The ribbon has been cut on the 2023 season and I wanted to push a few prospect updates live to The Board, including a few tweaks to the Top 100 list. This update also includes publication of scouting reports such that every rookie currently on an active roster now has a current record on The Board, and a few additions the farm systems I’ve already audited during this cycle based on things I saw during spring training.

Let’s start with injury-related updates to the Top 100. Phillies top prospect Andrew Painter has a partially torn UCL and is approaching the end of his four-week shutdown period. Rule of thumb: Among a similarly talented group of players, you’d most want to have the healthy guys. Painter slides from fifth overall to 12th, right behind newly minted big leaguers Anthony Volpe and Jordan Walker, who are comparably talented, healthy, and making a big league impact right now. This is just a cosmetic change to the list; Painter’s evaluation hasn’t changed. If it turns out he needs Tommy John, whether or not I slide him any further will depend on its timing. If rest doesn’t work and his surgery is timed such that he also misses all of 2024, that’s the worst case scenario for Painter and the Phillies. We know for sure that Nationals pitching prospect Cade Cavalli needs Tommy John, so in a similar fashion he falls within the 50 FV player tier, sliding from 63rd overall to 99th, right next to Mason Miller of the A’s, with whom he now shares injury-related relief risk.

Tigers prospect Jackson Jobe, the third overall pick in 2021, is going to miss three to six months due to lumbar spine inflammation. This injury is more novel than a TJ, and Jobe isn’t exactly coming off a great 2022. Unfortunately, this situation merits a more meaningful shift, but I still want to reflect the upside of a healthy Jobe, so he downshifts to the 45+ FV tier, where the most talented of the young high-variance prospects reside. Assuming he comes back late this season, he’ll be one of the higher-priority evaluations in the minors. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the exciting beginning of the WBC, early indications in spring training that MLB’s rules changes are having the intended effects, and a classic unprecedented occurrence in a baseball game, then continue their 2023 season preview series by discussing the Houston Astros (17:49) with Chandler Rome of The Houston Chronicle, and the Pittsburgh Pirates (59:39) with Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, plus a Past Blast from 1979 (1:30:38), preview trivia answers (1:37:36), and a farewell to editor Dylan Higgins.

Audio intro: Sloan, “So Far So Good”
Audio interstitial 1: The Black Crowes, “Houston Don’t Dream About Me”
Audio interstitial 2: Mason Jennings, “Pittsburgh”
Audio outro: Hockey Dad, “Dylan’s Place”

Link to Castillo catch
Link to runner’s celebration mistake
Link to last play of Australia-Korea
Link to Nootbaar catch
Link to Ohtani highlights
Link to story on Ohtani
Link to Passan tweet
Link to Lewie Pollis on the shift
Link to Tom Tango on stolen bases
Link to Cooper on game times
Link to Johnson’s bird snuff film
Link to You’re Wrong About on snuff films
Link to FanGraphs playoff odds
Link to FG payroll breakdown
Link to Astros offseason tracker
Link to Astros depth chart
Link to Passan on Click and Crane
Link to Chandler on Brown
Link to Chandler’s spring preview
Link to Chandler’s author archive
Link to Baumann on Brown
Link to Pirates offseason tracker
Link to Pirates depth chart
Link to Jason’s spring Pirates preview
Link to Jason on Keller
Link to Jason on catching prospects
Link to Jason on strike-throwing
Link to Jason’s author archive
Link to 1979 article source
Link to Belgium gambling news
Link to David Lewis’s Twitter
Link to David Lewis’s Substack
Link to Ryan Nelson’s Twitter
Link to Dylan’s last FGA episode

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Gary Sanchez finally has a team… sort of. Last week, he was one of two catchers named to Team Dominican Republic’s roster for the 2023 World Baseball Classic, which gets underway next month. Meanwhile, although pitchers and catchers have reported to major league camps this week, Sanchez still doesn’t have a destination, as he remains a free agent.

By our count, Sanchez is one of just four position players who put up at least 1.0 WAR last year but remain on the market, along with shortstop Elvis Andrus (3.5), outfielder Jurickson Profar (2.5) and infielder José Iglesias (1.0). Admittedly, he’s not coming off a great season with the Twins, but Sanchez’s 1.3 WAR was respectable, his 89 wRC+ matched the major league average for catchers, and he had his best defensive season since 2018, reversing a multiyear decline.

Aside from rumors of interest from the Giants in January and the Angels earlier this month, the Sanchez burner of the hot stove has barely flickered this winter, but things heated up a bit in the wee hours of Wednesday after Sanchez and strength and conditioning coach Theo Aasen shared a short Instagram video of the 30-year-old backstop doing some exercises and baseball activities while wearing a shirt with the Yankees’ insignia. Read the rest of this entry »

Depending on what your expectations were for the 2022 postseason, you likely saw Cristian Javier as the third or fourth starter for the Astros entering October. Dusty Baker agreed, as Javier didn’t get a start until the ALCS against the Yankees. But Javier clearly had different plans. When given the chance, he was dominant: in 12.2 innings, he pitched to a 0.71 era; in his two starts, he gave up a single hit across 11.1 innings facing the imposing lineups of the Yankees and Phillies. That performance plus his 3.4 fWAR in 148.2 regular-season innings put him on the map as one of the league’s best young pitchers. And last week, the Astros rewarded him as such by handing him a five year, $64 million extension.

After Houston announced the hiring of long-time Braves scouting executive Dana Brown as the team’s new general manager, I wondered if he would bring along his former organization’s tendency to extend players into their would-be free-agent years. It didn’t take long for that idea to come to reality. Javier was set to enter his three arbitration years in his age 26–28 seasons; those years have been bought out with salaries escalating from $3 million in 2023 to $7 million in ’24 and $10 million in ’25. His age-29 and 30 seasons will come at the price of $21 million per year, with an opportunity to escalate it from $500,000 to $2 million per year if he finishes at or near the top of the Cy Young ballot.

Even with free-agent departure after free-agent departure, Houston’s rotation remained strong due to the development of Framber Valdez and now Javier. But with the departure of Justin Verlander, the rotation looked like it was finally hitting a point of potential vulnerability. Extending Javier, then, provides the Astros some semblance of certainty beyond 2025. And with their entire starting lineup other than Martín Maldonado locked up through at least ’25, they needed to invest in their rotation. Read the rest of this entry »

Sportswriters are a miserable bunch. We slog through box scores and transcripts of quotes from practice and write about games that will be forgotten in hours. Then Hunter Brown falls out of the sky.

The Astros’ new starting pitcher not only has a windup like Justin Verlander’s, he grew up outside of Detroit and idolized Verlander as a kid! Can you believe it? That’s a human interest story fit to make J. Jonah Jameson spit out his stogie and forget all about those pictures of Spider-Man.

Even their repertoires look similar: An upper-90s four-seamer thrown about half the time, accompanied by a slider and a curveball. It’s the meat-and-two-sides combo you’ll find at most barbecue joints. There are differences, of course. Verlander throws his slider more than his curve, while Brown is the opposite. Brown also throws everything harder than Verlander does; his secondaries clock in about 6 mph faster than the three-time Cy Young winner’s.

Regardless, people look at Brown and say the baseball equivalent of “he has his mother’s eyes.” So why does Brown perform more like Framber Valdez? Read the rest of this entry »

When José Abreu signed with the Astros earlier this offseason, there was a lot to like. He fits their overall team construction, he’s a great hitter, and the contract looks more reasonable every day in the context of the rest of the free agent market. In several corners of the baseball internet, though, there was one worrisome note: Abreu’s performance against fastballs, particularly of the high-velocity variety, declined markedly in 2022.

I’m not crediting one person in particular with this observation, only because I’ve seen it in so many different places. It’s incontrovertibly true. Here are Abreu’s numbers against both all four-seamers and all fastballs thrown 95 mph or harder, per Baseball Savant:

Oh no! The trends seem quite clear; Abreu didn’t hit fastballs very well in 2022, and he’d already started to decline against them somewhat the season before. Is he just cooked? Is this fastball performance the proverbial canary in the coal mine, alerting us that bad times are coming? Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a fan of Michael Brantley. A big, big fan, in fact. He’s the type of hitter that both old school and new school folks adore. He doesn’t strike out and he hardly ever whiffs, but he still swings fast and with a variable bat path. He doesn’t necessarily light it up with his exit velocity, instead thriving by hitting it where they ain’t. On Sunday, he re-signed with the Astros on a one-year, $12 million contract; he can earn an additional $4 million in performance incentives. Basically, if he stays healthy and hits like he has since arriving in Houston in 2019, the deal will end up having about the same average annual value as his previous two-year, $32 million contracts with the Astros. Retaining Brantley is a low risk move. He is the perfect option to complete an already extremely balanced and talented group of hitters. And while he might not be the athlete he once was — his sprint speed dropped all the way down to the 11th percentile in 2022 — all the team needs him to do is stay healthy and hit in the DH spot.

Brantley has been extremely consistent during his four years with Houston; he’s posted a wRC+ ranging from 121 to 132 and been good for a three to four win pace no matter how many games he played. In his first two seasons, he didn’t miss much time at all, playing in 148 games in 2019 and 46 in the shortened ’20. However, his number of games played began to trail off in 2021, dipping to 121, and he only managed 64 in ’22 before requiring season-ending surgery on his right shoulder. After the injury, the Astros missed Brantley, including in the postseason. I know they won the World Series, but there were times throughout the playoffs when their lineup stagnated and could have used some of the variation Brantley provides. Their offense was still deeper than any other team, but if they could have asked for anything, it would have been another lefty to put the ball in play after the heart of the lineup delivered a mass of baserunners.

Of course, Brantley’s ability to play that role in 2023 assumes health, which as we’ve noted, hasn’t been a given. And injuries remain a significant concern after his shoulder surgery in August, the second of his career. No surgery is ever good, but for a hitter, lead shoulder surgery is particularly impactful. When you think about swing mechanics, having relaxed shoulders is key to avoiding too much tension in your upper body. One thing my hitting coaches always used to tell me was to relax from the chest up. Sometimes when hitters try to muscle up and take swings, they tense their shoulders. This can negatively affect a smooth energy transfer, as well as barrel accuracy and deceleration. Your shoulders should be along for the ride, not impeding your swing with roadblocks. Brantley has already overcome shoulder surgery before, but as you age, rehab gets more difficult. It’s obviously a concern. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Houston Astros.

Batters

The top of Houston’s lineup is dominated by four stars, all of whom could be one of the top three players at their position in any given season. Yordan Alvarez has been ZiPS’ favorite young slugger for a long time, and it’s definitely not seeing anything to make it question its algorithmic stance. Similarly, the system has always been in the Kyle Tucker fan club. Alex Bregman‘s peak was probably in 2018 and ’19, but he remains an elite third baseman, which isn’t easy given the quality at that position right now. We can also be even more confident now that Jose Altuve’s 2020 season was a blip we don’t have to worry too much about. And while he’s entering the downside of his career, he’s starting from a really high point. He bumped his 3,000-hit probability up from 34% to 46% in a single season, and that’s a milestone that’s hard to sneak up on by the back door. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2019 election, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. 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.

As much as Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, and Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte was a pillar of the Joe Torre-era Yankees dynasty. The tall Texan lefty played such a vital role on 13 pinstriped playoff teams and seven pennant winners — plus another trip to the World Series during his three-year run with Houston — that he holds several major postseason records. In fact, no pitcher ever started more potential series clinchers, both in the World Series and the postseason as a whole.

For as important as Pettitte was to the “Core Four” (Williams always gets the short end of the stick on that one) that anchored five championships from 1996 to 2009 — and to an Astros team that reached its first World Series in ’05 — he seldom made a case as one of the game’s top pitchers. High win totals driven by excellent offensive support helped him finish in the top five of his leagues’ Cy Young voting four times, but only three times did he place among the top 10 in ERA or WAR, and he never ranked higher than sixth in strikeouts. He made just three All-Star teams.

Indeed, Pettitte was more plow horse than racehorse. A sinker- and cutter-driven groundballer whose pickoff move was legendary, he was a championship-level innings-eater, a grinder rather than a dominator, a pitcher whose strong work ethic, mental preparation, and focus — visually exemplified by his peering in for the sign from the catcher with eyes barely visible underneath the brim of his cap — compensated for his lack of dazzling stuff. Ten times he made at least 32 starts, a mark that’s tied for seventh in the post-1994 strike era. Within that span, his total of 10 200-inning seasons is tied for third, and his 13 seasons of qualifying for the ERA title with an ERA+ of 100 or better is tied for first with two other lefties, Mark Buehrle (also on this ballot) and CC Sabathia. He had his ups and downs in the postseason, but only once during his 18-year career (2004, when he underwent season-ending elbow surgery) was he unavailable to pitch once his team made the playoffs. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2020 election, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. 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.

Bobby Abreu could do just about everything. A five-tool player with dazzling speed, a sweet left-handed stroke, and enough power to win a Home Run Derby, he was also one of the game’s most patient, disciplined hitters, able to wear down a pitcher and unafraid to hit with two strikes. While routinely reaching the traditional seasonal plateaus that tend to get noticed — a .300 batting average (six times), 20 homers (nine times), 30 steals (six times), 100 runs scored and batted in (eight times apiece) — he was nonetheless a stathead favorite for his ability to take a walk (100 or more eight years in a row) and his high on-base percentages (.400 or better eight times). And he was durable, playing 151 games or more in 13 straight seasons. “To me, Bobby’s Tony Gwynn with power,” said Phillies hitting coach Hal McRae in 1999.

“Bobby was way ahead of his time [with] regards to working pitchers,” said his former manager Larry Bowa when presenting him for induction into the Phillies Wall of Fame in 2019. “In an era when guys were swinging for the fences, Bobby never strayed from his game. Because of his speed, a walk would turn into a double. He was cool under pressure, and always in control of his at-bats. He was the best combination of power, speed, and patience at the plate.” Read the rest of this entry »