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On October 24, 2015, the Pittsburgh Pirates acquired Trevor Williams from the Miami Marlins in exchange for Richard Mitchell. Sort of. As ESPN’s Jayson Stark reported shortly thereafter, Williams was actually compensation for the Marlins’ hiring of pitching guru Jim Benedict. Mitchell was considered a non-prospect, while Williams was a former second-round pick, and is now working out of the Pittsburgh pen.

Last week, I asked Williams about the veracity of the report. Was he truly traded for a pitching instructor?

“It was weird,” said the 25-year-old right-hander.“On paper, I wasn’t, but in actuality, I was. It does make for a good story, because not many people get traded for a non-player. It is what it is. Whether you’re traded for a player, a front office guy, or a clubbie, you’re changing teams, you’re changing scenery.”

Williams wasn’t immediately aware of what had gone down. All he was told is that he was traded for “a minor leaguer.” Once the name became known, he went to his computer. Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps the best athlete, to date, is joining the revolution.

Said athlete is Yasiel Puig and said revolution is that of the fly-ball. It seems more and more batters are pushing against traditional coaching orthodoxy and endeavoring to lift the ball in the air.

Exhibit A from Thursday afternoon at Dodger Stadium:

According to MLB.com’s Austin Laymance Puig has been working with teammate Justin Turner on adding loft to his swing. And Puig is off to a tremendous start this season, having hit three home runs in four games.

“What I think about is putting the ball in the air,” Puig said via interpreter, “or else I’m going to have no money in my pocket.”

Turner, of course, is one of the key agents of the fly-ball revolution. If not the protagonist, he’s at least played an important supporting role. After a mediocre start to his career, Turner sought the help of outside hitting instructor Doug Latta, who believes that the ideal swing path is one that launches balls into the air. Turner’s mechanical adjustments turned him into a star. And now Turner is approaching players whom he believes can benefit from getting more balls into the air. The Puig-Turner relationship could perhaps be another example of the power of word of mouth, the power of peers to push a movement towards a tipping point.

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This is Joe Sheehan’s first piece as part of his April residency at FanGraphs. A founding member of Baseball Prospectus, Joe currently publishes an eponymous Baseball Newsletter. You can find him on Twitter, as well.

Like a lot of fans, I watched Sunday’s and Monday’s games fascinated by the number of pitchers who seemed to be throwing harder than they did last season. So it was a relief to see Dave Cameron’s note here Tuesday about why readings were higher. It will take some mental gymnastics to compare velo figures from 2017 to previous years, but I’m sure it will be second nature aft…

… wait, what?

This is what it’s like being a baseball fan in 2017. The issues you face are ones of reconciling changes in how the velocity of every single pitch thrown in MLB is tracked. It’s not about getting that data, but rather, about sussing out the difference between measurement points of the pitch on the way from the pitcher’s hand to home plate.

We had a different set of problems when we were putting together the first Baseball Prospectus annual, back in the winter of 1995-96. The challenges we faced weren’t discerning which measure of velocity to use, but rather, when we would get access to minor-league statistics, and how soon lefty/righty splits would be in our hands, and would anyone at all talk to us about prospects we only knew by their stat lines.

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A couple weeks ago, Zach Buchanan wrote an article with the following headline:

Can Michael Lorenzen be a two-way player?

Spring training is full of headlines that begin with words like “can” or “will” and that end with a question mark. The regular season is for settling. It’s still that early part of the regular season where people will watch a game between the Phillies and the Reds on purpose, and, because I was doing that, myself, let me give you an update, by switching some words and punctuation.

Michael Lorenzen can be a two-way player.

It’s happening. And I can say that because it happened.

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On Monday, the Cardinals announced yet another contract extension, having agreed to a long-term deal with outfielder Stephen Piscotty. This (presumably) wrapped up a busy extension winter for St. Louis, as they had previously kept Yadier Molina from hitting free agency after the season and had bought out Carlos Martinez’s arbitration years in exchange for a few of his free agent seasons. This followed last year’s long-term deal for Kolten Wong, who himself followed Matt Carpenter in deciding to take guaranteed money from the Cardinals early in his career. And this group is all coming on the heels of similar deals for Jaime Garcia and Allen Craig. It’s safe to say that the Cardinals are fans of the early-career contract extension.

And it’s pretty easy to see why. While the Craig deal has turned into a lemon, they were able to move him for value while he was still viewed as an asset, and they’ve saved a bunch of money with the Carpenter extension. The history of these kinds of contracts suggests that the Cardinals are more likely to save money on the Piscotty and Martinez deals, and the franchise’s ability to keep their home-grown stars is one of the reasons they’ve been so successful for so long.

But the Piscotty extension is interesting beyond just a continuing example of the Cardinals being a well run franchise. Because, barring some type of unexpected signing in the next few weeks, it feels like Piscotty — a perfectly solid player with perhaps limited star potential — is now the kind of guy who teams are more able to sign early on.

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While pitcher wins and losses have been abandoned by many as a means to assess a pitcher’s effectively, the traditional measurement of performance from a bygone era is still attached to every pitcher in the game. And even though pitchers have limited control over the ability to win and lose games, Chris Archer’s 19 losses last season do tell a story. They tell a tale of frustration, of an uneven campaign, and of poor luck on balls in play (and out of play) even as his underlying skills and fielding-independent numbers were suggestive of a pitcher who deserved a better fate.

Despite Archer’s 27.4% strikeout rate and the 19.5-point differential between his strikeout and walk rates (K-BB%), the Rays still managed to lose 23 of the 33 games Archer started.

But his Opening Day start against the Yankees suggested that Archer might be poised not only to bounce back by traditional measurements, but that he might be ready to leap to a new level of underlying performance thanks to an improved pitch.

After working as a top-of-the rotation arm mostly via a fastball-slider combo, Archer might have a new important variable for opponents to consider: an improved changeup.

Archer threw 13 changeups in the season opener versus the Yankees, and many of them were of the fading-, diving-, bat-missing, lefty-neutralizing variety.

An Archer change against Jacoby Ellsbury…

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We now have landing pages for all 30 Major League Baseball teams. These pages can be accessed through the Teams menu on the navigation bar above, simply by clicking on a team’s name. You can also access the pages directly, like so (no spaces in team names):

Many of the stats and features on the team pages are available in similar forms elsewhere on the site. We’ve now collected them into one place, however, so that readers can more quickly access team-specific information and analysis. As with any new addition to FanGraphs, we plan on expanding and adding features to the team pages as time goes on.

There are five different tabs on each page: Summary, Stats, Schedule, Pitcher Usage, and Depth Chart.

Summary

This is a quick overview of the team’s season. It includes boxes for the next and most recent games, division standings, team stats, depth chart, and roster notes.

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There have always been those who have doubted the merits of the shift in Pittsburgh.

Back in the summer of 2013, after a Pirates’ shift was beat by a well-placed ground ball that resulted in a Texas run, A.J. Burnett exchanged words with shortstop Clint Barmes on the field and later in the dugout. Later approached by a television reporter in the clubhouse, Burnett explained, with emphasis, his frustration.

“Listen, I did not have a problem with Clint! I do not have a problem with Clint! I had a problem with the fucking shift! We play people in the wrong spot!”

Of course, that was also the season the Pirates increased their shift usage by 400%, their staff produced an MLB-record ground-ball rate, opponents hit an anemic .207 against the shift, and the club dramatically improved its defensive efficiency en route to its first winning season and playoff berth since 1992.

Despite the general success of the shift for the Pirates, there were those once again bemoaning it in Pittsburgh (where I still keep a primary residence) — in the media and the public forums — after Sandy Leon beat the shift with a well-placed bunt on Monday.

As one can see, Leon’s bunt is followed by what appears to be a rather unpleasant gaze from Gerrit Cole into the visiting dugout, ostensibly in response to the club’s positioning.

And one batter later, Andrew Benintendi was able to cover an elevated-and-in 98 mph fastball.

Said Cole to reporters afterward: “They just hit them where we weren’t.”

Indeed.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Los Angeles Angels 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)

50 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Slashed .302/.379/.422 in 2016.

Scouting Report
Jones had already asserted himself as the organization’s best prospect by the fall after he was drafted, impressing scouts not only with his as-advertised athleticism and speed but with a surprisingly polished feel to hit and noticeable work ethic.

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TAMPA, Fla. — Even if Shohei Otani is not the next Babe Ruth, even if baseball has to settle for welcoming the next Madison Bumgarner some time in the not-too-distant future, some team will be quite happy.

You’re probably familiar with Otani. In case you’re unfamiliar with the Japanese star, however, please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the resume.

As a 21-year-old last season, he went 10-4 with a 1.86 ERA over 20 starts in the NPB. He struck out 174 and walked 45 in 140 innings. Oh, he also OPS’d 1.004 with 22 home runs over 323 at-bats in 104 games. He was named the league’s best pitcher and best DH.

The following exhibits from 2016 are visual evidence of this player’s existence.

Let’s start with the fastball that sits in the mid- to upper 90s and that has touched 102 mph…

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