Archive for Featured

As it stands this morning, there are five teams in the National League that have at least a 50% chance of reaching the postseason, according to our Playoff Odds forecasts. The three top teams are the same three that everyone had winning their divisions before the year began; the Dodgers, Cardinals, and Nationals. The fourth team — or first Wild Card, if you want to make it sound a little better — is the Padres, whose winter moves made the largest splash the world has seen since Noah decided to build an ark. And finally, as you’ve likely surmised from reading the headline, there’s the New York Mets, currently given exactly a 50/50 chance of reaching the postseason this year.

Yep, that puts the Mets ahead of the Pirates and Cubs, the two young darlings of the Central, each with rosters more stacked with young talent. It also puts the Mets well ahead of the Marlins, a trendy pre-season pick to make a run this year, but instead are a team that is reportedly considering firing their manager after getting their clocks cleaned in Queens over the weekend. After that four game sweep, the Marlins now find themselves seven games behind the Mets; it’s the largest gap between any two division rivals in baseball.

Of course, it’s still really early. It’s April 19th, and because the season started a week later this year, that date is even more deceiving than usual. We’re two weeks into a 26 week race. After 13 games last year, the Brewers were 10-3, standing with the best record in baseball; they went 72-77 after that point and finished six games behind the two Wild Card teams. While the games that have been played still count and can’t be taken away, a 10-3 start doesn’t mean the Mets are really a great team.

But that’s the thing about baseball in 2015; they don’t really need to be. They don’t even need to be particularly good, because in this day and age, a hot start and a roster that doesn’t suck makes you a contender.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the update to September’s list and a lot has happened since then. I chose to rank as many players as there are first round picks and to give reports on them, since those are the guys that matter at this point. I obviously have lots of info beyond that to pass along, but opted to be more general at this juncture.

The next couple section break down plays as sandwich to 2nd rounders or 3rd rounders or others of note, with varying definitions from each group that I note below.  The reason I’m less detailed about the lower rankings is because 1) we’re still six weeks from the draft, so this will change 2) it’s kinda silly to act like 45 and 65 are that different at this point and 3) there’s inherent secrecy from scouts about draft rankings, so these will likely change again in the summer when we see these guys compete on an even playing field. For these next two groups, players are presented in order of preference, so you can shift them around a few spots if you want, but the final section of others is in no order at all.

As I’ve said in many places already, this class is very weak up top. The top 15 players listed below have anywhere from six to ten players worth of being picks in the top half of the first round in a normal year. This amounts to 5-9 elite players missing, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but means teams picking in the top 20 will likely notice they’re getting less than they may have expected to get a year ago when the draft class was less clear.

Again, since the draft is inherently secretive at some level and I can’t see every player multiple times this spring, these rankings are a mix of what I’ve see and think and what scouts are telling me. I’d like for it to be 100% my opinion, but that would be foolish, so I have to side with the preponderance of scouts, even when they disagree with me.  I’ll link to video from the FG YouTube page where we have it, which is still a lot, but there will be a lot more in the coming weeks, as we have video of nearly every player I put in the top 3-4 rounds.

Read the rest of this entry »

Merry Krismas, Chicago; Kris Bryant’s defense magically improved in the exact amount of minor league games it took for the Cubs to delay his free agency by a year. With that remarkable coincidence act of theatre out of the way, the Cubs can now acknowledge that Bryant is not only their best third baseman, but one of their best big league players. And so today begins the Kris Bryant Era in Chicago.

Chris Mitchell has already written up the KATOH system’s expectations for Bryant, and as you’d expect, a model based on Bryant’s minor league performances think he’s going to be quite good. After all, few players have torn up minor league hitting the way Bryant has; including his stint in the AFL, Bryant has hit .331/.430/.671, good for a 195 wRC+. Kris Bryant can hit, and when he hits, the baseball goes a long way.

That profile is why he’s the consensus top prospect in baseball, and why there’s so much hype surrounding his call-up. Bryant isn’t some toolsy athlete in low-A ball that could be great in three years, or a flame-throwing ace who could rack up the strikeouts until his arm explodes; he’s a college-polished slugger who already projects as one of the best third baseman in baseball, even before he plays a big league game. As prospects go, Bryant is a very low-risk talent, as it would take a minor disaster for him to not be at least reasonably productive for the Cubs in 2015 and beyond.

Read the rest of this entry »

Happy Kris Bryant Day!

Kris Bryant is finally free. After spending his obligatory two weeks in the minors, the highly-touted slugger has been summoned to the major leagues. He’ll slot into the Cubs lineup today, and will be playing third base, putting an end to the much-maligned Mike Olt era in Chicago.

By now, you’re probably well familiar with Bryant’s prospect pedigree. After three monster seasons at the University of San Diego, the Cubs took Bryant with the 2nd overall pick in 2013, right behind Mark Appel. Bryant made quick work of the minor leagues, destroying opposing pitchers to the tune of .330/.429/.662 in his year and a half in the minors. Bryant was a highly-touted prospect dating back to his college days, but his prospect status ticked up to elite following his 2014 performance. He hit .325/.438/.661 between Double-A and Triple-A last year, and belted a whopping 43 homers along the way — the most of any player in affiliated baseball.

Unsurprisingly, KATOH’s all over him. My system forecasts the slugger for a remarkable 16 WAR through age-28, which was the 2nd most of any prospect last winter; Only Joc Pederson earned a higher projection. Here are the probabilities my system spits out for Bryant through age-28. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I shared notes about the 33 players that should sign on or just after July 2nd and project for seven figures. A common question from readers was if their team had other deals I knew of or if they were planning to go over their bonus pool. I saved part two of this series to break down that question with the information I have currently.

First, a note about this year’s class. As I mentioned in my previous July 2nd piece, that this year’s class is above average, especially the depth of seven figure prospects, but the higher top bonuses this year (detailed here) relative to last year (listed here) doesn’t tell the whole story. Most scouts (myself included) would take last year’s top player, Brewers SS Gilbert Lara (Report & Video), who got about $3.1 million (the highest bonus last year) and probably would take last year’s second best player, Rays SS Adrian Rondon (Report & Video) over anyone in the 2015 class.

The difference in bonuses despite slightly lesser talent up top is due to a numbers of factors: this year, more teams are spending their full pools, some teams are still going well over their bonus pools and the deals started very early. Also hurting Lara’s bonus was that the drunken sailor of last year’s period, the Yankees, weren’t on him, so his price didn’t get bid up by them, while the Rays locked up Rondon so early that some teams didn’t get good looks at him. Vladimir Guerrero, Jr.(Report & Video) was among the earliest deals in this year’s period, but it looks like he’s getting a retail price for his bonus.

Read the rest of this entry »

During the FanGraphs trip to Arizona in February, Carson remarked that I was squeezing an awful lot of juice out of the pitch-comp fruit. It’s true, I was — it was an idea I found interesting, and, more importantly, I didn’t have much else to write about. But now we’ve got a baseball season, a whole brand-new one, which means I get to resume writing about the thing I find perhaps the very most interesting: pitching to Mike Trout. I’ve probably written about this 10 times. I’ll probably write about it another 100 times. Many of you are probably sick of it. I might never grow sick of it.

Scouting reports make the rounds. At first, information is private, exchanged only within the industry. At some point, something gets leaked, or identified by an analyst. Then a report will make the rounds within analytical circles. Analysts write, so reports will be exposed to analytically-minded fans. But things can keep going, if sufficiently remarkable. Sometimes you’ll have a scouting report that makes its way into general baseball knowledge, even among people who don’t think in such granular terms. The Mike Trout scouting report is out there. I don’t even need to tell you anything about it because you’ve been hearing about it for months. Everybody knows. A few days ago I was listening to Mariners radio announcer Rick Rizzs, and he was talking about the importance of pitching Trout hard and in and up. It might be the only thing he has in his brain from within the past 12 years.

So it’s 2015 now. How is Mike Trout being pitched, given, you know, everything?

Read the rest of this entry »

Now that I’ve finished the organizational prospect lists, it’s time to circle back to the amateur baseball coverage and give some updates on what’s happening there. Before I jump into the international signing (most often referred to as the July 2nd group, because that’s the date players become eligible to sign) news, I’ll first give some updates on two Cubans and a Bahamian that should sign deals around that time as well, but don’t fit perfectly into the player pool.

Not Quite July 2nd Prospects

I wrote up 19-year-old Cuban righty Yadier Alvarez (Video) after I watched him throw a few innings in the last open workout for new Dodgers infielder Hector Olivera (Video). I said then that Alvarez was clearly superior to new Diamondbacks RHP Yoan Lopez (Video), a roughly comparable Cuban talent due to age, size and lack of track record of results. Lopez got $8.25 million and signed late in the international calendar, when many teams had already spent their money. Alvarez isn’t eligible to sign yet, but is awaiting a ruling from MLB on a waiver to make him eligible immediately.

The expectation is that even if Alvarez is granted the waiver that he will wait until July 2nd to sign. This is due to the persistent rumors that the Dodgers will be blowing past their international bonus pool for 2015-2016 (starting on July 2nd), with Alvarez their top target. The Dodgers offered Red Sox 2B Yoan Moncada (Interview & Background) $35 million (more than Boston’s winning $31.5 million bid) to wait until July 2nd to sign, but he passed. The Dodgers want to maximize their haul in their year of crazy spending and if they paid Moncada when he wanted to be paid, he would’ve been their only big signing, which would draw a two year penalty of not being able to give another young international prospect $300,000.

I lay that out as the evidence that the whole scouting world is pointing to of the Dodgers’ plan, beyond the rumors of targets, and I’ll mention those below. I’ve heard from multiple international scouts that believe the Dodgers already have a deal with Alvarez for $16 million (which would cost the Dodgers $32 million total, due to the dollar-for-dollar tax by MLB on 23 and under international prospects), but his reps deny a deal is done. Alvarez can’t sign right now anyway and, while a deal may not be done, everyone I’ve talked to thinks Alvarez will end up with the Dodgers (though a number of other teams are interested), and the price is about where scouts thought it would end up, so this makes a lot of sense.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, the Marlins called up Carter Capps from the minors, and Capps went on to make his season debut in last night’s game against the Braves. He pitched well, getting all three batters he faced out, one of them by strikeout. But a reliever getting called up and throwing a scoreless inning isn’t worthy of a post, so you know there has to be more to the story. And there is, because here’s what Carter Capps throwing the ball looks like.

legal pitch or nah? pic.twitter.com/sdNI4dXrky

— nick pants (@nick_pants) April 14, 2015

lol pic.twitter.com/mxSOdNGQbk

— nick pants (@nick_pants) April 14, 2015

Read the rest of this entry »

We rightfully spill a lot of ink here chronicling the exploits of the game’s best pitchers; the Clayton Kershaws, the Felix Hernandezes, etc.. We also tip our collective hat towards pitchers with the “wow” factor, from Chris Sale To Stephen Strasburg to Matt Harvey and Jose Fernandez. All that said, who do you think was the AL’s top contact manager last season? It wasn’t Hernandez, or Sale, or even Garrett Richards who paced the circuit in that category for much of the season. It was the Astros’ Dallas Keuchel, and two starts into the 2015 season, the 27-year-old lefthander has quickly set out to prove that it wasn’t a fluke. Read the rest of this entry »

You’d think that here in 2015, alongside our flying hoverboards and pill-based meals, we’d have finally eradicated the myth of “lineup protection.” The idea that having a dangerous hitter on deck would give the pitcher incentive to challenge the current batter with hittable pitches lest he walk him and put a man on for the better hitter may make sense in theory, but in practice it’s been proven wrong in an endless stream of studies, dating back to at least 1985.

But as I’ve watched the first week of games, it keeps coming up on broadcasts, seemingly endlessly. It’s not worth worrying about whether a great hitter has someone dangerous behind him — that hasn’t stopped Andrew McCutchen or Giancarlo Stanton or Robinson Cano in recent years — and it’s not worth worrying about whether the hitters in front of those great hitters get more hittable pitches. It’s been definitively proven that either there’s no effect at all or, if there is one, it’s so imperceptibly small and clouded by other variables that there’s no meaningful gain to be had from it.

It’s certainly not my intention today to give you yet another study on why lineup protection is terribly overrated in the traditional sense. What’s more interesting today is that we’re seeing, at least in one case in the early going, a different kind of lineup protection. Read the rest of this entry »