Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Jacob Nix, RHP, San Diego (Profile)
Level: Hi-A Age: 21   Org Rank: 7   Top 100: HM
Line: 9 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 11 K

Notes
A groin strain sidelined Nix until late May. Since returning, his fastball has been in the mid-90s, touching 97, and his curveball flashes plus. He has an inning-eater’s build (I have a Jon Lieber comp on the body) and throws lots of strikes. He’s rather firmly an overall top-100 prospect.

Read the rest of this entry »

One frequent topic of debate this season is whether Max Scherzer has overtaken Clayton Kershaw as the majors’ best pitcher.

Scherzer, for example, has recorded the majors’ second-largest strikeout- and walk-rate differential (29.1 points), behind only Chris Sale (30.5 K-BB%), while Kershaw ranks a somewhat distant third (24.6) by that measure. Scherzer (3.1) trails only Sale (4.6) in the FIP-based version WAR and leads all pitchers by the sort calculated with runs allowed. Scherzer also leads both Kershaw and Sale in Bill James’ starting pitcher rankings, something akin to world rankings in golf and tennis.

Depending on what metrics or qualities one cares to cite, the identity of Best Pitcher is open to debate. What’s not debatable is that, over the past three years or so, Scherzer has been the pitcher most likely to do something incredible in any given outing.

Read the rest of this entry »

No team’s batters have ever seen fewer four-seam fastballs than the Houston Astros this year. Few teams’ pitchers, meanwhile, have thrown fewer four-seam fastballs than the Houston Astros this year. This all has something to do with changes in baseball, yes, and also with the personnel on this current team. But there’s also a wrinkle to the thing that tells us a little more about why these trends are happening, and why the Astros are at the forefront in both cases.

Read the rest of this entry »

After the worst year of his career, including spending time on the DL with shoulder issues, Sonny Gray looks healthy again, posting his best fielding-independent numbers since his rookie year. And with the A’s looking like sellers, Gray is expected to get moved in the next month or so. And according to Susan Slusser, it might be sooner than that, with the Astros reportedly the most aggressive buyer at the moment.

Read the rest of this entry »

As a rookie in 2010, Stephen Strasburg turned in an amazing 68 innings of baseball. He struck out 33% of the batters he faced, posted a 2.91 ERA, and recorded an even better 2.08 FIP. Alas, it wasn’t to last: his season was felled by an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery. Seven years later, he’s putting up his best numbers since that debut season. This season, if nothing else, has underscored a point that’s often ignored: Stephen Strasburg has already had a pretty good career.

Often, we focus on the negative — or, at the very least, allow our enthusiasm to create expectations that are unlikely to be fulfilled by reality. In the case of Strasburg, a highly touted former No. 1 pick, there’s been plenty of room for such expectations — or there has been for me, at least. In my head, I’m often overly critical of Strasburg, because he’s an injury risk. He’s only tossed 200 innings in a season once, and he only reached 180 innings in one other season. And yet, in his last outing, he passed the 1,000 innings pitched mark for his career. He’s one of just 1,219 pitchers who have done so, out of 9,366 players who have pitched throughout history. That’s just 13% total to have reached 1,000 IP, and Strasburg is among them. Not bad for a guy who’s always injured.

When Strasburg put up 2.5 WAR in those 68 innings back in 2010, you’d be forgiven if you thought a string of five-win seasons were about to follow. He’s never quite gotten there. His best was a 4.5 WAR in 2014. He might have gotten there last year, as he compiled 3.9 WAR in 147.2 IP. But alas, elbow trouble limited his contributions once again. But while he’s never reached the 5 WAR threshold in any given season, he’s tallied at least three wins in five straight seasons, and he’s working on his sixth this season. That sort of consistency is hard to pull off. For instance, the only other pitchers who tallied at least 3 WAR in each season from 2012 to 2016 were Madison Bumgarner, Cole Hamels, Clayton Kershaw, David Price, Chris Sale and Max Scherzer. And while those six pitchers averaged 1,060 IP across those five seasons, Strasburg tossed just 832.1 IP, making him far, far more efficient in his consistency.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last three years, Max Scherzer has kicked it up a notch, progressing from simply a very good pitcher to one of the best three in the major leagues. He attributes some of that success to an improved curveball, a pitch that has served to complement his already devastating slider. Perhaps it’s because of his curveball’s effectiveness that he’s not afraid to continue tinkering. Perhaps the introduction of a new, third breaking pitch will lead to another leap forward, if that’s even possible.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was talking to Nationals reliever Blake Treinen the other day and the topic of command came up. I had to ask what happened earlier this year. He graciously addressed the early-season issues that cost him the closer’s role, and it opened my eyes to how the ninth might be different than the eighth — at least when it comes to typical reliever usage and the way batters act — particularly for a guy like Treinen. Hint: the difference has nothing to do with the pitcher’s demeanor.

Read the rest of this entry »

After talking recently with Daniel Murphy about launch angles and the like, I walked over to one of my brethren in hair Anthony Rendon and asked for some of his time. “I’m probably the worst person to talk to about this,” said the Nationals third baseman, already laughing. “Worst person ever!” added his next door neighbor Trea Turner. “I change strictly off of feel. Trying to talk to me about this launch-angle stuff…” Rendon said, gesturing with a wave towards Murphy. “I’m going off feel.”

That’s fine. For hitters, sometimes the best means to changing mechanically is simply to change the intention and focus on a different part of the field, like Yonder Alonso did. Very specific cues and jargon-laden research? Those are for the heady few.

But Rendon is a little different for another reason. While other batters are swinging for the fences and changing their approach radically, Rendon has achieved more power this year by adjusting in a very subtle way that allows him to make more of his level swing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Previously
Changeups: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Curveballs: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Cutters and Splitters: MLB Starters.
Four-Seamers: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Sinkers: MLB Starters.
Sliders: AL Starters.
Two-Seamers: MLB Starters.

This series seemingly began eons ago, but here we are: the final installment of our pitch-specific evaluation of 2016 ERA title-qualifying MLB starters. The best may have been saved for last, as today we examine NL starters’ sliders.

Read the rest of this entry »

When you look up and see that the Athletics are in the midst of a two-game mid-week series against the Marlins in late May, you might suspect that the major-league baseball schedule is simply an exercise in randomness. At this point in the campaign, that’s actually sort of the case. The combination of interleague play and the random vagaries of an early-season schedule conspire to mean that your favorite team hasn’t had the same schedule as your least favorite team. Let’s try to put a number on that disparity.

Read the rest of this entry »