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When a baseball trade happens, it’s common practice for folks to want a winner or a loser anointed right away. It’s only natural to desire an instant verdict, to immediately express an opinion. Truth is, it’s impossible to declare a winner or loser on the day of a trade. It might be impossible to do so until the careers of every player involved are finished. It might even take longer than that. It sure looks like the Blue Jays are going to win the Josh Donaldson trade, but what if Franklin Barreto turns into a Hall of Famer?

The expected deal between the New York Yankees and the Chicago Cubs is different. There’s external factors we don’t typically have to figure into a trade evaluation. Aroldis Chapman is likely heading to the Cubs. Some prospects will be going back to the Yankees, including a really good one. It’s interesting, strictly from a baseball perspective. Strictly from a baseball perspective, we won’t know who will have won or lost this trade for more than a decade. But this is one of those rare times when you can rightfully declare a winner or loser on the day of the trade, if inclined.

Aroldis Chapman’s been accused of choking a woman and firing eight shots in the garage of his home, for which he was suspended 30 games. I’ve since heard folks refer to him as a monster. You’d be hard-pressed to argue with that description if the police report is accurate. We enjoy sports because they provide us a necessary diversion from the terrors of the world and the tedium of daily life. It becomes harder to glean pleasure from the diversion when the diversion and the terrors begin to intertwine. The Chicago Cubs had a young man in their organization who, as far as we can tell, is an upstanding citizen with a bright future ahead of him, personally and professionally. They seem, in this case, to prefer the troubled man with the dark history. You could say the Cubs already lost this trade.

I know this is FanGraphs. I know you came here for baseball analysis. This is supposed to be the diversion from your favorite diversion. We’re getting to that. The real-life stuff is just so much more important, and it needs to be discussed. Front and center.

It’s difficult to transition back into the trivial stuff. Feels dirty. But that’s what you came here for. This is the best I can do.

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At birth, Alex Bregman was touched by the Baseball Gods. He is not very big, not very fast, not especially graceful, and yet he somehow finds a way to do everything you can ask of a baseball player. He turned an unassisted triple play at age four. He was already very clearly the best high-school baseball player in the history of New Mexico before his senior year when a bad hop broke a finger on his right hand, ended his season, and irreparably harmed his 2012 draft stock.

Pre-draft, Bregman’s camp promised he would not sign should teams fail to select him in the first round. The Red Sox called his name in round 29 and were rebuffed. Bregman matriculated to LSU, where his list of accolades grew. First Team SEC, First Team All American, Collegiate National Team. And all of that as a freshman. When 2015 rolled around and he was draft-eligible again, Bregman was a divisive prospect despite his success largely because there was no consensus about his long-term ability to play shortstop. He didn’t have no-doubt shortstop speed and, while his arm was fine for the left side of the infield, it wasn’t the kind of elite arm strength that allows some players to hide their lack of range. Additionally, Bregman had virtually no positive physical projection remaining and wasn’t hitting for the sort of game power at LSU that would allay concerns about his offensive profile should he have to move off of short.

That’s not to say scouts didn’t like Bregman — he’s always been adored — but it’s hard to justify drafting a second or third baseman with fringe to average power projection in the top three picks. None of it has mattered. Houston bought in, drafted him #2 overall in 2015, gave him nearly $6 million to sign and, 13 months of raking later, they have a big leaguer.

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Back in January, I made some tweaks to my KATOH projection system, and have been using that updated model for the past several months. That model was unquestionably better than the previous versions, but it left me unsatisfied. While it addressed many of the flaws from previous iterations, there was still a lot of information it wasn’t taking into account.

I’ve been plugging away behind the scenes, and finally have a new version KATOH to share with the world. In what follows, you’ll find some detail on the new model, including its notable updates. I’ll be using this model in all of my prospect analysis from this point forward. Below, you’ll find a quick run-through of the notable tweaks, followed by an updated top-100 list.

*****

Added Features

Choosing projection window based on level, rather than age

In my previous model, I projected out based on a player’s age. If a player were 22, I projected him through age 28; If he were 24, I projected through age 30. This resulted in KATOH undervaluing players who were old for their level. The goal of KATOH is to predict the value a player will generate during his six-plus years of team control. By projecting a 22-year-old through age 28, KATOH failed to capture some of that value in cases where the 22-year-old was still in A-ball.

This time around, I chose my windows based on level, rather than age. I projected the next six seasons for players in Triple-A. I did the next seven for players in Double-A, eight for A-ballers, and nine for Rookie ballers.

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Earlier this week, I interviewed Giants rookie right-hander Derek Law in the visiting dugout at Fenway Park. Approximately 10 feet to our right, another conversation was taking place. Johnny Cueto was shooting the breeze with Luis Tiant.

Tiant was a favorite of mine during his glory years. Law was born in 1990, eight years after the Cuban legend threw his last pitch, but he was every bit as captivated with the nearby confab.

“I’m a huge Luis Tiant fan,” Law told me. “I’d love to go over and get his autograph after this. My dad pitched for a bit and I’m big into baseball history. Tiant is one of the guys I’ve really taken a liking to.”

The windup is a big reason. Cueto essentially copied the one El Tiante artistically employed on his way to 229 wins. Not surprisingly, the youngster has asked his Giants teammate about the wiggle and turn. Read the rest of this entry »

The trade deadline is a week from Monday, and between now and then, we’re probably going to see a lot of moves. Not a lot of big moves, necessarily, but with a lot of buyers in the market for bullpen upgrades, we’re probably looking at a large number of depth acquisitions. Just for the fun of it, let’s wildly speculate on where the biggest name guys might go before August 1st. Keep in mind that no one really knows what is going to happen, so this is more of an exercise in frivolity than a serious attempt at forecasting the deadline moves. Let’s see how many wild guesses I can get right.

The Indians have put themselves in a strong position to make the playoffs, and with the fickleness of starting pitching — see Mets, New York — they will try to take advantage of this opportunity. Generally reluctant to trade their best young prospects, I think they’ll back off that stance this year, and move either Clint Frazier or Bradley Zimmer, plus some lower level pieces, to make the big league team as strong as possible.

Predicted Additions
Jonathan Lucroy, Will Smith, Daniel Hudson, Coco Crisp

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Any team looking to acquire starting pitching at this year’s trade deadline is going to have to be prepared to take on some risk in the form of uncertainty. Rich Hill, long viewed as the prize of potentially available arms, is a 36-year-old former journeyman who only started pitching like the kind of arm you’d pay to acquire less than a year ago. Now, he’s recently been scratched from a start due to a blister, left the following the start after five pitches, and is doubtful for his next one. The next-most intriguing option was Drew Pomeranz, who’s been good for an even shorter period than Hill, and comes with potential workload limitations. Even the big names of the market, like Chris Archer and Sonny Gray, come with significant recent performance concerns, and both seem unlikely to be moved regardless.

The entire market being littered with question marks, in a way, makes the individual question marks less concerning. It’s just about choosing your question mark. Someone’s going to choose Andrew Cashner’s question mark. Take his word for it:

Andrew Cashner: “I know I’m going to be traded. It’s just part of the game, part of where the season’s at.”

— Dennis Lin (@sdutdennislin) July 22, 2016

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Last October, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit challenging Major League Baseball’s minor-league pay practices scored an important, albeit preliminary, victory when the court tentatively certified the case as a collective-action lawsuit. As I noted at the time, this meant that rather than have to file individual lawsuits for every player allegedly denied the minimum wage or overtime, current and former minor-league players could instead opt-in to the existing litigation and have their claims against MLB tried together in the existing case (a much more efficient and less costly proposition).

As I also noted at the time, however, this initial victory was potentially short-lived. Under the applicable legal rules, even though the court had preliminarily certified the minor leaguers’ case as a collective action, the court withheld a final judgment on the matter until after the parties had gathered more evidence regarding the extent to which the players’ legal claims were “similarly situated” to one another’s (i.e., whether the work experiences and legal claims of the plaintiffs already named in the lawsuit were roughly equivalent to those of the rest of the players who might join the case).

That additional evidence has now been collected and, on Thursday evening, the judge in the minor-league wage lawsuit ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to show that their cases were similarly situated. Thus, the judge “decertified” the case as a collective action.

This means that the roughly 2,200 current and former minor-league players who had joined the case since October have now been tossed back out of the lawsuit. These players must now instead file their own individual lawsuits against MLB should they wish to seek compensation for their alleged underpayment.

Perhaps more importantly, Thursday’s ruling also dramatically lowers the odds that the existing lawsuit will force MLB to make significant, league-wide changes to its minor-league pay practices. Thus, the decision represents a major victory for the league in the minor-league wage litigation.

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Ten days from the trade deadline, we usually spend most of our time talking about whatever star player is eligible for free agency at years end, and is on a non-contending team looking to upgrade for the future. David Price, Johnny Cueto, and Yoenis Cespedes last year, for instance. This year, though, that guy doesn’t exist; the big pending free agents on rebuilding teams are guys like Rich Hill and Jay Bruce. And because of the dearth of quality players likely to change teams over the next week and a half, the guy who is generating the most conversation leading up to the deadline is… Kyle Schwarber?

Yes, at this point, the hot name that everyone wants to talk about is an injured 23-year-old catcher/outfielder who won’t be healthy enough to play again until next year. Despite the Cubs best efforts to tamp down rumors, leaks out of New York keep suggesting that Schwarber is the guy the Yankees covet, and given the Cubs well-known interest in Andrew Miller, there appears to be mutual interest in players from both sides, with a stand-off emerging over whether the Cubs should surrender Schwarber in a deal for the game’s best left-handed reliever.

The Cubs continue to insist they aren’t going to do it, seeing the move as shortsighted, giving up too much long-term value for a short-term boost. Their Wednesday night acquisition of Mike Montgomery gives them a quality lefty to stick in their bullpen, and relieves some of the pressure to pay the going price for Miller, though, of course, I’m sure they’d still love to have him. But it seems they’d like to acquire him while retaining Schwarber, preferring to have both on next year’s roster as they make perhaps their final run with Jake Arrieta at the front of their rotation.

But if the Yankees hold fast, and say it’s Schwarber-or-nothing, are the Cubs wisely protecting their future, or passing up an opportunity to increase the odds of bringing Cubs fans their first World Series title since 1908? Well, it all depends on what you think Kyle Schwarber is going to turn into.

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The Cubs had no room for Dan Vogelbach. Hit though he may, the absence of the designated hitter in the National League was always an inhibitor for his future there, to say nothing of the wealth of young bats the Cubs have amassed at or near the major-league level. For several months, Vogelbach was an obvious potential trade candidate simply because the Cubs had nowhere to put him. Yesterday, that trade occurred: Chicago sent Vogelbach and Paul Blackburn to Seattle in exchange for Mike Montgomery and Jordan Pries.

Then a third baseman, Vogelbach won a 3-A state baseball championship in high school at Bishop Verot High School in Fort Myers. He tipped the scales at close to 280 pounds at the time and was asked to shed weight early in his pro career with the Cubs. He’s now listed at 6-foot, 250 pounds. There are certainly baseball players built like Vogelbach who are still able to effectively execute all aspects of their given position. Stories about Bartolo Colon‘s athleticism or Livan Hernandez’s flexibility are common in scouting circles and it’s not impossible that someone built like Pablo Sandoval or John Kruk can maintain enough lateral agility to effectively play a corner infield spot. Vogelbach doesn’t appear to be one of those players. He’s not a good athlete and has issues with range, footwork, flexibility and throwing accuracy. He’ll make the occasional, spectacular-looking, effort-based play but hasn’t shown enough technical refinement in his five pro seasons to convince scouts he can play a position.

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In his latest trade rumblings column, Ken Rosenthal has a pretty fun story.

Here is an example of a trade that recently was discussed but never got close, and would have amounted to a bombshell if it had come to fruition.

The scenario, according to major-league sources, unfolded like this:

The Cubs tried to acquire left-hander Drew Pomeranz before the Padres sent him to the Red Sox for Class-A right-hander Anderson Espinoza. Simple enough.

The Cubs’ plan, though, wasn’t to keep Pomeranz, who is under club control through 2018. No, the Cubs wanted to spin Pomeranz for a starter who is under even longer team control.

I could not determine the identity of that starter — it was a pitcher whose “name is not out there (publicly), and probably is not going anywhere now,” one source said.

In any case, the Cubs balked at the Padres’ request of infielder Javier Baez for Pomeranz, believing it too high a price. The second part of the deal — the spinning of Pomeranz for the unidentified starter — would not necessarily have worked, either.

This is an intriguing idea for all kinds of reasons. For one, what do the Cubs need with another starting pitcher? Their rotation is already pretty excellent, so making a complicated three-way trade to either acquire a #6 starter or bump Jason Hammel from the rotation while he’s running a 3.34 ERA would be a bit weird. They could use some rotation depth in case of injury, but if you’re acquiring Pomeranz — potentially the most valuable starting pitcher to be moved this month — because you want to flip him for someone even more valuable, that guy has to be pretty good, right? You’re probably not going to pay the price for Pomeranz, only to ship him off for some guy you’d stash in Triple-A, if you’re a win-now contender like the Cubs. At least, I wouldn’t think so.

Of course, it’s not entirely unheard of. The win-now Dodgers inserted themselves into the Todd Frazier trade, getting a package of prospects they liked from Chicago more than the ones they sent to Cincinnati, rather than just keeping Frazier for themselves. Maybe the Cubs knew that some other team hunting for Pomeranz was willing to part with a guy they liked for the future, and they thought this was their best chance to get a young controllable starter from a team that they don’t match up well with in trade. And perhaps they’d think about using that starter as a reliever down the stretch, strengthening a bullpen that could use an upgrade, with the idea of moving him back to the rotation next year.

So, just for the fun of it, let’s try to figure out who this mystery pitcher might be.

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