The 2020 season has been an exercise in constant risk calculation. Attempting to play baseball in the middle of a pandemic introduces a daunting list of potential issues, but athletes have come up with plenty of sensible reasons to play anyway. Some wish to avoid losing a year of service time or aren’t in a position financially to stop collecting paychecks. Some don’t want to feel like they’re letting their teammates down. Some would simply rather play baseball than not. The decision whether or not to play, however, isn’t one that athletes made once in July and then forget about. Players face that same decision every day as new variables come into play, the environment around them changes, and the upside in pushing forward shrinks. If you’re a star shortstop on the cusp of hitting the market for the first time, playing for a team barely clinging to life in its postseason chase, the upside in playing is next to nothing, while the risk in doing so is as great as ever.

That’s the situation Andrelton Simmons found himself in this week when the Los Angeles Angels entered Tuesday 4 1/2 games out of the final Wild Card spot with just five games left on the schedule. Simmons, a 31-year-old shortstop and a free agent this winter, decided those five games would take place without him. Read the rest of this entry »

Even though he’s still got one start to go and several other pitchers will also see playing time over the next few days, the American League Cy Young race is all but over. Last year, it was a two-horse race between Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander. This year, Shane Bieber has been so dominant that no other AL pitcher can come close to his accomplishments with less than a week remaining. He leads the league in strikeouts by 25 through Monday’s games, with the distance between first and second the same as the distance between second and 18th. His 41% strikeout rate is the best in baseball, and his 2.13 FIP and 1.74 ERA pace the league as well. There isn’t a credible argument against Bieber winning the award and he should even garner support for MVP. As for second place, there are a ton of candidates.

To try to wade through the potential two-through-five slots on voters’ ballots, let’s take a quick look at pitcher WAR through Tuesday night’s games:

Read the rest of this entry »

When you pull up the MLB position player leaderboards for September, you’ll find some familiar names. Freddie Freeman has launched himself into the middle of the National League MVP race with his incredible form this month. José Ramírez is challenging Mike Trout and José Abreu in the battle for the American League MVP. But nestled among these stars is one surprising name: Jared Walsh. He’s put up a 222 wRC+ in September, notching hits in all but one game this month. Eight of his 24 knocks have left the park — including a mammoth grand slam yesterday afternoon — giving him an impressive .390 ISO this year. He has truly been one of the few bright spots for the floundering Angels.

Best known for being developed as a two-way player, Walsh has finally tapped into the power that he’s displayed throughout his minor league career. A 39th-round pick back in 2015, Walsh quickly moved through the Angels organization, powering his way through each minor league stop. He posted a .237 ISO during his minor league career, though all that power came with plenty of strikeouts. He made his major league debut last September, struggling through 87 plate appearances and five appearances out of the bullpen. A strikeout rate over 40% really hampered all of his efforts at the plate, and those relief appearances all came in mop-up duty where his 26.1% walk rate could do little harm.

With such a disappointing audition in 2019 and the Angels seemingly focused on a playoff run, Walsh was likely relegated to a mere depth piece on their depth chart entering this season. But nothing in 2020 has gone according to plan, and the Angels quickly found themselves looking up from the bottom of the standings. When they traded away a couple of players at the trade deadline, it opened up an opportunity for Walsh, and he has run with it. Read the rest of this entry »

With less than a week to go in the regular season, writers will soon vote on end-of-season awards, and the shortened season makes for some very tight races. That’s certainly true for American League MVP. Through play on Sunday, here’s the WAR Leaderboard for American League position players:

That’s a fine list of players, to be sure, but it doesn’t include one of the top players by AL WAR at the moment. Shane Bieber has made 11 starts and pitched 72.1 innings good for a 2.13 FIP, 1.74 FIP, and 2.9 WAR. He’s struck out 41% of batters, given up three runs in three starts, two runs in two starts, one run in one start, and no runs in five starts. He pitched at least six innings in every start but one, when he threw five frames against the Brewers on September 6, striking out 10 against one walk, giving up a single run. Given Bieber’s runs’ allowed, there is no real difference between his FanGraphs’ WAR and his mark at Baseball-Reference. He also leads the league in xwOBA over at Baseball Savant. Read the rest of this entry »

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 started with the National League East; below is my look at the American League West, covering players who have appeared in big league games. The results of the 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.

Houston Astros

A rash of injuries has necessitated several pitching prospect promotions in Houston. Cristian Javier (ranked second in org) and Brandon Bielak (fifth) have been up the longest, and both have struggled in unexpected ways. Bielak, who threw lots of strikes in the minors, has wrestled with walks. He might be nibbling with his fastball because it’s getting crushed to the tune of a 90% in-zone contact rate and a .674 xSLG according to Baseball Savant. He’s been bullpenned for now, but I still consider him a likely No. 4/5 starter (45 FV), albeit one who probably has to pitch more heavily off his secondary stuff. Even though he’s walked more hitters than usual, Bielak has still shown a consistent ability to execute his changeup and breaking balls to good locations, especially against lefties.

Javier’s walk rate is actually better than usual, but he hasn’t missed bats at anything resembling his career norm, and a whopping nine of the 27 hits he’s surrendered this year have been home runs. That home run rate will likely regress across a larger sample, but if Javier is going to keep starting then he still needs to find a better way to deal with left-handed hitters because his splits have been pretty extreme. Because of an off day, Houston opted to skip Javier’s turn in the rotation over the weekend and use him out of the bullpen, where he had five strikeouts in two innings. I think he’s a candidate to move the ‘pen during the playoffs, and potentially long-term, and he projects as a high-leverage reliever if he does. Read the rest of this entry »

As you read this, Albert Pujols is still trying to hit his 660th home run, tying him for fifth all-time with Willie Mays. This round-tripper will very likely be 40-year-old Albert’s last big career milestone. He could still catch Alex Rodriguez, next in the home run gauntlet at 696, or even get the roughly 200 RBIs needed to catch Hank Aaron’s all-time record, but at his age and advanced state of decline, these will likely need a minimum of two more full-time seasons. So why does a player like this find his way into a ZiPS Time Warp? The cruelty of time ensures that most Hall of Famers surpass milestones when they’re well into their declining years, but in the case of Albert Pujols, we have that rare all-time great who was a shadow of himself for half of his career.

The greatness of 2000s Pujols hardly needs to be restated, so we won’t dwell on it too long. Through the first decade of his career, he hit .331/.426/.624 with 408 home runs, 1230 RBIs, and a sterling 70.6 WAR. Through age 30, that comes out to sixth all-time in homers, eighth in RBIs, and eighth in WAR (Mike Trout has pushed him back to ninth in the last number). The first time he ended a season as a major leaguer and didn’t tally an MVP vote was in 2013, the 13th season of his career. That’s short of the 15-year streak of Barry Bonds, but he didn’t get his first MVP tally until age 25.

Unlike many of these all-time greats, Albert emerged in the majors fully formed with little need for adjustment. As impressive as a .329/.403/.610, 37 HR, 7.2 WAR debut was for a 21-year-old, it’s stunning how he managed having only played three games above A-ball. Even Trout, our gold standard for phenomitude, only hit .220/.281/.390 in his first 40-game cameo; after his 40th game in the majors, Pujols had a 1.150 OPS. It was this quick burst into the majors at such a young age, along with his steep decline, that fueled the rampant speculation that Pujols, originally born in the Dominican Republic before later moving to New York and then Missouri, was a few years older than his birth certificate claimed. While the actual truth of this story remains a mystery, no evidence has ever been presented that is robust enough for me to dignify with even a hyperlink. Read the rest of this entry »

Dave Raymond knows the West. The team he does play-by-play for, the Texas Rangers, not only competes in the American League West, their inter-league schedule this year comprises solely the National League equivalent. As a result, Raymond has been getting regular looks at two of the game’s most talent-rich divisions. In terms of powerhouse clubs and marquee players, the West is arguably baseball’s best.

How would Raymond rank the teams and players he’s seen this season? That was the crux of a conversation I had with the TV voice of the Rangers prior to last night’s game.

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David Laurila: Which is the best team you’ve seen this year?

Dave Raymond: “I’ve been really impressed with the Padres. They looked really good against us [in mid-August]. We may have gotten them right on the way to their peak — and that might have been us headed right to the trough — but they were really impressive. They have so much great young talent. There are guys like Jake Cronenworth who are hardly even noticed in the shadow of Fernando Tatis Jr. I mean, Cronenworth has to be the top rookie-of-the-year candidate right now, and he doesn’t even stand out on that team.

“Even Manny Machado. It looked like the energy of some of the young players is lifting him a little bit. He made some plays against the Rangers that were were pretty neat. You got a glimpse again of that young Manny Machado who won a Gold Glove and was more of the all-round player.

“But here’s my thought about the Padres: if you look at that lineup, find me the homegrown guy. He’s not there. It’s made up of all these pieces that were plucked from different organizations in trades and free agent signings. In kind of a perverse way, it’s really remarkable. I don’t think anybody sets out to build a championship team almost exclusively from other teams, but that’s kind of what they’ve done. And we just saw them, at the trade deadline, going out and aggressively bringing in even more guys from other organizations. Read the rest of this entry »

A .441 winning percentage and fourth place in one’s division on the day of the trade deadline aren’t typical characteristics of a buying team, but 2020 is anything but a typical season. Even after a disappointing 15-19 start, the Cincinnati Reds are just 1 1/2 games out of a playoff spot. Considering the number of moves the team had already made in an effort to make this a contending season, that’s a gap the organization thought was worth trying to close with a pair of deals completed just ahead of Monday’s 4:00 pm deadline.

The Reds acquired outfielder Brian Goodwin from the Angels and closer Archie Bradley from the Diamondbacks within just a few minutes of each other on Monday, with the list of total exits and entrances appearing as follows:

• Reds get: RHP Archie Bradley and OF Brian Goodwin
• Diamondbacks get: INF Josh VanMeter and OF Stuart Fairchild
• Angels get: LHP Packy Naughton, and PTBNL or cash

We’ll start with Bradley, as he’s likely to have the biggest impact considering Cincinnati’s relief woes. The Reds’ bullpen has been a far cry from their stellar starting rotation this season, allowing the fourth-worst ERA and fifth-worst FIP in the majors. The unit hasn’t had any trouble striking out batters, leading the majors with 11.9 strikeouts per nine, but it has allowed opponents to rack up walks and homers with similar frequency — only four teams have a higher walk rate in their bullpens than Cincinnati’s, and only the Phillies have a higher home run rate. Read the rest of this entry »

It had been hours — hours! — since A.J. Preller and the San Diego Padres made a trade, so they were more than due. To fix that nearly unthinkable drought, they stayed within the state of California — Jason Castro is headed from the Angels to the Padres:

Sources: The Padres are trading for catcher Jason Castro, sending righty reliever Gerardo Reyes to the Angels in return. Deal is pending medicals.

— AJ Cassavell (@AJCassavell) August 30, 2020

Catcher has been the main weak spot for San Diego this year. Austin Hedges is hitting .167/.262/.352, and that’s actually better than last year’s batting line. He needs to be more or less perfect behind the plate to make up for that, and he’s fallen short of that this year. The depth chart behind him looks even worse; Francisco Mejía combines the defense of someone the Padres have been hiding in left field to avoid his catching butchery with a line that would make Hedges blush; .079/.146/.184. He’s also on the Injured List with a thumb injury. Third-stringer Luis Torrens has been acceptable in 13 plate appearances, but he’s hardly a solid stopgap.

Enter Castro, whose .192/.323/.385 slash line this year, good for a 98 wRC+, would be the best offensive contribution the Padres have received from a catcher in quite some time. That’s not a good thing, per se — he’s striking out 37.1% of the time with a gross 15% swinging strike rate — but as the saying goes, any port in a storm. Perhaps no position player in baseball this side of Jeff Mathis projects to be worse than Hedges on offense.

Castro’s offensive production, while it would be an upgrade, isn’t the reason teams value his services. He’s made a career out of hitting enough to be playable while saving runs behind the plate, a sort of halfway version of Hedges, who has been one of the worst hitters in baseball his entire career but arguably the game’s best defensive catcher. Read the rest of this entry »

An Oakland Athletics offense that was already fourth in baseball in WAR has acquired Tommy La Stella — a man who has hit .265/.361/.461 this year (.287/.350/.480 over the last two), and who has the lowest strikeout among baseball’s qualified hitters at a paltry 5.6% (7.9% combined the last two years, also the lowest in baseball) — to solidify a second base situation that has been molten since Jed Lowrie’s most recent departure. The A’s traded 24-year-old infielder Franklin Barreto to the Angels in exchange for La Stella.

As his now twice former manager Joe Maddon once said when he was a Cub, La Stella could roll out of bed and hit, a notion he has since further reinforced, as La Stella’s strikeout and barrel rates have each trended in a positive direction since he left the north side. He makes the A’s lineup a top-to-bottom threat for the rest of the year before he hits free agency this winter.

La Stella is a clear upgrade over incumbent keystone Tony Kemp, who emerged from a crowded preseason group mostly made up of disappointing prospects. Kemp is hitting just .250/.377/.281, with the OBP portion of his line driven by an unusually high walk rate and BABIP compared to the five-year big leaguer’s career norms. Kemp, who also has experience in the outfield, is likely to shift to a bench role as a situational lefty bat, and a late-inning replacement for La Stella, who is neither a good defender nor runner.

There will likely also be some instances when La Stella serves as Oakland’s designated hitter in lieu of the struggling Khris Davis (who is hitting .155/.269/.241 this season, and .213/.290/.371 over the last two combined), with either Kemp or Chad Pinder starting at second base. In essence, La Stella bolsters the second base and DH spots simultaneously as he himself is an upgrade, and his addition means Bob Melvin can choose from whichever of Pinder, Kemp or Davis he thinks is more likely to do damage that day. For instance, Pinder could play more often versus lefties, Kemp versus righties, and Davis against pitchers who throw a lot of fastballs. I think this move may put Rule 5 pick Vimael Machín‘s roster spot in jeopardy, especially in light of Marcus Semien’s recent injury, which could leave Oakland without a viable defensive shortstop on their 40-man, perhaps necessitating a deal or Nick Allen’s addition to the active roster for a brief stretch. Read the rest of this entry »