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

Games of 8/9

Dakota Mekkes, RHP, Chicago NL (Profile)
Level: Hi-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: HM  Top 100: NR
Line: 7 IP, 4 H, 1 BB, 0 R, 9 K

Notes
Looking at his stuff in the absence of context, Mekkes is barely a middle-relief prospect. His fastball typically sits in the low 90s and his slider is solid average, perhaps a tick above. But Mekkes is a gargantuan 6-foot-7, takes a large stride toward the plate, and releases the ball much closer to the plate than the average pitcher, creating a Doug Fister-like effect that allows his stuff to play up. He has a 1.00 career ERA in pro ball and has allowed just 32 hits in 61 innings this year while striking out 80.

Like most XXL pitchers in their early 20s, Mekkes struggles with control, but hitters’ inability to adjust to his delivery in short stints has limited their overall ability to reach base. As a result, he has a WHIP under 1.00 despite an 11% walk rate. It’s hard to say how this rare type of deception will play in a big league, assuming upper-level hitters are still flummoxed by it as Mekkes moves on. Jordan Walden was dominant for a half decade with a similar type of deception but had much better stuff. Regardless, it’s worth noting that Chris Mitchell had flagged Mekkes as a noteworthy prospect before he was drafted.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Michel Baez, RHP, San Diego (Profile)
Level: Low-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: NR (signed before SD rankings)  Top 100: NR
Line: 7 IP, 4 H, 1 BB, 0 R, 9 K

Notes
I could probably reserve a place for Baez in this space every fifth day and not be let down. His fastball velocity has backed up a bit since extended (when he was routinely in the upper-90s) but is still sitting mid-90s with huge extension. Baez’s secondaries are also progressing, especially his running changeup, and he’ll flash a plus breaking ball and change a few times during the course of a start now. He’s come a long way since spring training when he was just a tall guy who threw hard.

Read the rest of this entry »

Below is a ranking of the prospects traded this month, tiered by our Future Value scale. A reminder that there’s lots of room for argument as to how these players line up, especially within the same FV tier. If you need further explanation about FV, bang it here and here. Full writeups of the prospects are linked next to their names. If the player didn’t receive an entire post, I’ve got a brief scouting report included below. Enjoy.
Read the rest of this entry »

Again, Zach Britton found himself waiting for a phone call that never came.

Fellow left-handed reliever and fellow significant trade chip of a motivated seller, Brad Hand, is also staying put.

While the headlines Monday were tied to the top front-line starters traded, the Yankees adding Sonny Gray and the Dodgers beating the 4 p.m. eastern buzzer to land Yu Darvish, this was a reliever-heavy deadline period. This should be remembered as the trade deadline of The Reliever when more and more teams are focused on improving bullpens and attempting to build super relief corps. Read the rest of this entry »

This is not just about the Cardinals’ shortstop Paul DeJong. He’s the subject of the sarcastic tweet below, but the point is that this sort of sentiment — surprise at a walk from a player with poor plate discipline — is increasingly more common in today’s game.

PAUL DEJONG WALK

— Gif Weaver (@SimulacruMusial) July 28, 2017

It’s true, he walked! It’s also true he hasn’t walked much this year, and that he strikes out a lot. For the season, he has coupled a 2.6% BB% with a 31.3% K%. Yikes! But, with today’s power environment, this sort of plate discipline is more…allowable. Used to be, if you struck out four times for every walk, you just didn’t have a spot in baseball. That’s not true any more.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Padres have already made one trade of consequence, having sent Trevor Cahill, Ryan Buchter, and Brandon Maurer to Kansas City. Though the Padres aren’t exactly poised to do much of anything else, there’s one valuable asset they still possess that many expect to see moved. The deadline is a time when available relievers are prized more highly than ever, and I’m not sure there’s a reliever being more intensely pursued than Brad Hand.

The Padres have reportedly set a high price. Ownership says trade offers haven’t been adequate. You didn’t need links to know either of these things. We already know a trade hasn’t been agreed to yet, and that’s because the Padres have asked for more than has been offered to them. That’s always the case. I wouldn’t buy the idea that Hand will ultimately stick around. Though he is under team control through 2019, relievers can be too much of a risk for a rebuilding club to hang onto. Hand’s value could disappear in an instant. They might as well trade him, and if and when they do, the return should be substantial.

Because Hand could be this year’s Andrew Miller. He’s not actually Andrew Miller, of course. And even Andrew Miller in 2017 might not mean as much as Andrew Miller meant in 2016. But teams are all looking for that kind of weapon, and in Hand, there are more than enough parallels.

Read the rest of this entry »

Monday’s six-player swap between San Diego and Kansas City only saw one prospect moved, AZL infielder Esteury Ruiz, but left-hander Matt Strahm had only just exhausted his rookie eligibility before succumbing to a knee injury and is divisive enough in the scouting community to merit some discussion here. A reminder of the players involved:

Padres get

• LHP Travis Wood
• LHP Matt Strahm
• 2B Esteury Ruiz

Royals get

• RHP Travor Cahill
• RHP Brandon Maurer
• RHP Ryan Buchter

Let’s first touch on Strahm, who ranked 72nd overall on my top-100 list entering the season. A misdiagnosis of an injury that ultimately required Tommy John caused Strahm, who was drafted out of a junior college and wielding relatively newfound velocity at the time, to miss two years of pitching. That background caused some (including me) to forgive some of Strahm’s issues — chiefly his inconsistent command — in anticipation of late-coming progress due to a previous lack of reps. Strahm turns 26 in November and has continued to have issues throwing strikes, largely because his mechanics are very inconsistent. Additionally, Strahm’s stuff hasn’t always been crisp this year. At times he’ll touch 96 with his fastball and sit 93-94; he’s been 89-92, touching 94 at others, though. He works with multiple breaking balls — a mid-80s slider and a more vertically oriented curveball that sits 77-81 — generating in excess of 3000 rpms at times, and they’re both lethal when Strahm is locating them.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Enyel De Los Santos, RHP, San Diego (Profile)
Level: Double-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: 24   Top 100: NR
Line: 7 IP, 3 H, 0 BB, 0 R, 8 K

Notes
The good-bodied De Los Santos, acquired from Seattle for Joaquin Benoit in November of 2015, missed bats with all three of his pitches last night, garnering swings and misses on his 92-95 mph fastball both within the strike zone and above it and with his fading changeup. De Los Santos also has a solid-average curveball that he can bend into the zone for cheap, early-count strikes the third time through the lineup, but he’s becoming more adept at burying it in the dirt when he’s ahead. He generally lives in the strike zone and is a good bet to start; the only knock I’ve heard from scouts is that the stuff plays down due to poor extension, which might explain the modest strikeout rate despite good reports on the stuff.

Read the rest of this entry »

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The Royals are overachieving. They’d probably consider that an insult — I imagine they’d say they’re properly achieving — but the Royals have a winning record to go with a negative run differential, and right now they cling ever so barely to a would-be playoff spot. It’s a crowded race, to be sure, and the Royals could fall out of position any day, but they are very much in it. In what’s assumed to be the final ride with the current core, the Royals are again gunning for the playoffs, and they’re even within easy distance of the inarguably underachieving first-place Indians.

The Royals don’t have major young pieces to subtract. Nor do they have the budget flexibility to take on someone expensive. Yet, like any other team, the Royals have been looking to improve. Monday, they’ve done that. They just had to go to the Padres, and they’ve come away with a pretty fascinating stretch-run asset.

Royals get:

• Trevor Cahill
• Ryan Buchter
• Brandon Maurer

Padres get:

• Matt Strahm
• Travis Wood
• Esteury Ruiz

This is a package that includes several semi-familiar names, and Esteury Ruiz. Every single player is individually interesting, but it’s Cahill who most captures my attention. He’s a risk and a rental, but he could provide a jolt for the Kansas City starting staff.

Read the rest of this entry »

Can the home-run spike be enjoyed equally across the game?

Some hitters are in better position to take advantage of what might be a juiced ball. Some environments, like Yankee Stadium II and Chase Field, are more favorable to fly balls from the hitter’s perspective. With home-run rates rising per fly ball (HR/FB) across the game, however, it seems at times as though no park is immune to the invasion of the long ball. It seems like we’re running out of pitching-friendly environments.

So that brings me to the curious case of the Padres.

The Padres lead the National League in percentage of runs scored via the home run (46.2%). They Padres would have not been my first guess, but I asked FanGraphs’ own Joe Douglas to research teams’ share of runs off home runs and this is what he found:

Now, the Padres are also last in runs scored (305) — in large part because of their league-worst .295 on-base percentage — so it’s not as though this penchant for the long ball has translated directly to offensive proficiency. But the club ranks second in fly-ball percentage (37%), trailing only the outlier Mets (43%), and is tied for third in GB/FB ratio (1.20). The Padres, despite their home, are hunting fly balls and homers and are having some success.

Read the rest of this entry »