After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for eight years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Tampa Bay Rays.

Batters

One of the things that amazes me about the Rays is how easily they seem to be able to find solidly average talent. Give Tampa’s front office a list of minor league free agents and guarantee that those they talk to will sign with them, and I bet they end up with a bushel of 1.5 WAR players. Heck, send them into a dollar store and they’ll probably find a second baseman who can hit .270/.330/.380 and some off-brand Doritos.

Just one player, Austin Meadows, is projected to be worth at least three wins, so the team’s lineup will tend to max out at “good” rather than competing with the Yankees, A’s, or Twins; they just don’t have enough high-upside talent (right now at least, someone is coming). But it also makes them an incredibly safe lineup, one of the few groups that could survive an obscene number of injuries. Read the rest of this entry »

When publishing prospect lists — in particular, the top 100 — I am frequently asked who, among the players excluded from this year’s version, might have the best chance of appearing on next year’s version. Whose stock am I buying? This post represents my best attempt to answer all of those questions at once.

This is the third year of this exercise, and last year Kiley and I instituted some rules. First, none of the players you see below will have ever been a 50 FV or better in any of our write-ups or rankings. So while I think Corbin Martin will return from Tommy John and become a 50 FV again later next year, I’m not allowed to include him here (although I just sorta did). The second rule is that I am forbidden from using players who have ever been on this list before, which means no Gilberto Celestino (on the list two years ago) or Lenny Torres (who was on last year’s) even though they might soon be 50s. McDaniel and I were right about 18 of the 63 players we picked the first year, about a 29% hit rate, and we were right about 16 of the 55 players on last year’s list, which is also 29%. Two years still isn’t long enough to know whether that’s good or not, but it does appear as though a baseline is being established.

At the end of the piece, I have a list of potential high-leverage relievers who might debut this year, because readers seem to dig that category. These are not part of the 50+ FV forecasting; it’s just a way to point an arrow at guys I like who might have real big league impact in a smaller role very soon.

I’ve separated the players into groups or “types” to make the list a little more digestible and to give you some idea of the demographics I think pop-up guys come from, which could help you identify some of your own with The Board (with The Board, through The Board, in The Board). For players whose orgs I’ve already covered this offseason, there is a link to the applicable team list where you can find a full scouting report on that player. I touch briefly on the rest of the names in this post. If you want to peek at the previous lists, here is Year 1, and here is Year 2. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the weekend, the presumptive second-best team in the AL East sent a key contributor from a recent playoff run to sunny California. In exchange, they received a package including a major league outfielder and a minor league catcher. That’s right — Emilio Pagán is headed to San Diego. As Josh Tolentino first reported, the Rays traded Pagán to the Padres in exchange for Manuel Margot and catching prospect Logan Driscoll.

At first glance, this trade seems pretty straightforward. Pagán was the most valuable pitcher in one of the best bullpens in baseball last year. His fastball/slider combination overwhelmed batters to the tune of a 36% strikeout rate and only a 4.9% walk rate. With Nick Anderson, Diego Castillo, José Alvarado, and a host of others ready to pick up the slack, however, he was surplus, and as noted last week, the Rays lacked a right-handed platoon partner to play center alongside Kevin Kiermaier.

Enter Margot, or exit Margot from San Diego’s perspective. Over three seasons as the team’s regular center fielder, he provided spectacular defense and forgettable offense. Per Statcast’s OAA, he’s been the eighth-best defensive outfielder in baseball since the beginning of 2017. His batting line of .248/.301/.394, on the other hand, works out to an 85 wRC+, a cool 207th among qualifying players. The whole package came out to 4.1 WAR over those years, and while that’s a valuable contribution, it’s a fourth outfielder’s line overall, even with the shiny defense. Read the rest of this entry »

By now, you know the drill. Earlier this week, I highlighted contending teams with weak points in the infield and on the mound. We’ve still got eight teams to cover today, so there’s no time to waste. Let’s dive in!

St. Louis Cardinals

The Hole: Two years ago, the Cardinals were so overloaded with outfielders that they traded Tommy Pham to open up playing time for promising youngsters Harrison Bader and Tyler O’Neill. This offseason, they had enough of an outfield surplus that they traded Randy Arozarena and José Martínez, but the top-end talent the team hoped for still hasn’t materialized.

That’s not to say that the Cardinals don’t have outfielders. O’Neill and Bader are still around. Dexter Fowler is solidly in his decline phase, but will likely take up a season’s worth of plate appearances. Tommy Edman will see some time in the outfield in addition to sharing third base with Matt Carpenter.

But while they have bodies, they’re lacking in upside. Bader looks like a long-shot to ever recapture his 2018 offensive line, O’Neill’s 2019 was gruesome (35.1% strikeout rate), and Fowler is subsisting on walks at this point. They might field an entire outfield of sub-100 wRC+ batters, and only Bader can make up for that with his glove. Read the rest of this entry »

After the penalties against the Astros were announced for their sign-stealing scandal, there was a very brief time period where the club looked set to ride out the suspension of general manager Jeff Luhnow for a season before he regained control of the club, and the atmosphere that came along with it, that he helped create. Hours later, Astros owner Jim Crane fired both Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch. For the manager role, Crane hired something of a stopgap in the form of 70-year-old Dusty Baker, a veteran option with years of experience and a sterling reputation in the clubhouse. It was a hire designed to help the club move forward with as little friction and ties to the past as possible. It was also a hire made without a general manager, the person typically responsible for such decisions. Baker received just a one-year deal, likely in part due to this uncertainty. The Astros and Crane appear to be less interested in making a similar decision at general manager, opting for 42-year-old James Click from the Rays organization over a more-experienced option like Bobby Evans, formerly of the Giants.

If the Astros had wanted some consistency and someone within the organization to step up for a short time, the list of candidates wasn’t long. The last three assistant general managers for Astros are in charge of the Brewers (David Stearns), the Orioles (Mike Elias), and ineligible to be involved with major league baseball (Brandon Taubman). Several key front office members left with Elias when he moved to Baltimore as well. Internally, Pete Putila graduated from college in 2010, has been with the Astros since 2011, and rose to his current position of assistant general manager, but when Crane fired Luhnow, the Astros owner assumed responsibility for baseball operations. In Click, the club is going with a more experienced version of Putila. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2020 Tampa Bay Rays arguably have one of the best front-end starting rotations in the American League, with Charlie Morton, Blake Snell, and Tyler Glasnow as the headliners. Last season, Glasnow flashed moments of brilliance prior to and following a mid-season injury that halted his torrid start in early May and kept him out of the rotation until September. Glasnow already has the ability to be the ace of the Rays staff — in his 60.2 innings, the right-hander was worth 2.3 WAR and posted a 1.78 ERA and 2.26 FIP — but a couple of minor adjustments could vault him into 2020 Cy Young Award discussions.

Glasnow, who avoided salary arbitration last Friday by agreeing to a one-year, $2.05 million deal, operates with three pitches: a straight, backspinning four-seam fastball that has some carry and can sometimes have cutting action; a 12-6 diving curveball; and a hard changeup that exceeds 90 mph.

Let’s start by looking at Glasnow’s four-seamer, one of the straightest in baseball with a good amount of rise:

Read the rest of this entry »

For some time, the Rays have approached prospect valuation similarly to other small market clubs like Pittsburgh. The short version is that Tampa has valued their prospects more highly than almost any other club because their small payroll means cheap contributors are worth more because they have the least to spend. In recent years, they have also led the farm system rankings and had among the deepest 40-man rosters, causing them to trade valuable prospects like Nick Solak and
Jesús Sánchez due to these two pressures. This dynamic was also clearly at work in last week’s Matthew Liberatore trade.

Adding cheap, controllable major league talent to one of the best teams in baseball is key to the Rays both being better when their present competitive window is open and allowing the team to keep players who they’ve helped improve and create value, thus avoiding the same fate as they did with Avisaíl García. García signed a one-year make-good deal for 2019 for $3.5 million guaranteed; he then made good and got $20 million from the Brewers. Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine, if you will, running the Rays. As you ponder your next fleecing acquisition, a lackey rushes in. “Sir! I’ve found a new undervalued talent to acquire!” Before you can even ask, he continues. “He’s on the Cardinals, and his name is Randy Ar–.”

“The Cardinals?!?” You thought you’d trained your lackeys better. “They probably won’t even take our phone calls. They hate us! They never forgave us for that time we sent them Revelation Cabrera.”

“Génesis, sir. And I’ve got that angle covered. We’ve been working on our player operations department, as you know. And Kean, the new recruit we released to bring us back information from other clubs? He already has a mole.”

Of course, this isn’t how major league front offices work. They all have each other on speed dial. They go to the same conferences, hire people back and forth, and value players using roughly similar frameworks. One bad trade isn’t enough to jam up the works; teams understand that baseball players have unknowable and variable outcomes, that sometimes Tommy Pham is a key cog and sometimes he hurts his hip.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk details. Thursday night, the Rays sent Matthew Liberatore, Edgardo Rodriguez, and a Competitive Balance Round B pick to the Cardinals in exchange for Randy Arozarena, José Martínez, and a Competitive Balance Round A pick. That’s a lot of moving parts, so we’ll break them down one by one before talking about the overarching strategy behind it. Read the rest of this entry »

No pitcher who took the mound for at least 50 innings in 2019 threw their four-seam fastball more than Tampa Bay Rays reliever Colin Poche. Utilizing the pitch just over 88% of the time, it went far beyond the league average four-seamer deployment rate of 37.7%. As part of 2019’s strongest bullpen, the 25-year-old Poche produced 0.6 WAR with a 3.79 K/BB rate, which was juxtaposed by his 4.70 ERA (and 4.08 FIP).

There are a few pitchers who are able to live and die by their four-seamer. The question isn’t whether Poche should continue to throw his four-seam fastball roughly nine out of every 10 pitches he throws; it’s whether he actually needs to throw it that much?

Last year, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel put a 70 FV on Poche’s four-seamer, noting in their write up last year:

Essentially, Poche has an average fastball with three separate characteristics that make it play up. Big league hitters may be less vulnerable to one or more of these characteristics, but if not, Poche’s fastball is going to play like a 7 or 8.

He throws his fastball with almost pure backspin, which creates 99%+ spin efficiency. Under these conditions, Poche (who led the league in FA-Z, min 50 IP) is able to induce a lot of rise on his fastball, or rather, the pitch drops much less than a typical four-seamer. This is advantageous because he lives high in the zone. Hitters who try to square up the elevated four-seamer may end up swinging under the pitch because they expect it to drop more, but in Poche’s case, Mangus Force keeps the pitch up longer than anticipated. That could at least partially explain how Poche was able to produce his 34.8% strikeout rate despite his elevated ERA. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Batch three of my completist series features a pair of Dominican-born sluggers whose unorthodox paths to the majors stand in stark contrast to those of their countrymen — not better or worse, just different, and eye-opening. Both players beat long and circuitous paths around the majors and had power galore, topping out at 46 homers apiece, but their approaches at the plate were night and day, as were their secondary skills.

Carlos Pena

Dominican-born but American-raised, Carlos Peña was a first-round pick who struggled to live up to that billing, passing through the hands of five teams in eight years before landing in Tampa Bay. While he joined a cellar-dwelling club that had known no previous success, he played a key part in their turnaround while establishing his own foothold in the majors. For a few years, he ranked among the league’s top sluggers, and among its most patient. Read the rest of this entry »