Archive for Featured

The hands seem so important when it comes to hitters, it’s fair to maybe be fascinated with them. Where are they before the swing? How do they get to the ball? How important is the top hand with respect to the bottom hand? It’s easy to spot them, it’s easy to track them, it’s easy to talk about them.

But so much of what you do with your body determines what is happening with your hands. And so, if you talk to Josh Donaldson about hitting, he won’t have a ton to say about his hands. But his shoulders? His torso? He’ll have plenty to say about those things.

And so, even if I asked Donaldson about his hands, it’s what followed that was maybe more interesting.

Read the rest of this entry »

With strikeout rates soaring and run scoring dipping to generational lows in recent seasons, word came in the offseason that the Competition Committee would be monitoring the expanding strike zone in 2015. Given the scrutiny it is receiving at the league level, I have been tracking the strike zone over the course of the season, with updates at the end of each month. At the following links you can find the updates from the end of April, May and June.
Read the rest of this entry »

This breakdown starts with the Scott Kazmir deal on July 23, but there weren’t any trades from the 16th to the 23rd, so this covers the whole second half of the month, trade-wise, up until now. I count 25 total trades with prospects involved in that span that add together to have 58 prospects on the move. Check out the preseason Top 200 List for more details, but I’ve added the range that each Future Value (FV) group fell in last year’s Top 200 to give you an idea of where they will fall in this winter’s list. Also see the preseason team-specific lists to see where the lower-rated prospects may fall within their new organization.

40 FV is the lowest grade that shows up on these numbered team lists, with 35+ and 35 FV prospects mentioned in the “Others of Note” section, so I’ll give blurbs for the 40 FV or better prospects here. I’ve also linked to the post-trade prospect breakdown for the trades I was able to analyze individually, so click there for more information. Alternately, click on the player’s name to see his player page with all his prior articles listed if I didn’t write up his trade.

I opted to not numerically rank these players now, but I will once I’ve made the dozens and dozens of calls necessary this fall and winter to have that level of precision with this many players. Look for the individual team lists to start rolling out in the next month, with the 2016 Top 200 list coming in early 2016. Lastly, the players are not ranked within their tiers, so these aren’t clues for where they will fall on the Top 200.

Read the rest of this entry »

On the back of a terrific young rotation, the Mets are contender-ish this year, and so for the last few months, there has been a steadily increasing cry to improve the team’s feeble offense. After all, the Mets position players are 27th in wRC+, and even after acquiring Juan Uribe and Kelly Johnson, this was an offense that didn’t really inspire much confidence. And so, the Mets have been looking for a slugger they can stick behind (or maybe in front of) Lucas Duda, and after walking away from Carlos Gomez on Wendesday night, they’ve reportedly landed Yoenis Cespedes right before the deadline.

The cost was a couple of solid but not spectacular prospects. Michael Fulmer is the headliner in the deal, and while Kiley McDaniel gave him a 45 FV grade before the season, he told me he’d bump him up to a 50 based on the improved slider and command he’s shown this year. Still, it’s mostly a toss-up whether he’s a starter or a reliever, and he’s sticking with his Joba Chamberlain comparison, so this isn’t exactly a premium pitching prospect that the Mets just surrendered. Luis Cessa, the second prospect, is more of just an arm-strength guy with average secondary stuff; Kiley mentioned he’s still a 40 FV and compared him to the pitching prospects the team gave up to get Uribe and Johnson last week.

The big concession here is that they only control Cespedes through the end of the season, as he’s not the multi-year player they were looking for earlier. After the Gomez deal fell apart, and they apparently decided not to meet the Reds asking price for Jay Bruce, rentals were really the only options on the table, so at least they got the best rental position player left. Cespedes is currently in the midst of the best season of his career, already putting up +4.2 WAR in the first 100 games of the year, though he shouldn’t be expected to keep playing at that level; the Mets are probably buying about +1.5 WAR over the remainder of the season.

In fact, for all the long-running talk about the Mets as a landing spot for Troy Tulowitzki, Cespedes actually projects to be a better player over the rest of the 2015 season. His combination of power and quality defense make him a well above average player even in a normal year, and the Mets are acquiring him when he’s performing at the peak of his abilities. And they got to keep most of the best parts of their future in tact in order to do it.

So, realistically, the questions are more about how Cespedes fits in New York than whether about this is a fair price to pay for a good player; it pretty clearly is, given the other trades we’ve seen this week. But while the Mets have long been searching for offense, Cespedes is still a bit of an awkward fit for New York.

Read the rest of this entry »

In case you missed it, I’ve broken down the prospects in the Johnny Cueto (Reds to Royals) trade, Scott Kazmir (A’s to Astros) trade, Tyler Clippard (A’s to Mets) deal, the Troy Tulowitzki (Rockies to Blue Jays) trade and in one post yesterday covered the prospects in the deals of Ben Zobrist (A’s to Royals), Jonathan Papelbon (Phillies to Nationals), David DeJesus (Rays to Angels), and David Murphy (Indians to Angels) trades.  This morning I wrote up the deal sending Cole Hamels from the Phillies to the Rangers. Here’s the breakdown of the 3-for-1 David Price deal sending him to Toronto, and I bet I’ll write a few more of these.

Everyone is going to compare this trade to the Johnny Cueto deal since it’s one rental MLB ace for three minor-league lefties. I gave Finnegan, Reed and Lamb 55, 50 and 40 FV grades, respectively — with all of them pretty close to the big leagues — while the combination Norris, Labourt and Boyd received 55, 50 and 45+ FV grades, with Labourt the farthest away of the six (although not by much). I’d lean to the Price haul and I’d lean strongly that way if Norris can work out his delivery issues.

Daniel Norris, LHP, Detroit Tigers, FV: 55

Coming into this year, Norris was riding a wave of positive momentum after a non-descript start to his pro career, itself coming on the heels of a $2 million bonus in the second round in 2011 out of a Tennessee high school. The big question on Norris coming into pro ball was his delivery and those questions still exist now, even though they disappeared in the second half of 2014 when he steamrolled his way to the big leagues from A-Ball.

Read the rest of this entry »

Update: the Braves are reportedly also sending Bronson Arroyo to the Dodgers, which works out to saving about $8 million. So, that’s a small benefit for Atlanta, which isn’t discussed below.

—

Update No. 2: the Dodgers are taking on some of Arroyo’s money, but not all of it. So the Braves are saving less than that $8 million. Glad we could get this straightened out.

—

A valuable lesson we all learned yesterday is that a trade isn’t official until it’s officially official. In the case of this trade, it still isn’t totally complete, so, who knows? Something else we’re aware of is that the structure is complicated. As the Braves, Dodgers, and Marlins work through their three-way exchange, this seems like the current picture of the Braves’ side of things:

Get:

• Hector Olivera
• Paco Rodriguez
• Zachary Bird
• Competitive balance draft pick

Lose:

• Alex Wood
• Jose Peraza
• Jim Johnson
• Luis Avilan

Because it isn’t official, it could always fall apart. Alternatively, it could always change its form. Beyond that, even if this does go down as understood, there are plenty of moving parts. Real people, having their lives changed in an instant! A draft pick, just after the first round! So what I’m about to do is over-simplify, but what this is really about, from the Braves’ perspective, is swapping Wood and Peraza for Olivera. The rest of it more or less cancels out, given the cost of relievers at the deadline. The Braves, perhaps, weren’t comfortable with the risk of keeping Wood and Peraza around. They’re more comfortable with the risk of Olivera, who they tried hard to sign only a few months back.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers have an apparently endless supply of cash, and are using it to run the largest payroll in baseball this year, so naturally, any time a prominent and expensive player is rumored to be trade bait, LA is one of the first teams mentioned. They’ve been linked to Cole Hamels all year. More recently, they’ve been tied to David Price. They needed pitching, they had the money to afford those guys, and so the fit seemed to make sense.

But we should perhaps note that, since Andrew Friedman took over the reigns of the Dodgers baseball operations department, that’s not really how the Dodgers have used their resources. They haven’t been at all shy about throwing money around, but they haven’t yet shown any willingness to spend big money on Major League veterans. Despite a roster that they wanted to completely turnover, they only signed two prominent MLB free agents over the winter, and both Brandon McCarthy and Brett Anderson were more mid-level value plays than the buy-stars-with-cash approach.

When they needed a catcher, they traded for Yasmani Grandal, who they saw as an undervalued player they could acquire at a good price, and managed to dump a lot of Matt Kemp’s overpriced contract in the deal. They wanted a new middle infield, but targeted production-over-flash with Howie Kendrick and Jimmy Rollins, solid role players on short-term commitments who could provide value while waiting for the team’s up-and-coming prospects to develop. They needed better relievers to get them to Kenley Jansen, so they traded for Juan Nicasio and Chris Hatcher, then went with a bunch of youngsters after guys like Yimi Garcia dominated spring training. The Dodgers have had plenty of opportunities to use their ample payroll to acquire marquis players, and at every chance, they’ve gone another direction.

So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that, when it came time to replace McCarthy and Hyun-Jin Ryu in the rotation, they looked for alternatives to the go-get-the-most-expensive-guy plan. That isn’t to say that they won’t still end up with Price– we’d be fools to ever assume the Dodgers are done working on things, given the number of moves they’ve made in the last year — or some other big name player before Friday’s deadline, but today’s move is probably the most Dodgers transaction we’ve seen since Friedman and Farhan Zaidi were given unlimited funds and told to do what they do best.

The deal, as we understand it at this point.

Dodgers Acquire:

LHP Alex Wood
RHP Mat Latos
RHP Jim Johnson
LHP Luis Avilan
2B/OF Jose Peraza
1B Michael Morse

Braves Acquire:

2B/3B Hector Olivera
LHP Paco Rodriguez
RHP Zach Bird
Competitive Balance Pick (#35 overall, currently)

Marlins Acquire:

RHP Jeff Brigham
RHP Victor Araujo
RHP Kevin Guzman
Corporate Profits

Read the rest of this entry »

In case you missed it, I’ve broken down the prospects in the Tyler Clippard (A’s to Mets) deal, the Troy Tulowitzki (Rockies to Blue Jays) trade and in one post yesterday covered the prospects in the deals of Ben Zobrist (A’s to Royals), Jonathan Papelbon (Phillies to Nationals), David DeJesus (Rays to Angels), and David Murphy (Indians to Angels) trades. It sounds like there’s still a few more deals to come, but last night’s huge deal sending Cole Hamels to the Rangers has plenty of interesting young players to cover.

In short, scouts were surprised that the Phillies sent Hamels to Texas without getting 3B Joey Gallo, RHP Alex Gonzalez or RF Nomar Mazara, but by paying down Hamels and taking Matt Harrison’s contract, Philly got three prospects from Texas’ top tier, which makes it a nice trade for both teams at this point. You can see Eno’s take on the deal from a big-league perspective and also see my preseason reports on the Rangers deep system and my preseason Top 200 for more notes/context on these players.

Jorge Alfaro, C, Philadelphia Phillies, FV: 55

Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of pitchers are flashier than Cole Hamels, and every year, a few new guys pop up and post better seasons, only to disappear again into the night not long after. Hamels doesn’t throw 100 and his out-pitch is a change-up instead of a highlight-friendly breaking ball, but with his command of a full repertoire and remarkable consistency, Hamels has established himself as one of the game’s best pitchers.

After a decade in Philadelphia, Hamels now heads to Texas to try and help turn another team into a winner. After a long time on the trade block, Hamels will reportedly be shipped to the Rangers — along with lefty reliever Jake Diekman — for outfielder Nick Williams, catcher Jorge Alfaro, and pitchers Jake Thompson, Jerad Eickhoff, Alec Asher, and Matt Harrison, though the latter is in the deal for contract reasons rather than as a future asset.

The focus will likely be on the the package coming to Philadelphia, given all the words that have been written estimating what Hamels would command as a trade chip, but while the Phillies didn’t get Joey Gallo, Nomar Mazara, or Alex Gonzalez, the Rangers depth of prospects means that the Phillies still got real talent back even without demanding a team’s best young players. The three primary prospects in the deal were all ranked in the team’s top 10 by Kiley McDaniel this spring, with Alfaro and Thompson both grading out as 55 FV guys, and Williams at 50. Kiley has provided a thorough examination of the players going to Philadelphia. The bottom line, though: these are good prospects that the Rangers surrendered.

Read the rest of this entry »

The headline isn’t the way the Marlins would put it. It’s not the only way to interpret Wednesday’s trade — it’s just one way to do so. The Dodgers, who’ve been in the market for rotation help, convinced the Marlins to sell them Mat Latos. The price for Los Angeles: accepting, along with Latos, Michael Morse. To soften that blow, the Marlins have thrown in a competitive-balance draft pick, to be made after the end of the first round. Now, technically, the Dodgers are sending the Marlins three minor-league pitchers. So it’s not a pure sale, and we don’t know who those players are, so maybe a conclusion shouldn’t be jumped to, but this one feels pretty safe. Those pitchers are presumably the equivalent of nothing. They won’t be as valuable as the player that draft pick turns into. The Marlins sold an asset at the deadline, and they’re the ones effectively losing the best prospect.

Read the rest of this entry »