The main reason why the Astros have been able to survive and thrive despite the departure of a large percentage of the core of their 2017 World Series-winning team is their success in developing their young talent. One of the most prominent of these players, Kyle Tucker, had his breakout season in the shortened 2020 and cemented those gains with a .294/.359/.557, 4.9 WAR 2021 campaign that saw him get his first MVP votes. With Tucker heading to arbitration this winter for the first time, the Astros discussed a long-term contract with their incumbent right fielder in recent weeks, but the deal has apparently fallen through.

The Astros recently spoke with Kyle Tucker’s camp about a contract extension, but the sides were unable to come to a deal and are no longer engaged, sources tell me and @brianmctaggart. Tucker will become arbitration-eligible for the first time at the end of this season.

— Mark Feinsand (@Feinsand) May 16, 2022

While it hasn’t worked out, it’s the right idea. Teams want to lock up their best young players, and many players, especially before they get that first big arbitration bump, are interested in mitigating their personal risk. Wander Franco was more likely than not to beat the $182 million he’ll receive from the Rays and the team they trade him to around 2029, but it also provided him some real security, given he’s still a couple years from arbitration. These types of deals can be win-win.

So who should be the next players to get inked for the long haul? Here are my favorite picks. For each, I’ve included their ZiPS projections for both performance and a fair contract; after all, I don’t own a team, so I don’t have the motivation to pitch any absurdly team-friendly agreements like the one Ozzie Albies signed with the Braves. I’ve also omitted Juan Soto since we’ve already talked about him and a long-term deal quite a bit, most recently in Jay Jaffe’s piece before the season that already has the ZiPS projections. If you want a figure, let’s just say 10 years and all circulating US currency. Read the rest of this entry »

This season, Eric and Tess Taruskin will each have a minor league roundup post that runs during the week, with the earlier post recapping some of the weekend’s action. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

Nick Loftin, CF, Kansas City Royals
Level & Affiliate: Double-A NW Arkansas Age: 23 Org Rank: TBD FV: 45
Weekend Line: 4-for-9, 2B, HR, SB

Notes
Loftin, who was drafted as a shortstop, was first listed as an outfielder on the Royals’ 2022 winter minicamp roster and has begun a transition to center field, playing there exclusively so far in 2022. It’s a logical move given the glut of middle infielders ahead of him in the org, and it’s worth noting that the Royals timed it so Loftin would have two seasons of play prior to his 40-man deadline day to make the move. While Loftin still needs some technical polish (for instance, he has a tendency to backpedal rather than turn his hips and run, and he doesn’t look comfortable with at-’em balls) and often looks like a recent conversion guy out there, his gap-to-gap range is very exciting, and he has the pure speed to be an above-average or better center field defender with reps.

Much more polished is Loftin’s bat. He’s extremely tough to beat with velocity and squares up fastballs with regularity, spraying them into both gaps. He keeps things incredibly simple at the plate, which is part of why he has made such consistent contact, but one can imagine him making more athletic use of his lower half and adding more power eventually. Loftin is also a very wiry, pretty skinny guy. He’s 23, so maybe the cement on his body is dry, but between his frame still having room for mass and his swing perhaps housing dormant power, there are a few potential avenues for him to add thump. Right now he profiles as a contact-oriented center fielder, a profile that’s currently pretty scarce across baseball. Myles Straw is a more extreme contemporary example. Read the rest of this entry »

This season, Eric and Tess Taruskin will each have a minor league roundup post that runs during the week, with the earlier post recapping some of the weekend’s action. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

Jordan Brewer, OF, Houston Astros
Level & Affiliate: High-A Asheville Age: 24 Org Rank: TBD FV: 40
Weekend Line: 7-for-11, 3 HR, 2B, 3B, 2 BB, 1 K, 2 SB

Notes
Brewer has always had big tools (plus-plus speed, above-average raw power, a plus arm) and some late-bloomer qualities. He was draft eligible in 2018 at Lincoln Trail JC in Illinois and went unselected, but emerged after he transferred to Michigan and went in the third round in 2019. Brewer has barely played pro ball due to a combination of the pandemic and injuries, including a knee surgery. Even though he’s already 24, you could reasonably hope things will click for him on a delay because of the atypical amateur path and all the missed reps in pro ball. Brewer’s start to the 2022 season is what it would look like on paper if that was actually happening. He’s halfway to his 2021 home run total after just six games. Read the rest of this entry »

This season, Eric and Tess Taruskin will each have a minor league roundup post run during the week, with the earlier post recapping some of the weekend’s action. Those posts will typically run Monday or Tuesday (since Monday is widely an off day for the minors), though they will occasionally be featured later in the week, as Eric’s notes are here.

Christian Encarnacion-Strand, 3B, Minnesota Twins
Level & Affiliate: High-A Cedar Rapids Age: 22 Org Rank: HM FV: 35
Line: 10-for-14, 3 HR, 2 2B, 1 SB, 15 RBI (!)

Notes
Wow! Encarnacion-Strand ended up at the bottom of our Twins list because we think he’s destined for first base and has more swing-and-miss going on than we’re comfortable with at that position. After transferring from Yavapai to Oklahoma State, he only struck out in about 19% of the plate appearances during his lone Division-I season, which is less than I’d have guessed based on my in-person notes on his contact ability. He certainly has big power, though. The universal DH helps Encarnacion-Strand’s cause since there are more 1B/DH jobs in the majors now, and teams are more open to platooning there and/or carrying a positionless bopper on their bench. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday, ESPN’s Buster Olney reported that Major League Baseball is expected to allow players to use wearable signal devices to call pitches this season. Later in the day, the Associated Press reported that the league did indeed approve the use of such devices and sent a five-page memorandum to teams’ general managers, assistant GMs, managers and equipment managers outlining the rules regarding such devices. Known as the PitchCom system, the devices were tested in the minors last season and have made their way around the majors during this year’s spring training, drawing glowing reviews. Aimed at improving the pace of play and countering sign stealing — by both legal and illegal means — their adoption addresses two issues that have been hot-buttons in recent years and have resurfaced this spring. In that light, the league could be doing more to reassure the public that it’s on top of potential abuses of the system.

Created by a company called ProMystic that provides modular technology to mentalists and magicians (!), the PitchCom system consists of a push-button transmitter that fits into a wristband worn by the catcher, and receivers that fit into the padding of the catcher’s helmet and the sweatbands of the caps worn by the pitcher and other fielders. In the transmitter’s nine-button grid, each button corresponds to a given pitch type as well as a location, the latter akin to the familiar three-by-three strike zone grid. From the AP report: “four seam high inside, curve hi middle, slider hi outside, change mid inside, sinker middle, cutter mid out, splitter low inside, knuckle lo middle, two seam low outside.” The other three buttons to the left of the grid are to cancel the selection and to adjust the volume up or down.

Through an encrypted signal, the choice of pitch and location is conveyed, with an audio output that uses a proprietary variant of bone-conduction technology (bypassing the ear canal) and has preprogrammed English and Spanish options, though players can record their own audio. Olney reported that as many as three teammates besides the battery will be allowed to wear receivers so as to aid defensive positioning; generally those will be the middle infielders and the center fielder. Read the rest of this entry »

It arrived stressfully, chaotically, and slightly late, but the 2022 season is here. And that means it’s time for one last important sabermetric ritual: the final ZiPS projected standings that will surely come back and haunt me multiple times as the season progresses.

The methodology I’m using here isn’t identical to the one we use in our Projected Standings, so there will naturally be some important differences in the results. So how does ZiPS calculate the season? Stored within ZiPS are the first through 99th percentile projections for each player. I start by making a generalized depth chart, using our Depth Charts as an initial starting point. Since these are my curated projections, I make changes based on my personal feelings about who will receive playing time, as filtered by arbitrary whimsy my logic and reasoning. ZiPS then generates a million versions of each team in Monte Carlo fashion — the computational algorithms, that is (no one is dressing up in a tuxedo and playing baccarat like James Bond).

After that is done, ZiPS applies another set of algorithms with a generalized distribution of injury risk, which change the baseline PAs/IPs selected for each player. Of note is that higher-percentile projections already have more playing time than lower-percentile projections before this step. ZiPS then automatically “fills in” playing time from the next players on the list (proportionally) to get to a full slate of plate appearances and innings.

The result is a million different rosters for each team and an associated winning percentage for each of those million teams. After applying the new strength of schedule calculations based on the other 29 teams, I end up with the standings for each of the million seasons. This is actually much less complex than it sounds. Read the rest of this entry »

José Cruz Sr. had an outstanding career. Playing for three teams — most notably the Houston Astros — from 1970-1988, the Puerto Rico-born outfielder logged 2,251 hits while putting up a 119 wRC+ and 50.8 WAR. As his grandson, Detroit Tigers infield prospect Trei Cruz put it, the family patriarch may not be a Hall of Famer, but he is in “The Hall of Very Good.”

Moreover, the father of 1997-2008 big-leaguer José Cruz Jr. is a 74-year-old in a younger man’s body.

“He has more energy than anybody I’ve ever met in my life,” explained Trei, who calls Houston home and is No. 14 on our 2022 Tigers Top Prospect list. “I actually work with him, every single day. He throws BP for hours, and it’s some of the best left-handed BP you’ll ever see. He’s got a lot of life in his arm — he’ll really chuck it in there — and along with gas he’ll mix in sliders and changeups. Guys actually come to hit with me, because his BP is so good. He’s amazing, man. I don’t know how he does it.”

The smooth left-handed-stroke that produced 650 extra-base hits is still there, as well. The septuagenarian may not be able to catch up to mid-90s heat anymore, but he hasn’t forgotten what to do with a bat in his hands. According to Trei, his abuelo isn’t shy about standing in the box when the situation calls for it. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 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.

As I continue to play catch-up with my coverage with the holidays approaching, it makes sense to take a fresh look at a trio of pitchers who have done just enough to remain on the ballot. Mark Buehrle, Tim Hudson, and Andy Pettitte all cleared the 200-win mark during their exceptional careers while producing some big moments and playing significant roles on championship-winning teams, but none ever won Cy Young awards, produced much black ink, or dominated in the ways that we expect Hall-caliber hurlers to do. When Buehrle and Hudson debuted last year, I was skeptical that they would even clear 5% and retain their eligibility, but with the ballot traffic having thinned out, enough voters — particularly those on ballots that went unpublished — found room for them to do so, though the results were hardly resounding. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 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.

In my previous multi-candidate roundup, I lumped together four 10th-year candidates — Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling, and Sammy Sosa — about whom there’s little left to be said at the tail end of a decade’s worth of debate, and few minds likely to be changed. Three of those candidates were linked to PEDs, and all four have some pretty dark corners beyond the baseball diamond. As a means of completing my coverage of the major candidates before the December 31 voting deadline, it made sense to group them into a single overview while inviting those readers wishing to (re)familiarize themselves with the specifics of their cases to check out last year’s profiles.

As the holiday season approaches, I’m still playing catch-up with my coverage, but the two candidates in this roundup don’t have the same type of underlying connections. Both hit a lot of homers during their long careers, both were sometimes overshadowed by more famous teammates, and both have struggled to generate a ton of support through multiple election cycles to the point that neither is likely to get to 75% via the writers before their 10 years run out. Beyond that, they’re very different players and cases.
Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 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 »