Without a true minor league season on which to fixate, I’ve been spending most of my time watching and evaluating young big leaguers who, because of the truncated season, will still be eligible for prospect lists at the end of the year. From a workflow standpoint, it makes sense for me to prioritize and complete my evaluations of these prospects before my time is divided between theoretical fall instructional ball on the pro side and college fall practices and scrimmages, which will have outsized importance this year due to the lack of both meaningful 2020 college stats and summer wood bat league looks because of COVID-19.

I’m starting with the National League East. Players who have appeared in big league games are covered below, as are a few players who have been at the offsite camps all season. The results of changes made to player rankings and evaluations can be found over on The Board, though I try to provide more specific links throughout this post in case readers only care about one team.

Atlanta Braves

In an August post, I talked about how I was moving away from hitters who swing recklessly but failed to mention that I’d slid Drew Waters from the back of the 55 FV tier — around 50th overall — down to 76th overall, near a bunch of the high ceiling/high variance hitters grouped toward the back of the top 100.

I also slid Kyle Wright (now a 40+ FV — I know he has graduated off of other publications’ lists but even after counting his time on the roster I still have him classified as rookie-eligible, though perhaps I’m miscounting?) and Bryse Wilson (45+ FV). Both of them are throwing hard (Wilson up to 96 over the weekend, Wright up to 97 yesterday) but because they’re of the sink/tail variety, their fastballs don’t have margin for error in the strike zone and both of them too often miss in hittable locations. Each has the secondary stuff to start, but neither has seized a rotation spot even though Atlanta desperately needs someone to. Read the rest of this entry »

Not for nothing did they call Tom Seaver “The Franchise.” When he debuted in 1967, the Mets lost 101 games, their fifth time in triple digits in six seasons of existence. Two years later, he led the team not only to its first winning record but to an upset of the powerhouse Baltimore Orioles in the World Series. A month shy of his 25th birthday, he had given “the Miracle Mets” a leg up against the crosstown Yankees, who were going through a fallow period after dominating baseball for four and a half decades, and in doing so he became an all-American icon. Uniting a powerful, efficient “drop and drive” delivery with a cerebral approach and impeccable command, he would go on to check virtually every important box in his 20-year major league career, winning three Cy Young awards, making 12 All-Star teams, leading his league in a triple crown category 11 times, tossing a no-hitter, surpassing the 300-win and 3,000-strikeout milestones, and setting a record with the highest share of a Hall of Fame vote when he became eligible in 1992.

Last summer, in celebrating the 50th anniversary of that championship, the Mets announced that they would officially designate the address of Citi Field as 41 Seaver Way (after his uniform number, which they retired in 1988), and dedicate a statue to “Tom Terrific.” Alas, by that point, Seaver’s family had gone public with the news that he had been diagnosed with dementia and was retiring from public life; he had battled health problems for years, including multiple bouts with Lyme disease. He missed the anniversary festivities and never lived to see the statue’s completion. Seaver passed away on Wednesday at age 75. According to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, he died peacefully in his sleep from complications of Lewy body dementia and COVID-19.

Seaver spent 11 1/2 of his 20 seasons with the Mets, departing in rather traumatic fashion first on June 15, 1977, in a trade to the Reds that was dubbed “The Midnight Massacre,” and then again in 1983, when after returning to New York via a trade and spending a season back in Queens, he was left unprotected in what was called the free agent compensation draft. He spent 2 1/2 years with the White Sox and his final half-season aiding the 1986 Red Sox’s pennant push, though a late-season knee injury kept him off the postseason roster and he could only watch as his former team won its second World Series.

Seaver was so durable that he made at least 32 starts and threw at least 200 innings in the first 13 seasons of his career and in 16 in all, the last at age 40. He finished with an ERA+ of at least 100 while qualifying for the ERA title in 18 of those seasons, including his final one at age 41; that’s tied with Walter Johnson for fourth behind only Greg Maddux, Roger Clemens, and Cy Young, all with 19. His 3,640 strikeouts still rank sixth all-time, while his 311 wins rank 18th. He’s seventh in shutouts (61), 15th in starts (647), 19th in innings (4,783), walks (1,390) and home runs allowed (380), and in a virtual tie for 22nd among pitchers with at least 2,500 innings in ERA+ (127).

On the advanced statistical front, his 109.9 bWAR (including offense) ranks sixth behind only Johnson, Young, Clemens, Pete Alexander, and Kid Nichols. His seven-year peak score is “only” 20th, but his 84.6 JAWS is eighth; every pitcher ahead of him save for Clemens last pitched in the majors prior to World War II. Read the rest of this entry »

Wracked by injuries and currently running fourth in the NL East at 15-20 — but even so just two games out of the eighth playoff spot — the Mets added a trio of players via separate deadline deals with the Rangers and Orioles on Monday. While catcher Robinson Chirinos and infielder Todd Frazier are the more familiar names and could have relevance beyond this season, it’s reliever Miguel Castro who will probably have the most staying power. Each addition addresses an area of need, though their 2020 impact might be minimal, and the hard-throwing righty did cost them a prospect of note as well as either a player to be named later or cash.

On a team that lost Noah Syndergaard to Tommy John surgery and Marcus Stroman to an opt-out, then sent Michael Wacha and now Steven Matz to the Injured List with shoulder woes, the Mets have raided their bullpen to draft Robert Gsellman and Seth Lugo into the rotation alongside Jacob deGrom, Rick Porcello, and rookie David Peterson. Particularly with Dellin Betances joining the IL due to right lat tightness, the need for competent relief work became particularly acute, and the addition of Castro, a 25-year-old righty with a live arm, helps to remedy that. Castro’s two-seam fastball averages 97.7 mph and goes as high as 99; as Ben Clemens recently observed, when he’s facing lefties, he tends to use his changeup as a secondary pitch, while against righties, he goes to his slider as an alternative. The fastball is even more hittable than most, but the secondary pitches are very good.

While Castro, who debuted with the Blue Jays in 2015 but still has two years of arbitration eligibility remaining, got rather mediocre results in 2019 (4.66 ERA, 4.73 FIP in 73.1 innings), this year, he’s pitched markedly better (4.02 ERA, 3.71 FIP in 15.2 innings). His strikeout rate has spiked from 22.3% to 34.3%, while his walk rate has fallen from 12.8% to 7.1%; as a result, his K-BB% has nearly tripled, from 9.4% to 27.2%. His home run rate has climbed from 1.23 per nine to 1.72, but at the same time, his batted ball profile has taken on a different shape — harder contact but more grounders, and a ridiculous HR/FB rate:

Read the rest of this entry »

As the 2020 baseball season seemed to teeter on the brink of collapse this weekend in light of the news of an outbreak on the Cardinals, the comments of commissioner Rob Manfred, and the inactivity of six teams, four players — three of them former All-Stars — opted out of the 2020 season: Brewers center fielder Lorenzo Cain, Mets outfielder Yoenis Céspedes, Marlins second baseman Isan Díaz, and free agent lefty Francisco Liriano. None of them are known to be in high-risk groups themselves, meaning that they’ll forfeit the remainder of their salaries. The departure of Cain is likely the most impactful from a competitive standpoint, and that of Díaz the most understandable given his proximity to the largest outbreak to date. All of those were overshadowed by the drama surrounding Céspedes and the Mets, who together turned the announcement of an opt-out decision into a bizarre spectacle that unfolded over the course of a few hours on Sunday afternoon.

We’ll get to Céspedes, but first is Cain. Although he had played just five games this season, the 34-year-old two-time All-Star was off to a promising start, going 6-for-18 with a double and three walks. A speedy, savvy baserunner, he pulled off an entertaining escape from a rundown against the Cubs on July 25, a clip that made the rounds:

Read the rest of this entry »

Monday night, Michael Wacha made a cathartic first start with the Mets. Over five solid innings, he struck out four while allowing only one run on a Mitch Moreland solo shot. He walked away with the win, his first in more than a year, and gave Mets fans hope that they might cheat the injury gods and assemble an acceptable rotation. But wait! Michael Wacha was last seen being terrible. It’s time to do some digging. The game is afoot!

We start this investigation, like so many others of sudden pitching competence, with the fastball. But alas, there’s nothing to be gleaned from it. Wacha averaged 94.3 mph on the pitch, a hair higher than last year’s season-long average but only a hair higher than last July’s mark. Allowing for the fact that the switch to Hawkeye might come with some calibration errors, we can rule out a newly lively fastball accounting for the fact that the Red Sox looked flummoxed.

Or can we? Why not spiral deeper, hunt further for fastball clues? His spin rate is up by nearly 150 rpm. Mayhap that’s the culprit. Mayhap indeed — but in my opinion, it’s not likely. Spin is one of the things to be most skeptical about in the new system. Perhaps skeptical is the wrong word; maybe we should be skeptical of the old measurements. The Hawkeye system measures spin directly with high-speed cameras, while the old radar-based system imputed spin from other factors. The point is, spin is going to be a tricky thing to tackle for a good while. Read the rest of this entry »

Once upon a time, on a Friday in the middle of July, Yoenis Céspedes hits a home run.

***

It’s only been a few days since I’ve once again had the opportunity to spend my days sitting around watching MLB.TV. I’m already sick of the MLB Flashbacks that get shown during commercial breaks. The idea behind them is solid: There are so many feats in major league baseball’s memory bank, so many of the magical sports moments that people cite when they talk about why they love the game. Why not use otherwise unoccupied airtime to remind fans just how great the game can be?

But in my experience, at least, they end up having the opposite effect. Devoid of context, unhinged from past and future, the homers and robberies — and they are almost always homers and robberies — start to blur, then to lose meaning altogether. Like a favorite word repeated too often and too excitedly by a little kid, I start to get tired of hearing the same hype music leading in, the same fever pitch of the broadcast, the same reaction of the crowd. It’s what watching baseball feels like if you don’t like baseball. Swing. Bat hits ball. Ball leaves yard. Cheer! Repeat.

That sense of numbness one gets watching home run after home run, back-to-back, packed into the space of a minute or two — it isn’t what drew me to baseball, what continues to draw me to baseball sometimes in spite of myself. The rhythm is too much like time, or at least too much like the way we so often measure it as working adults. Seconds and minutes and hours clipping forward relentlessly, reminding you that in every idle moment you are wasting your life, wasting moments you could have spent being productive. Your time is limited. There is a distance between you and nothing, and that distance is even now getting shorter. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets were fortunate when it came to Jacob deGrom’s back, but they weren’t so lucky regarding Marcus Stroman’s left calf. The 29-year-old righty will start the season on the Injured List due to what’s been described as “a torn muscle in his left calf” — meaning that he has at least a Grade 1 strain. He won’t require surgery, but manager Luis Rojas described him as “week to week.” In a season that’s just over nine weeks long, that’s not good news.

Per Newsday’s Anthony Rieber, Stroman was hit in the calf by a line drive during an intrasquad game last Friday, though he kept pitching. On Monday, he felt tightness in his calf during a 50-pitch bullpen session. On Tuesday night, he underwent an MRI that revealed the tear.

The loss of Stroman is particularly ominous given the Mets’ reduced depth in the wake of Noah Syndergaard’s Tommy John surgery, a matter I highlighted earlier this week. As I discovered, the 2.1 WAR deGrom is projected to produce this year accounts for 38.2% of his rotation’s WAR, the highest share of any pitcher with any team. What’s more, the 1.0 WAR drop-off from deGrom to the number two starter, Stroman, was the largest in the majors, and where the team’s total of 5.5 WAR ranked ninth among the 30 teams, the 3.4 WAR projected for the starters besides their ace is tied for 14th. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets had quite a scare last week when Jacob deGrom left Tuesday’s intrasquad game after just one inning due to back tightness. Thankfully, an MRI taken on Thursday came back clean, and upon being cleared, the two-time reigning Cy Young winner threw a bullpen session on Friday, followed by a 60-pitch simulated game on Sunday. At this writing, he’s on track to make his Opening Day start against the Braves on July 24 in Queens, albeit with his targeted pitch count reduced from 100 to 85, but this close shave underscores the fact that there may be no ppitcher who’s more crucial to his teams chances for contention this season.

Intuitively, that makes sense. The 32-year-old deGrom is coming off of a season during which he led the NL in WAR (7.0) and strikeouts (255), ranked second in both ERA (2.43) and FIP (2.67), and third in innings (204). By the numbers, it may not have been as strong as his 2018 season, in which he led in ERA, FIP, and WAR, but for the second straight year, he ran away with the Cy Young, netting 29 out of 30 first-place votes. He’s projected to provide the Mets 2.1 WAR in this abbreviated season, a total 0.1 ahead of Max Scherzer in three more innings (76 to 73), and one surpassed by only the Yankees’ Gerrit Cole (2.4 in 79 innings). Here it should be noted that our innings projections are subject to manual adjustments based upon injury reports, and the news with regards to deGrom’s back was positive enough that we did not dial his total back.

Both Cole’s Yankees and deGrom’s Mets lost their respective rotation’s second-best pitchers — namely Luis Severino and Noah Syndergaard — to Tommy John surgery this spring, though the Yankees’ rotation still projects as the deeper one, with James Paxton (1.5 projected WAR) ahead of Marcus Stroman (1.1) among the remaining number two starters, and likewise Masahiro Tanaka (1.0) ahead of Rick Porcello or Steven Matz (both 0.7). In fact, the Yankees’ rotation’s 6.7 WAR tops our Depth Charts and thus our Positional Power Rankings, though they’re in a virtual tie with the Nationals and a hair ahead of the Rays (6.6). The Mets (5.5) rank ninth, 0.1 behind the Indians and 0.2 behind the Reds. Read the rest of this entry »

Brent Strom had a better playing career than he likes to give himself credit for. His numbers are admittedly nondescript, but he did toss 501 big-league innings and throw 16 complete games, three of which were shutouts. Pitching for the New York Mets, Cleveland Indians, and San Diego Padres, the now-71-year-old southpaw logged a respectable 3.95 ERA over parts of five seasons.

My invitation to revisit his MLB debut — with the Mets on July 31, 1972 — yielded both entertaining anecdotes and a healthy dose of self-deprecation. Now in his seventh season as the pitching coach for the Houston Astros, Strom is equal parts gruff and engaging as a storyteller.

Against the Montreal Expos on that particular night, Strom was stellar. He allowed just two hits and a pair of runs — only one of them earned —over six-and-two thirds innings. Strom fanned seven, and despite departing with a lead settled for a non-decision.

His high school coach was on hand to see it.

“Bernie Flaherty, who is since deceased, had promised that if I made it to the big leagues he would be there for my first game,” Strom told me. “He flew from San Diego to New York to watch me pitch against the Expos that night, which was pretty cool. At least I didn’t disappoint him that game.”

Another notable from back home was there as well, and unlike Flaherty he wasn’t watching from the stands. He was calling balls and strikes. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is another installment of my series discussing each team’s 60-man player pool with a focus on prospects. If you missed the first piece, you’re going to want to take a peek at its four-paragraph intro for some background, then hop back here once you’ve been briefed. Let’s talk about the National League East.

Atlanta Braves

Prospect List / Depth Chart

The Braves have pooled the most catchers in baseball with seven (eight if you count Peter O’Brien and the faint memory of his knee-savers), several of whom are prospects. I think Travis d’Arnaud’s injury history and the implementation of the universal DH makes it more likely that Alex Jackson opens the season on the active roster. I don’t think this would save Atlanta an option year on Jackson since they optioned him in mid-March, and Atlanta’s bench projects to be very right-handed, so he might be competing with Yonder Alonso for a spot.

We’re probably an Ender Inciarte injury away from seeing Cristian Pache play in the big leagues every day. Aside from him, I doubt we see any of the recently-drafted position players (Drew Waters, Braden Shewmake, Shea Langeliers) playing in the bigs this year, and if William Contreras debuts it’s likely because a couple guys ahead of him have gotten hurt. Read the rest of this entry »