Kiley McDaniel: Hello from North Carolina! Following around college Team USA and the Cubans for a few more days before I head to Cleveland for the Futures Game and our FG live event
Kiley McDaniel: the J2 edition of THE BOARD has confirmed, non VZ bonuses and the minor league version has all 35+ connected players (even if they haven’t signed yet) added to team lists
12:32
Kiley McDaniel: including Jasson Dominguez at 61 overall and 1st on the NYY list
12:33
Kiley McDaniel: lastly, we have some fun stuff planned with the high speed video and Eric has seen Greinke, deGrom and Kershaw, so here’s his article trying to figure out other guys that do stuff similarly to Kershaw using the video: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/lets-find-some-clayton-kershaws-to-scale/
Last week, I saw Dodgers lefty Clayton Kershaw in person for the first time. While he’s no longer the dominant force of nature he was at his peak — Kershaw’s fastball now sits 89-91, rather than sitting 92-94 and touching 97 as it did 2015-2017 — he’s still a very effective big league starter, on pace for a 4 WAR season, and the owner of a 3.51 xFIP across just under 100 innings pitched ahead of the All-Star break.
This is far from the first piece on this website to chronicle what makes Kershaw great as, over the last decade, he’s improved his command, and altered his pitch mix and pitching approach. What I suggest today is that part of his continued success also has to do with, simply, how he releases the baseball, and that this trait is identifiable in prospects.
It’s probably obvious to you that things beyond mere raw velocity contribute to fastball effectiveness. You can probably deduce what some of those things are through simple pattern recognition; the System Summary from this prospect list is an example of that. From having done this for a while now, there are common, visually identifiable characteristics shared by pitchers whose strikeout results outperform what we might anticipate given just their velocity, just as there are common mechanical/stuff-related attributes targeted by successful teams in the draft. (Those teams have also made mechanical and/or approach alterations to players they’ve acquired.) Spin rate, extension, vertical and horizontal approach angles, and spin direction/efficiency all play a role, too, as does command.
The more those traits serve to support vertical movement — a.k.a ‘rise’, life, carry, Z-break — the more swings and misses a fastball tends to generate. And when a fastball exhibits several of these traits, you can end up with a dominant heater despite limited velocity. Without them, I’ve been bamboozled by otherwise visually pleasing stuff. And indeed Clayton Kershaw’s fastball has some of these attributes. At 88-91, his fastball is still fine. In the mid-90s, it was utterly dominant.
The way we talk about these traits in scouting and player development is not yet entirely consistent across baseball. I was on the phone with an in-office analyst last week discussing what would eventually become this article, and we were using the same terms to describe different things, which caused us to argue for about 10 minutes before we realized we were simply miscommunicating. This video and these twoarticles provide a great foundation for understanding how pitches need to spin in order to create vertical movement. The version that has been most intuitive for me is the Rapsodo/TrackMan version, which describes spin direction by using a clock face from the pitcher’s perspective. The closer fastball tilt gets to 12:00, the more backspin it has. For the purposes of this article, I’m just looking at lefties, but you’ll be interested to know that some frequently-asked-about prospects like Zac Gallen (12:30 spin axis on the fastball), Astros RHP Jose Urquidy (91-95, up to 97, plus changeup and command, smart breaking ball usage, a 12:30 spin axis on the heater), and Ashton Goudeau (90-93, also has 12:30 spin axis, plus split/change) have some of the traits I’ve talked about.
It’s fair to watch a pitcher’s arm angle and assume that vertical arm slots create the kind of backspin we’re looking for, but we can better see the ball/hand relationship, including sub-optimal ones, using our high-speed camera, Slomie. If you didn’t read the Driveline and Laurila background articles, we’re looking for something close to pure backspin and seam uniformity. You’ll be unsurprised to see Clayton Kershaw exhibit both. At peak, he was averaging over 12 inches of Z-break on his fastball. He’s closer to 10 inches now, which is still above league average:
Spin rate is a factor here, too, and we have those for most of the minors. So based on information we have, here some lefty pitching prospects who I think also exhibit some of these Kershawian traits. I don’t anticipate any of them becoming as incredible as Kershaw, but they do possess mechanical characteristics that will enable them to get the most out of their stuff. Full scouting reports for most of these players can be found on THE BOARD.
MacKenzie Gore, San Diego Padres
Gore has all the components: the velocity, the spin axis, the seam uniformity, elite athleticism, some natural mechanical deception. He doesn’t spin his curveball as well as Kershaw, but his changeup is better. He’ll be in Sunday’s Futures Game.
Joey Wentz, Atlanta Braves
Wentz doesn’t have the quality breaking ball but his fastball plays well above it’s 88-91, and he has good changeup feel.
Ethan Small, Milwaukee Brewers
The Brewers 2019 first rounder is Kershaw’s mechanical doppelgänger. In 2019, he struck out 176 hitters in 107 innings for Mississippi State, most of them in the SEC, while sitting 88-92.
Joey Cantillo, San Diego Padres
Cantillo, a 2017 16th rounder out of a Hawaii high school, only sits about 88-92, but the life on his fastball and the quality of his secondary stuff has him missing lots of bats in the Midwest League. He hasn’t allowed more than one run in a start since April 26.
Tarik Skubal, Detroit Tigers
Skubal’s full report is on The Board. He ranks 14th in the minors in swinging strike rate.
Erik Miller, Philadelphia Phillies
He doesn’t get into his legs the way Kershaw does, and the velocity fluctuations Miller has experienced over the last year and a half is a bit concerning, but he has the pitch specifications I’ve outlined above and knows how to mix his stuff.
Burl Carraway, Dallas Baptist University
I anticipate Kiley will have high speed of Carraway in the coming days, as he’s been electric for Team USA recently, up to at least 97 with a knockout breaking ball.
Drew Dowd, Junipero Serra HS (CA) and Ross Dunn, Cottonwood HS (UT)
These were the two high schoolers at PG National whose fastballs I thought played up above their velocity for the reasons I’ve outlined above, though Dowd might be better off working with a four-seamer.
Futures Game rosters were announced today. We’ve compiled them and added them to a tab on THE BOARD for your perusal. There you’ll have access to things like our scouting reports, tool grades, and video of the prospects.
You probably already know most of the names on the rosters because they’ve been discussed and/or prominently ranked at this website, but I want to touch on some interesting inclusions. First, I had to create a new BOARD record for, and source a fresh report on, Brewers RHP Devin Williams, who has been in pro ball since 2013 and is this year’s oldest participant. Injuries constantly sidetracked the first five years of Williams’ career and this season was his first above A-ball. I saw him as a starter in 2016 and 2018 sitting about 90-93 with a plus curveball. He was finally ‘penned this year and has been 91-97 and has touched 100 while showing plus breaking stuff. In my opinion he’s still too wild and has too lengthy an injury history to FV him the way we have other relievers with similar stuff (he was in the honorable mention section of the Brewers’ offseason list), but it’s a great story and an in-person look in Cleveland might change our minds. He’ll likely be a 40-man add this offseason.
Also of note is the Red Sox’s 2018 seventh round pick Jarren Duran, who was the biggest individual riser on our post-draft list update and is on the roster. As far as I know, he’s the lowest-drafted player to make a Futures Game in the following season. Boston’s system is not good and that’s part of why he’s their representative, but his rise has been quite incredible and his evaluation is arguably the game’s most important.
Of course, it’s important to note that these rosters are subject to change due to either injury or big league call-ups. Cubs RHP Adbert Alzolay and Rays LHP/1B Brendan McKay are both in the big leagues right now and would seem to be the most likely to be replaced, while Nationals SS Carter Kieboom, Cleveland OF Daniel Johnson and Rockies LHP Ben Bowden are, in my opinion, in the next tier of likelihood to be replaced. For logistical simplicity, replacements for Alzolay and McKay would be, and this is just an educated guess on my part, Midwest League arms from those teams. Rays prospects Shane Baz or Matthew Liberatore, both on Bowling Green’s roster, would be fine inclusions whose throwing schedules wouldn’t have to be adjusted much for this game, while Cubs LHP Brailyn Marquez, who is at South Bend, is a logical talent/proximity sub, but he’s have to be shorted a day’s rest (compared to what he’s used to, not based on typical big league rest) to throw that night.
Lilith: Should I be worried about Trammell? He seems to have lost all of his power over the past year. I heard a rumor that he changed his swing? Is that true?
12:08
Eric A Longenhagen: I wouldn’t worry about it. I don’t think he’ll ever hit for significant power, it’ll be an OBP/defense thing.
12:08
John Coppolella : What chance do you see of Kevin Maitan ever tapping into his (once) immense potential?
12:10
Eric A Longenhagen: maybe 5%? If he were a junior college prospect he’d probably be a 400k sort. Still a prospect, and it’s important to look at him with the context of his amateur reports, but his career probably died when some combination of the player and Braves let his body get out of control.
12:11
Brandon J: What do you make of Josiah Gray? Could you see him surpassing Jeter Downs as the better prospect of the Dodgers/Reds trade?
Kiley McDaniel: Hello from ATL! Starting a little early and will run a bit shorter today since I’m tightly scheduled on my last day before I head to Florida for the MLB PDP event, my first of summer showcase season
As an outfielder for four years at St. Mary’s College, three of which were as a starter, Tony Gonsolin hit .305/.383/.453. During the summer after his junior year, he was an all-star for the Madison Mallards in the prestigious summer collegiate Northwoods League, slugging 11 home runs and hitting .316/.403/.510 with a wood bat. Moonlighting as a pitcher, Gonsolin never struck out more than a batter per inning at St. Mary’s and had nearly as many games saved as he did games started. He was drafted as a senior in the ninth round of the 2016 draft as a pitcher – a decision that was a surprise to some, given his power potential in the outfield and lack of refinement on the mound. In Gonsolin, the Dodgers saw a plus athlete with untapped skills who had immense upside if he focused solely on pitching.
On Wednesday, three years after being selected as a proverbial money saver, the first place Dodgers will call on Gonsolin to make his major league debut against the Diamondbacks. Gonsolin debuting as a big league starter might be even more unexpected than him debuting at all. His first 61 professional appearances were all as a reliever, and it wasn’t until he opened the 2018 season as a member of the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes rotation that the transition from outfielder to reliever to major league starter began materializing.
Gonsolin’s professional career began in the hitter-friendly Pioneer League, as a member of the Ogden Raptors in 2016. There, as a reliever, Gonsolin touched 94 with his fastball and worked 89-92, flashing some feel for two different breaking balls. He displayed solid feel for his arsenal but lacked an out pitch. Still, the foundation was there. The delivery was clean and efficient and relatively low effort. The high arm slot with which he released the ball was repeated pitch-after-pitch. The athleticism was evident and the aptitude for adjusting on the mound was growing by the day. Read the rest of this entry »
July is upon us, and with it comes a new signing period for international amateur players. Over on THE BOARD, we’ve added rankings and reports on the players we consider to be the best in this year’s class, as well as the big league teams to which they’re tied.
We talked about the very top of the class at length back in February, headlined by Dominican CF Jasson Dominguez (expected to sign with the Yankees), who will go right onto our top 120 prospects in baseball. Other than late questions about Dominican LF Bayron Lora (a wrist injury may be the culprit, though it is unlikely to be a long term issue), and Venezuelan CF Yhoswar Garcia (who international personnel told us to remove from the list entirely due to age/identity issues that ultimately led to a year-long suspension), the top tier of players on our list hasn’t changed.
You’ll notice we don’t have projected bonuses on THE BOARD this year. We have some bonus amounts in the players’ scouting summaries, and we’ll add some only as they become official, but for player safety reasons, we decided to exclude all Venezuelan bonuses. Lots of the players from this class have already started playing baseball at their employer’s complex and are likely very safe, but any amount of risk that a teenager may be targeted because they have new money is too much.
Most of these deals were agreed to long before the players are technically eligible to sign, something that MLB seems eager to change by way of an International Draft, which we discussed at length on this podcast. Some players in this class agreed to deals two years ago and they’re so infrequently scouted or even seen once locked up, that the most up-to-date reports are often over a year old unless the signing team is our sole source. As you can surmise, lots of things can happen between ages 15 and 16, so our rankings for middle- and lower-tier players tend to be much more accurate after fall instructional leagues.
Even with early deals, there are still multiple teams with millions in uncommitted money (remember, each team’s bonus pool is now hard capped), some players who have yet to agree to deals, and perhaps even players who we don’t know about (often late-bloomers or late-defecting Cubans) and may become eligible to sign over the next 11 1/2 months. Teams can trade for additional bonus space to pursue these types of players outside of their assigned bonus pools. We anticipate some clubs will make a run at Cuban SS Yiddi Cappe, who is eligible to sign this year but has a $3.5 million deal for 2020, by trying to trade for enough pool money to make things interesting right now.
The Yankees did exactly this with Cuban SS Alexander Vargas last year. Vargas was set to sign with Cincinnati for $3 million next week, but the Yankees traded for enough pool space to lure him away with a $2.5 million deal last summer. If a team is unsuccessful in doing this (as a couple of clubs were when chasing Shohei Ohtani), they may end up spreading that money around to players in Asia (three Taiwanese players are referenced on our rankings), Mexico (a newly-opened market), or other less-scouted markets (for example, the Phillies signed Australian RHP Jake Gessner two weeks ago, before the last signing period closed).
Kiley McDaniel: Hello from ATL! I’m on the couch and Scout is on her bed eyeballing my lunch, which is leftover meat I grilled last night
12:21
Kiley McDaniel: (andouille sausage, shrimp, chicken thighs for those curious)
12:22
Kiley McDaniel: I would normally link to all the stuff I wrote the last week but I was commanded to not do stuff this week
12:22
Kiley McDaniel: but here’s the FG prospects page where all our stuff is, including the graduation monitor so you know when guys will graduate from our lists: https://www.fangraphs.com/prospects/
We’ve made a lot of adjustments to our minor league prospect lists in the last week. We’ve added all top 10 round draft picks, regardless of whether they’ve signed, as only a handful will not and we’ll take them out if and when they fail to. We’ve added confirmed signings beyond the 10th round, and will keep adding those as they roll in. We’ve taken the graduated prospects off; you can see a list of those on the Prospects MLB Playing Time sidebar on the right side of the Prospects homepage. We’ve also moved over 120 prospects who were on the off-season lists around, and moved some onto the list who were eligible and weren’t included this winter.
What all of this means is that there are new team prospect lists, and a new overall top 124, as part of 1185 total prospects who appear on THE BOARD. Rays SS Wander Franco is now a 70 FV and the top prospect in baseball, just ahead of soon-to-graduate Padres SS Fernando Tatis Jr., who was also upgraded to a 70 FV.
Most prospects with new FV’s have only shifted a bit, up or down one tier. The most prominent players to move in this fashion are a throng of teenagers either drafted last year or being seen at length in the U.S. for the first time. This group — Giants SS Marco Luciano, Mariners OFs Jarred Kelenic and Julio Rodriguez, Mets SS Ronny Mauricio, Cardinals 3B Nolan Gorman, Orioles RHP Grayson Rodriguez, and Red Sox 1B Triston Casas — has started to separate from their same-aged peers. Read the rest of this entry »
Kiley McDaniel: we’re rolling out some of our favorite clips of draft video at our instagram @fangraphs but my personal favorite is also on twitter: Zach Thompson’s 3000+ rpm curveball:
Kiley McDaniel
@kileymcd
One of the coolest clips we got this spring was Cardinals 1st rounder Kentucky LHP Zach Thompson throwing a 3000+ rpm hook in warmups. Look at the wrist action.
11 Jun 2019
12:13
Kiley McDaniel: and lastly, so those interested, we have a new top 100 and all the team lists have movement, graduations taken off, draft (all top 10 rounders or confirmed later signs) are added. I would guess that comes out this week since we’re just doing clerical stuff now like filling out blurbs and whatnot. Possibly Monday.
