Archive for Featured

The amateur draft is just one day away, and it’s still unclear whom the Phillies plan to take first overall. One player who’s vaulted himself into top-five consideration, and might even be in the mix for 1-1, is Kyle Lewis, an outfielder from Mercer University. Lewis’ stat line is about as good you’ll see from a college hitter: .395/.535/.731. But there’s a catch: he’s a product of the Southern Conference, which churns out very few big leaguers and features a rather low level of competition.

Lewis’ competition level makes it a bit difficult to gauge just how good he is, especially from a statistical standpoint. Yes, .395/.535/.731 is a very good stat line, but it isn’t immediately clear how that compares to Corey Ray’s .319/.396/.562 performance in the ACC — a conference that is likely chock-full of future professional ballplayers.

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Last night, Yordano Ventura once again lived down to his reputation. The video at MLB.com shows not just the 99 mph fastball that drilled Manny Machado in the back in the 5th inning, but the 2nd inning pitches that led Ventura to decide to throw at the Orioles best player. If you haven’t seen the context that precipitated the brawl, this is worth watching.

As referenced by the announcers, this is nothing new for Ventura. Last April, he was unhappy with Mike Trout, and caused the benches to clear by mouthing off after pitching poorly. He was then ejected from his next start for hitting Brett Lawrie with a fastball, and in the start after that, he got the benches to clear by yelling at Adam Eaton after a groundball back to the mound.

As Jeff Passan — who lives in Kansas City and knows more about the Royals than most national writers — noted this morning, Ventura’s act has worn thin, not just with everyone else in baseball, but his own organization as well.

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It’s been a long, strange trip to the major leagues for Jameson Taillon. Sandwiched at second overall between Bryce Harper and Manny Machado in the 2010 draft, Taillon missed all of 2014 and 2015 while recovering from Tommy John and inguinal hernia surgeries, respectively. His stuff flashed last fall during instructional league and there was hope coming into the season that he would be able to pick up somewhere close to where he left off in 2013 when he had a brief and wild but effective stint in Triple-A.

This year, Taillon has exceeded all hopes and expectations and laid waste to the International League. In ten starts (61.2 innings), Taillon has struck out 61 and walked just six, while generating a ton of ground balls. Per MLBfarm.com, 83 of the 168 balls put in play versus Taillon this year have been on the ground. He debuts for the Pirates tonight against Noah Syndergaard and the Mets.

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In the winter of 2013, the Yankees faced a decision on star second baseman Robinson Cano, and after years of getting burned with big contracts for aging players, the team drew the line in the sand when Cano asked for a 10 year deal. After maxing out their offer to Cano at $175 million over seven years, the Yankees let Cano leave for Seattle, but then promptly reallocated most of the money earmarked for their second baseman to center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury; he signed with New York for $153 million over seven years a week after Cano signed with the Mariners.

Because of the similarities of the offers and the timing of when they occurred, Ellsbury is always going to be linked to Cano, and comparisons between the two have become a frequent source of conversation. That was especially true back in April, when Cano got off to a blistering start to the season while Ellsbury struggled tremendously. A few days into the season, ESPN ran this story from Andrew Marchand.

Jacoby Ellsbury could go down as one of the worst free agent signings in Yankee history https://t.co/2EXsqLKfur

— Andrew Marchand (@AndrewMarchand) April 8, 2016

Similar stories followed over the next month, as Ellsbury limped to a .235/.278/.341 line over the first month of the season. The slow came on the heels of a miserable second half to the 2015 season, and by the time April ended, Ellsbury had hit just .241/.293/.338 (a 71 wRC+) over the past calendar year, spanning a total of 498 plate appearances. It was pretty easy to write Ellsbury off as a washed-up and overpaid mistake.

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Nos. #30 – #21

Roughly four years ago now, the present author facilitated a crowdsourcing project designed to place a “grade” on each of the league’s television and radio broadcast teams. The results weren’t intended to represent the objective quality or skill of the relevant announcers, but rather to provide a clue as to which broadcast teams are likely to appeal most (or least) to the readers of this site.

The results of that original exercise have been useful as a complement to the dumb NERD scores published by the author in these pages. Four years later, however, they’ve become much less useful. In the meantime, a number of the broadcast teams cited in that original effort have changed personnel. It’s possible that the tastes of this site’s readers have changed, also.

Recently, the author published an updated version of the television rankings according to the site’s readership. This week: the results of that same exercise, but for radio broadcasts.

Below are the 20th- through 11th-ranked radio-broadcast teams, per the FanGraphs readership.

But first, three notes:

• Teams are ranked in ascending order of Overall rating. Overall ratings are not merely averages of Charisma and Analysis.
• The author has attempted to choose reader comments that are either (a) illustrative of the team’s place in the rankings or (b) conspicuously amusing.
• A complete table of ratings will appear in these pages on Thursday, unless they appear later than that.

20. Baltimore Orioles
Main Broadcasters: Joe Angel and Fred Manfra (and Jim Hunter)
Ratings (Charisma/Analysis/Overall): 3.8, 3.3, 3.6

Representative Reader Comment
“Angel… [d]oesn’t really offer any in-depth analysis or anything but he’s witty, natural, always ready to go. Never at a loss for words.”

Notes
There appears to be something like a consensus that Joe Angel is the real draw of the Orioles’ radio broadcast. There’s also something like a consensus that the author ought to be clear about the various broadcasters’ roles — namely, how Angel and Manfra serve as the main radio personnel, handling play-by-play duties in alternating fashion over the course of a game, and that Hunter periodically substitutes for one or the other of them.

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Last week, I wrote a piece about where the struggling Diamondbacks go from here, given their current position in the NL West race despite high hopes for their season. This week, on the back of the Padres dumping what they could of James Shields‘ remaining contract, it’s time to talk about the other NL West team whose hopes of contention have been dashed on the harsh rocks of reality.

During the Diamondbacks big splashy off-season, comparisons between Arizona and San Diego have been pretty common, as the Padres spent the prior winter making big moves in an attempt to skip the rebuilding line and get back to the winner’s circle. The moves mostly failed, though, with the Padres finishing 74-88 despite the roster makeover, and 2016 isn’t going any better; they’re currently 23-35 and just agreed to pay $31 million to make James Shields pitch for someone else over the next few years. But even as I write a piece with the same headline as the one that I wrote about the Diamondbacks last week, it’s important to note that the D’Backs and Padres aren’t really in the same boat. In fact, at this point, it’s not actually clear that the Padres even have a boat.

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Roughly four years ago now, the present author facilitated a crowdsourcing project designed to place a “grade” on each of the league’s television and radio broadcast teams. The results weren’t intended to represent the objective quality or skill of the relevant announcers, but rather to provide a clue as to which broadcast teams are likely to appeal most (or least) to the readers of this site.

The results of that original exercise have been useful as a complement to the dumb NERD scores published by the author in these pages. Four years later, however, they’ve become much less useful. In the meantime, a number of the broadcast teams cited in that original effort have changed personnel. It’s possible that the tastes of this site’s readers have changed, also.

Recently, the author published an updated version of the television rankings according to the site’s readership. This week: the results of that same exercise, but for radio broadcasts.

Below are the 30th- through 21st-ranked radio-broadcast teams, per the FanGraphs readership.

But first, three notes:

• Teams are ranked in ascending order of Overall rating. Overall ratings are not merely averages of Charisma and Analysis.
• The author has attempted to choose reader comments that are either (a) illustrative of the team’s place in the rankings or (b) conspicuously amusing.
• A complete table of ratings will appear in these pages on Thursday, unless they appear later than that.

30. New York Yankees
Main Broadcasters: John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman
Ratings (Charisma/Analysis/Overall): 2.5, 1.7, 2.0

Representative Reader Comment
“As a Yankee fan, I am thankful for MLB At Bat.”

Notes
It’s difficult to find any feedback among the readers’ comments that doesn’t merely resort, at some point, to an ad hominen attack on the Yankees’ radio team. Which, that’s unfortunate. But also: probably indicative of the sort of frustration a FanGraphs reader might have attempting to comsume a Yankees game by way of the radio feed.

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CHICAGO — Cubs ace Jake Arrieta continued his year-long run of brilliance on Sunday afternoon, striking out 12 batters with one walk in a 3-2 home loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks.

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Last year’s brilliant rookie class was exciting for many reasons, one of which was that it brought the arrival of an infusion of talent to the shortstop position in Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor, and Addison Russell. Remarkably, we were assured that even more young shortstops are on the way – an assurance reinforced by Corey Seager’s strong debut last September and his near unanimous presence atop top-100 prospect lists this past winter. But, at the start of the season, it was less-heralded rookie shortstops Aledmys Diaz and Trevor Story catching all the headlines. Where was Corey Seager?

While Story spent the month of April hitting 10 home runs and Diaz spent it batting .423, Seager posted an unremarkable 92 wRC+ through 106 plate appearances. He put up decent enough plate-discipline numbers — a 8.5% walk rate and 14.2 strikeout rate — but a low BABIP (.275) and low ISO (.146) kept him from producing at the level expected of the sport’s top prospect, whether those expectations were fair or not.

Ever since the end of April, however, Seager has been quietly reestablishing his place among the league’s best players. Well, he was going about it quietly, until this weekend. On the off chance anyone had forgotten about Seager or prematurely written him off as over-hyped, he reminded the baseball world Friday night that he’s exceedingly worthy of our time and attention when he did this to Braves pitcher Julio Teheran:

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The only prospect involved in the White Sox and Padres deal for James Shields is 17 year old INF Fernando Tatis, Jr., who the White Sox signed during the 2015-2016 July 2 International Free Agent period for $700,000. Tatis was not ranked among the 47 prospects to which former FanGraphs writer Kiley McDaniel ascribed hierarchy on his 2015 J2 Sortable Board and was not on my top 10 International Prospects list from that time. He’s blown up a bit this Spring and is one of the more interesting bats in Extended Spring Training. Read the rest of this entry »