland] and [Aroldis] Chapman with the Cubs, it seems like that is what is coming about now in the game. It’s changing a little bit. I saw [in Miller] what I do. It was pretty cool. It’s big-time situations there. It’s important.”

But Devenski is arguably more of a revolutionary, more of disruptive figure than Miller. Since joining the Indians, Miller has pitched in high-leverage situations often, but he’s only recorded two or more innings in an outing three times in the regular season. He’s never recorded more than six outs in an appearance. Devenski had 18 such outings last season alone, including nine in August and September when the then-rookie was thrust into more high-leverage situations.

Devenski has recorded six or more outs in seven of his nine appearances this season and has an absurd 49.2-point strikeout- and walk-rate differential (K-BB%) and 22% swinging-strike rate. He has become a unique weapon in an unusual role.

Devenski said his wide range of experiences — from starting to relieving to tandem-starting — made the job a natural fit. While most pitchers would rather start or rack up saves, Devenski seems to have embraced his work in a hybrid capacity.

Read the rest of this entry »

In some ways, the Nationals just finished up a great week. In the last seven days, they scored 77 runs, running a team batting line of .355/.423/.649 and a wRC+ of 175. For reference, Mike Trout’s best single-season wRC+ is 176. If you wanted to know what a line-up of nine Mike Trouts would look like, it would look something like the Nationals line-up of last week.

But beyond the results on the field, the Nationals had a terrible week, as on Friday, Adam Eaton’s knee gave out running through a close play at first base, and the postgame diagnosis confirmed the worst; a torn ACL that will sideline him for the rest of the season. The Nationals’ big winter acquisition, and one that cost them a significant chunk of the upper-levels of their farm system, Eaton was off to a strong start at the plate and had helped the team to a commanding early lead in the NL East.

Now, though, the team is roughly back to where they were at the beginning of last winter, with enough talent to see themselves as legitimate contenders, but with enough holes to not necessarily be seen as a favorite when October rolls around. As we noted before the season began, the Nationals have a depth problem, and so with Eaton on the shelf, the team will now turn to Michael Taylor and his career 69 wRC+ to hold down center field for at least the next few months. Taylor’s probably not a guy you want to be starting in October, and having him as the starting CF means he can’t fill in for Jayson Werth, who may remember that he’s 38 at any moment.

Given the team’s current options, it’s entirely possible that they could end up starting not only Taylor, but also Chris Heisey, in some important playoff games, and while the top of the line-up is pretty great, you don’t really want to be starting multiple guys of this ilk in October. And if any of the infielders get hurt, you’re tossing in a Stephen Drew here or a Wilmer Difo there, and a vaunted line-up can quickly start to look pretty thin.

So, the natural reaction to Eaton’s injury would be to make a trade to fill the gap. The team saw center field as a big enough weakness to surrender Lucas Gilioto, Reynaldo Lopez, and Dane Dunning six months ago, so they probably shouldn’t be willing to roll with the pre-Eaton status quo now. But making a deal is now more difficult than it was over the winter, and there’s a rational argument to be made that enough else has change to disincentivize the team from making another big all-in trade.

Let’s tackle that second point first. While it is certainly too early to be hatching any chickens, the Nationals strong start in April, combined with a pretty disastrous first month in New York, has significantly improved the team’s odds of making the postseason. While we saw the Nationals as the likely division winner on Opening Day, the Mets were a strong contender as well, and their presence left enough room for our forecasts to say that there was something like a 1-in-3 chance the Nationals wouldn’t win the NL East. As we stand here on May 1st, however, the 17-8 Nationals are already 6 1/2 games ahead of the 10-14 Mets, and the primary in-division challengers just saw their ace walk off the mound with an arm problem a few days after their best hitter was sent to the DL with a nagging hamstring issue.

So now, even without Eaton, the big early lead and the Mets health issues have combined to push the Nationals division odds up to 88%, so that 1-in-3 chance of not winning the division is now something like 1-in-9. The Nationals have a big enough cushion that they probably can run Taylor out there for the next five months and still win this thing, probably comfortably. So now, the question is more about how much you surrender to get a better player in the line-up in October.

Certainly, you want to put the best team on the field you can in order to give your team the best chance in the postseason, but the randomness of the playoffs can’t be understated. If you make another big trade for a center field upgrade, you’re hoping that the guy you acquire hits well for maybe 50 at-bats, and it can be a tough sell to give up a significant piece of the team’s future for the hope that you get a few good weeks out of a guy at the end of the year.

Which brings us to the difficulty of making a trade to begin with. Put simply, it doesn’t look like the market is teeming with potentially-available center fielders. Several rebuilding or potential sellers signed their center fielders to long-term extensions over the winter, taking Ender Inciarte, Odubel Herrera, and Kevin Kiermaier officially off the market. A few others who will likely be selling at the deadline have big weaknesses in CF too, as you’re not going to be hitting up teams like the White Sox for CF help.

Realistically, it looks like the best CF who is probably a good bet to get moved this summer is Lorenzo Cain. The Royals are off to a lousy 7-16 start, and with a bunch of guys heading into free agency this winter, they can’t afford to keep everyone together for the stretch run and hope a late-season revival makes up for their slow start. Cain wouldn’t replace Eaton at the plate, but he’s a better defender, and would put the the Nationals roughly back where they were in overall talent level before Eaton’s knee gave out.

But to land Cain, Mike Rizzo would have to outbid every other contender looking for a CF, and the Royals aren’t going to just give Cain away, given that he’s one of their best trade chips at the moment. And since the Eaton trade removed most of their high-level arms, you’re now looking at a small group of names that every other team is going to be asking for: Victor Robles, Juan Soto, and Erick Fedde, most likely. Eric ranked Robles as the #8 prospect in baseball before the season, so he should be off limits for a rental, but Soto and Fedde are both Top 100 material, and giving them up for a hoped-for October upgrade could also be a tough pill to swallow.

In the end, Rizzo and his staff will have to decide whether they want to push in as far as possible to try and win in the next two years, while they still have Bryce Harper around, or if they think they are better off trying to build a sustained winner even after Harper likely leaves. After all, it’s not like this a team clearly headed for a cliff where a win-at-all-costs posture is clearly correct. Trea Turner looks like a franchise player, Robles could be as well, and the team has long-term guarantees to Stephen Strasburg and Max Scherzer. Eaton is still around. They’ll still have Anthony Rendon in 2019. If the Nationals don’t give up a Robles or a Soto this summer, they could reasonably think that their window could extend past Harper’s time in Washington, especially if the money he might otherwise get is reallocated in free agency.

But that puts them right back where they’ve been the last few years; entering the postseason as a good-but-flawed team that probably would need some things to break their way to take down the Cubs or Dodgers in the playoffs. And after going out in the first round in three of the last five years, it’s only natural to want to avoid another early elimination because you gave the other team four easy outs a game by starting Michael Taylor in the postseason.

The May-September Nationals probably don’t need to replace Eaton. The rest of the team is good enough to likely hold on to their division lead, especially with the Mets in a somewhat chaotic state.

The October Nationals, however, could certainly use a guy like Cain, especially if he came along with a bullpen upgrade like Kelvin Herrera. But that’s not going to be a low-cost acquisition, and it’s not an easy call to give up big parts of the remaining farm system for the hope that these guys are significant upgrades in just a handful of games in the postseason. If you give up a Robles or a Soto to land another 2017 upgrade, in addition to what you already gave up to get Eaton, you’re probably setting yourself up for a rebuild after 2018, especially with Philadelphia and Atlanta poised to be contenders at that time.

Maybe it’s best to not worry about the future while you have a generational talent like Harper, and just try to push in on the next two years, accepting that there will be some losing seasons down the line. If you go out in the first round because Lorenzo Cain didn’t hit in October, well, at least you tried. But while a noble feeling, surrendering big parts of a team’s future for a bet on October performance alone remains a risky bet, and could set up the organization to have some long-term pain without any real guarantee of short-term benefit.

With the Eaton trade, the Nationals tried to thread the needle of contending both now and in the future. They gave up a lot to get him, but landed a young player with long-term control who could make them better without feeling like they sacrificed the future. Unless Kevin Pillar’s April power surge is for real, there doesn’t appear to be another Eaton-type out there, so this time, the Nationals will have to make a more clear choice. Do they push in on their Harper window, potentially sacrificing what’s left of the long-term future of the organization in the process, or try to make another playoff run with a good-not-great roster?

It’s not an obvious call. I think either decision could be defended, and since they have a big early lead, the organization can take a few months to see what Taylor can do, and whether he can convince them to not make a big trade for a CF in July. But if he’s just the Michael Taylor we’ve seen the last few years, it’s going to be tough for the team to feel comfortable with their outfield headed into the postseason, and if the Royals sweeten the pot with a guy like Herrera, it might be too tempting to avoid giving the team their best chance to win while Harper is still launching home runs in the nation’s capitol.

The strike zone. Depending on your opinion of baseball’s home-plate umpires, you may prefer to call it “a” strike zone rather than “the” strike zone. You may not know what to expect on any given day while watching your favorite team.

Regardless of whether you think the calling of balls and strikes should be improved in some way, you at least have the option of knowing how the umpires’ collective zone appears objectively. For a decade now, every pitch thrown in the majors has been tracked. The position of every ball has been recorded as it crosses home plate. This extraordinary data has allowed for a quantitative assessment of what the strike zone looks like when aggregated over all pitches across the league.

During this era, the called strike zone has expanded rather significantly, in particular at the bottom of the zone. This trend finally ended last season, when both the overall size and lowest section of the strike zone actually shrunk ever so slightly compared to the 2015 season.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jessica Mendoza’s ears perked up while she was conversing with Kyle Hendricks yesterday afternoon. The ESPN analyst was doing game prep for this evening’s Sunday Night Baseball broadcast when the Chicago Cubs right-hander mentioned effective velocity.

“I interrupted him,” Mendoza told me later. “I said, ‘Can we talk about that?’

If you read this Sunday Notes column from last August, that won’t surprise you. The Stanford-educated Mendoza is a baseball nerd. So is the Dartmouth-educated Hendricks, who was more than happy to oblige her request.

“It was refreshing, because that’s (the type of subject) we love talking about,” said Hendricks. “We started talking about bat paths, two- and four-seam fastballs, how to attack hitters. That was the first time I’d met her, and it was great to talk baseball with her. You can tell she’s very knowledgeable, especially about hitting.”

How Hendricks is avoiding bats is what Mendoza wanted to address when she approached him in the clubhouse. She was especially curious about his velocity, which has been down this year. That’s where the ear-perking subject came up. Read the rest of this entry »

CLEVELAND — We know the Astros are one of the most forward-thinking, analytically minded organizations in baseball. They’ve led baseball in infield shift usage in recent seasons. They’ve experimented with piggy-back rotations in the minor leagues, they’ve been creative in maximizing draft pools, and have given us a revolutionary bullpen figure, the gift that is Chris Devenski.

They’ve also been as aggressive as any team I’ve observed with regard to outfield alignment.

Outfield alignment doesn’t receive as much attention as infield shifts. There are few, if any, outfield alignment measures publicly available, and we don’t often see outfield alignments in full scope on television broadcasts prior to a batted ball. Average depth is recorded by Statcast, but we’re still working on understanding optimum outfield positioning.

But the Astros are up to something — something which I first noticed last season at PNC Park.

Since air balls are more evenly distributed than ground balls, there are typically fewer radical defensive alignments in the outfield. Since there are only three fielders tasked with covering a much larger area of ground than in the infield, outfielders are generally kept in equidistant positions, spreading risk. But the above alignment against the left-handed-hitting Gregory Polanco represented an extreme swing to the left. It appeared counterintuitive, too, with the Astros playing Polanco as if he were an extreme right-handed pull hitter. In this case, the left fielder was near the left-field line, the center fielder shading toward left center, and the right fielder nearly in right center.

But the approach appears to be rooted in logic, too. While most ground balls are pulled, air balls are more evenly distributed, with batters often slightly favoring the opposite field.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the classic criticisms of the front-page entries on FanGraphs is that it can sometimes look like writers are just scanning different leaderboards until they find a subject. Now, there’s nothing actually wrong with that, I don’t think. That’s why the leaderboards exist — so we can all learn from what they say. It’s not like we can easily and automatically keep track of everything by ourselves. Still, I understand where the criticism comes from. And so I’d like to be up front here: This post is about something I didn’t expect to see on a leaderboard. There’s no deeper inspiration. But when I saw a player’s line, I knew I couldn’t not write about it.

In the early going this season, the White Sox have been a pleasant surprise! They’re hanging tight with the Indians, and they’re well ahead of, say, the Royals. One element that’s driven the White Sox has been the pitching staff, and, specifically, the bullpen. Even coming into the year, the team had Nate Jones and David Robertson, so the bullpen wasn’t likely to be terrible. To this point, it’s second out of all big-league bullpens in ERA-. It’s first in K-BB%. That…isn’t what anyone expected. And now, a plot.

Read the rest of this entry »

PITTSBURGH — Nearly 20 years ago, in the back yard of his half-acre lot in suburban Las Vegas, Mike Bryant completed what has became a crucial construction project for his family and the Chicago Cubs. Foundational holes were dug, and concrete was poured, to support three metal frames from which nylon netting was draped. The result: a spartan batting cage within feet of his home.

Kris Bryant often waited until the evenings, when his father had completed his private hitting instruction, to enter the cage.

“We had some lights that weren’t very good, but they did the job,” said Bryant of evening hitting sessions. “[The cage] was just a net and some dirt on the ground. The net had holes everywhere. You’d be hitting baseballs across the street and into other houses… But I was fortunate to have it at my finger tips and swing whenever I wanted. Other guys had to go to a local batting cage and find time to hit.”

Bryant hit balls across the street and against neighbors’ homes because he hit the ball in the air. In the cage, Mike Bryant taught his son to elevate the ball. He would create targets in the upper part of the netting and challenge Bryant to direct the ball there. The targets were always raised above the ground.

“It would be like, ‘Try to hit in the back right-hand corner of the cage. Try to hit it right there.’ It’s almost something I practiced when I was younger and didn’t know,” said Bryant of his uppercut plane. “Being young, you are not as focused on your swing, you are just out there hitting. But my dad would do certain games in the cage where I would hit targets in the air and I would practice it.”

While it’s probably unnecessary to remind our loyal readers that we’ve written often about the fly-ball revolution at FanGraphs this offseason and spring, you can read some of our musings here, here, and here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Projections. Do you not like reading that word? Don’t worry about it. I don’t particularly like writing that word, and I know full well that it can be a major turn-off. It doesn’t help that there’s not a great alternative way to express the same idea. When you’re talking about projections, you typically have to say “projections” somewhere. It’s inelegant, but it is what it is.

Some people don’t like projections because projections aren’t always right. Perfectly legitimate, even if it holds the model to an impossible standard. That being said, overall, the better projections are better than human guesswork. I’ve never seen convincing evidence that people are better at seeing the baseball future than projections are, and so the projections live on, referred to constantly. This has all been a long way of getting to the point that, hey, I’m about to build a post around our team projections. I want to compare projections today to the projections we had the morning of the first day of the season.

It’s not that hard to do, using the information readily available on our Playoff Odds page. You could do it yourself! But you don’t have to. Because, look below. When we start getting games under our collective belt, fans and readers ask us which of our ideas have changed. We all have our own individual ideas about players and teams, but changes in the projections tend to be closely linked. So let’s quickly examine changes at either end of the spectrum.

Read the rest of this entry »

Those who witnessed Eric Thames play in South Korea aren’t so surprised about his exploits in the States this April. After all, he was dubbed “God” there while playing for the NC Dinos in the southeastern port of Changwon.

Over the last couple of weeks my colleagues at FanGraphs have written about the scary, scarier, and scariest feats and underlying performance metrics of Thames.

On Tuesday, FanGraphs editor Dave Cameron asked the people what they would now pay for Thames. (FWIW, I chose to pay Thames $11-15 million of my make-believe dollars per annum. You can still vote!)

Thames continued to mash Tuesday evening…

And Thames continues to be drug tested…

Even if the Reds’ staff remains mostly equivalent to KBO pitching — kidding (kind of)! — Thames has been Bonds-ian over the first few weeks of the season.

Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Oakland Athletics farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from my own observations. The KATOH statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this. -Eric Longenhagen

The KATOH projection system uses minor-league data and Baseball America prospect rankings to forecast future performance in the major leagues. For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, so take these projections with a grain of salt. Due to their purely objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated. Due to sample-size concerns, only players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced last season have received projections. -Chris Mitchell

Other Lists
NL West (ARI, COL, LAD, SD, SF)
AL Central (CHW, CLE, DET, KC, MIN)
NL Central (CHC, CIN, PIT, MIL, StL)
NL East (ATL, MIA, NYM, PHI, WAS)
AL East (BAL, BOS, NYY, TB, TOR)
AL West (HOU, LAA, SEA, TEX)

55 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Has recorded .295 career batting average.

Scouting Report
Barreto was signed by Toronto for $1.45 million back in 2012 and then traded to Oakland — along with Kendall Graveman, Brett Lawrie, and Sean Nolin — in exchange for Josh Donaldson. Bay Area sports talk radio still discusses the deal with frequency and bile, and largely considers Barreto the last hope for salvaging it, though Graveman and his sinker appear to be breaking out this year.

Read the rest of this entry »