These are notes on prospects from Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments of the Daily Prospect Notes here.

Games on 9/12

Mason Fox, RHP, San Diego Padres
Level & Affiliate: Double-A San Antonio Age: 21 Org Rank: 38 FV: 35+
Line: 1 IP, 3 K

Notes
Fox’s previously dominant fastball (he had a 0.55 ERA and 0.98 WHIP in 2019, mostly in short-season ball) wasn’t as nasty during the spring. Sitting in the low-90s, he struggled and was shut down, and was put on the Development List for most of July and August. Back for about three weeks now, his fastball velocity has more often been in the 93-95 range again, though his curveball still lacks bat-missing power and depth. Because 2021 is his roster evaluation year (either he’s put on the 40-man or subject to the Rule 5 Draft in December) and because he’s thrown so few innings so far this season, the Arizona Fall league is perhaps a logical assignment for Fox and the Padres.

Jackson Rutledge, RHP, Washington Nationals
Level & Affiliate: Low-A Fredricksburg Age: 22 Org Rank: 5 FV: 45+
Line: 4 IP, 3 H, 1 BB, 1 R, 4 K

Notes
Speaking of other potential Fall League candidates (I’m drawing logical conclusions here, not reporting anything or leaking dope), Jackson Rutledge has struggled to take the ball every fifth day because of an early-season shoulder injury, and more recently, recurring blister issues. Sunday was Rutledge’s third blister-free start since his most recent activation. He’s sitting in the 94-98 range since returning, with his stuff intact coming off those dreaded shoulder issues. Obviously context is important here (it’s not as if Rutledge has gone every fifth day all year and is sitting 94-98), but that’s an encouraging sign for his health. Having amassed just 32 innings this season, Rutledge is a prime Fall League candidate. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, my colleague Kevin Goldstein shared his experience of scouting José Abreu back in 2013 as a member of Houston’s front office. Kevin suggested that if Abreu had been able to play his entire career in the majors, I would be writing pieces about the slugger’s chances of reaching even bigger milestones. And since I probably would be, why not actually do that?

Abreu’s not the first player whose success in a foreign league and long enough career in MLB have compelled us to ask what if? Ichiro Suzuki is another such player, and in 2016, I ran his NPB translations alongside his actual major league statistics. I’ve since added his final MLB numbers to this chart:

The translations bring him tantalizingly close to Ty Cobb and Pete Rose, giving us an even better understanding of his abilities over his full career. Joining the 4,000-hit club is cool and all, but Ichiro aged so well and continued to play for so long that you don’t really need his NPB career to give him a Cooperstown case. Abreu’s a different story. Unless he proves to be as amazingly durable as Ichiro did and cranks out another six or seven years of 30-plus homers, he’s not going to hit the important thresholds for home run hitters when it comes to Hall voting. ZiPS projects a fairly normal decline path for a mid-30s slugger:

Eighty-nine additional homers (85 in those projections and four more in 2021) get Abreu to 316 MLB home runs, and I don’t think that quite does it, leaving him in the mythical Hall of Very Good along with sluggers like Joe Adcock and Torii Hunter. But what if? We have Abreu’s stats from his time in Cuba and a history of players who have gone from Cuba to other professional leagues, so we can at least estimate what his performance would have looked like in the majors:

Even with the Serie Nacional de Béisbol playing just over half the games per season as MLB when Abreu was playing there and some pretty steep adjustment factors, the translations still add another 117 homers to the tally. While this is speculative, it feels right for Abreu, given that he basically played at the level of his final Cuban two-year average in the US. His projections at that point look like a typical Abreu season:

Abreu has actually been a little better than ZiPS expected, so it’s hard to say the translations overrate him. ZiPS had him at 24.3 WAR through 2021, which is pretty darned close to the 23.1 he is at now (and ZiPS didn’t know about COVID in 2014!):

Combined, while I’m still not sure I’d vote for José Abreu for the Hall — his is a career that looks like Jim Rice’s, who also a very borderline candidate for me — it’s a case I’d have to seriously consider before not ticking the box next his name. With an excellent reputation both generally and for mentoring other Cuban players specifically, and with no suspensions for PEDs hanging over his head, I think this version of Abreu gets into the Hall of Fame.

Along those same lines, we talked a bit about Yuli Gurriel on our Twitch watch-along of last week’s Mariners-Astros game. Gurriel didn’t even get the advantage of playing his late 20s in the majors; Abreu was in his sixth season of MLB play at the same age Yuli debuted with the Astros. He’s proven to be amazingly resilient to the vagaries of aging, showing little indication of decline, and at 37, Gurriel is arguably having his best season in the majors, hitting .315/.385/.467 in 125 games for 3.3 WAR. ZiPS has regularly been low on his projection for the simple reason that the computer doesn’t understand why the fourth dimension doesn’t apply to him!

Given that we know he could play in MLB, and that he was already a legend in Cuba by the time he came to the US, it makes sense to give his Cuban numbers the same treatment. With his translations, ZiPS projects another 317 hits from Gurriel, putting him at 1,028 hits starting at age 32:

Even with the huge hit in the numbers from a translation, Gurriel still ends up with just under 2,500 hits despite never getting to a play in a 100-game season until he was in his 30s.

This kind of exercise brings up some philosophical issues with our conception of the Hall of Fame. We wouldn’t put Mark Prior in Cooperstown for projections, but projections and translations aren’t really the same thing. Translations just try to adjust for context, no different than park-adjusting or league-adjusting stats, even though the calculations are trickier. A career projection for Prior involves giving him credit for seasons he never played, but Abreu and Gurriel actually played those years of baseball; through little fault of their own, that play just happened to be in leagues that MLB does not consider to be major leagues.

But when you examine MLB’s history, what constitutes a major league is quite gray, especially in the early years. While we can say that today’s Triple-A leagues are not the majors, I’d argue that from a competitive standpoint, 19th-century baseball didn’t consist of major leagues either, a state of affairs even perhaps stretching into the 1910s and ’20s. The standard deviations of numbers for starters around the league didn’t start to resemble those of modern baseball until the mid-1920s (you expect more competitive leagues to have tighter spreads of ability than less competitive leagues do). And even if we say “No, the American League from 1901 and the National League before that are still major leagues,” MLB gives credit for stats from the Players League, the Union League, and the Federal League, all extremely uneven leagues, with the first two also being very unstable (as was the early American League).

If we have a good faith basis to believe that Yuli Gurriel and José Abreu didn’t suddenly become awesome baseball players the minute they were able to play in the US, why should the performances that pre-date their debuts here be summarily ignored when bestowing baseball’s highest honor? I’m not sure either Gurriel or Abreu have the career numbers to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, but let’s make sure we’re considering all the times they played this grand game. It’s messy to estimate what could have been, but just because answering a question is difficult doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

Whether it’s because they’re only just getting healthy or someone ahead of them has gotten hurt or their talent is kicking down the doors of roster manipulation made brittle by actual competitive spirit, some potentially important participants in postseason play are currently in the minors as we speak. This is especially likely when it comes to pitching, where health and effectiveness are tenuous, and team behavior surrounding promotion tends to be more opportunistic and aggressive.

For both leagues, I’m providing a scouting-centric update on pitching currently in the minors, either because the players are prospects who could conceivably play a September role or make a postseason roster, or because the player in question is a rehabbing big leaguer. Pitching can be streaky and fragile, so any of these guys could be in the big leagues at the drop of a hat, or they may simply convince their front office, like several rookies did last year, that they’re one of the best 26 guys in the org and need to be put on the playoff roster. The level of impact could range from Hunter Greene or Shane Baz dominating like Francisco Rodriguez in 2002, to Connor Seabold or Thomas Hatch humbly eating innings in a blowout loss in effort to save the rest of the bullpen for the series’ next game like J.A. Happ in 2008.

I’ll touch first on the American League this week, then provide some National League options next week. If any prospects moved on The Board due to info or opinions brought to light from this piece, I’ll note that below.

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See if this story is familiar. A pitcher’s fastball appears so-so using traditional metrics but is revealed to possess off-the-chart spin rates. The pitcher then succeeds by locating up in the zone, taking advantage of that trait. At first glance, Astros reliever Phil Maton fits the bill. Here’s what he usually does with his four-seamer:

Maton’s fastball velocity is in the 20th percentile, but that doesn’t matter too much, because its spin rate is in the 92nd percentile. It’s what makes him big league viable — well, at least that’s the popular narrative. What isn’t as commonly known is this: Maton might have the league’s zaniest fastball. Zaniest? Trust me, this is an appropriate use of that word.

The anatomy of a fastball is complex, but let’s start with movement. Using our site’s pitch type splits, we see that Maton’s fastball has averaged 6.5 inches of ride (vertical movement) and 0.5 inches of run (horizontal movement) in 2021. The lack of vertical movement is strange, but hardly outlandish; plenty of major league fastballs are similarly deficient. What stands out is the absence of arm-side run. Consider Gerrit Cole’s fastball, the gold standard for righties, which features around seven inches of run and 10 inches of ride. There’s ample movement in both directions with an emphasis on the upward, bat-missing variety. Maton’s fastball is different; it’s as straight as an arrow and sinks like a stone. What gives?

Read the rest of this entry »

With the elimination of the waiver deadline, the last two months of the season (or more accurately now, the last six weeks) can leave front office personnel feeling like little more than helpless observers. Problems at the big league level, whether of the health or performance variety, are going to pop up, but for the most part, the answers to those problems have to come from within. Yes, there’s the occasional player who gets designated for assignment who deserves consideration, but otherwise teams will either lean on the depth they’ve spent much of the year trying to establish or curse the risks they took in terms of depth in order to improve their big league roster. Here are the depth situations for the American League playoff contenders, with the National League to follow tomorrow.

American League East

Tampa Bay Rays
Strengths: The Rays bolt together pitching staffs as well as any team in baseball, and there are plenty more pieces available to them at Triple-A Durham should the need arise. They load up on pitch-data darlings while also developing plenty from within, and the result has been the best record in the International League, with their staff generating a team-wide strikeout rate of over 28%. With five current Durham pitchers already on the 40-man roster, managing innings down the stretch shouldn’t be an issue, be it for need or just for the purposes of keeping players fresh. In terms of position players, Vidal Bruján continues to slot in all over the diamond; his ability to play six positions makes him the most likely hitter to be called up. Read the rest of this entry »

This series of articles looks at players whose careers are cut short due to misfortune, but few of them are cases as sudden or as dramatic as that of former Astros pitcher J.R. Richard, who died one week ago at age 70. The Houston fireballer had emerged as one of the game’s hardest throwing starters and a potential ace when he suffered a stroke 41 years ago and collapsed during the team’s pregame warmups. He never pitched in the majors again.

Richard’s debut was about as brilliant as one can get: a complete-game shutout of the Giants in September 1971 in which he struck out 15 batters. This was toward the end of Willie Mays‘ illustrious career, but how many pitchers can claim to have pulled off a hat trick of whiffs against an inner-circle Hall of Famer in their debut? Those 15 strikeouts tied pitcher Karl Spooner’s debut record; incidentally, Spooner is another player with a short career that was ended by a shoulder injury a year later, but that’s a tale for another time.

As a pitcher, Richard looks more at home in 2021 than in 1970. At 6’8″ with a fastball hitting the century mark and a slider in the low 90s, there was a lot of intimidation and little in the way of pitching to contact here. The only problem was that he was raw mechanically, just two years out of high school, and coaching staffs weren’t as experienced as today at helping pitchers harness such an explosive repertoire; over his 12 remaining innings that season, including a first inning he didn’t finish, Richard walked 13 batters.

The wildness never quite went away, and Richard spent the new few years riding the Triple-A shuttle. But the Astros traded Claude Osteen in 1974 for two recent Cardinals draft picks, and Don Wilson and his son died in January 1975 from carbon monoxide poisoning, and these were the days you couldn’t just go shopping in free agency. So up to the majors came Richard for good.

Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Brendan Gawlowski. Read previous installments of the Daily Prospect Notes here.

Justin Steele, LHP, Chicago Cubs
Level & Affiliate: Triple-A Iowa Age: 26 Org Rank: 37 FV: 40

Notes
After a strong debut out of Chicago’s bullpen this spring, Steele has spent the last month in Triple-A getting stretched out in preparation to join the Cubs rotation. The southpaw dazzled in his 11 big league outings, striking out 37% of the hitters he faced while also generating a 70% groundball rate. Evaluators are split on whether he’s a reliever long-term, and with the Cubs going nowhere fast, this summer provides the team with the perfect opportunity to assess his chops as a starter.

Over his last two outings, he’s registered 13 strikeouts against just two walks in 10 innings of work. It’s a good sign that both his low-to-mid-90s fastball and slider didn’t lose much gas in the transition to the rotation. Watching him, I’m impressed with his ability to locate the slider against opposite handed hitters: he’s good at both back-dooring the pitch for a strike and can also spin one to a hitter’s back foot in search of a whiff. That utility takes a little pressure off the change, which he’s just now working back into his repertoire after not using it at all in the bigs. While the safe bet is that he’s still a reliever long-term, there are enough ingredients here to make this rotation experiment more than a blind shot in the dark. Read the rest of this entry »

What a ride this year’s deadline was. All told, we had 75 prospects move in the last month. They are ranked below, with brief scouting reports written by me and Kevin Goldstein. Most of the deals these prospects were a part of were analyzed at length on this site. An index of those pieces can be found here, or by clicking the hyperlink in the “Trade” column below. I’ve moved all of the players listed here to their new orgs over on The Board, so you can click through to see where they rank among their new teammates. Our farm rankings, which now update live, also reflect these changes, so you can see where teams’ systems stack up post-deadline.

A couple of quick notes before I get to the rankings. We’ve included a few post-prospect players here (those marked in blue) so you can get an idea of where we value them now as opposed to where we had them at their prospect peak. Those players, as well as the Compensatory pick the Rockies will receive after they extend Trevor Story a qualifying offer and he signs elsewhere, are highlighted below. We had closer to 40 prospects (and 23 Players to be Named Later) traded last year, with the PTBNL number inflated by 2020’s COVID-related transaction rules. The backfields are not well-represented here, with just four prospects who have yet to play in full-season ball. Two of those are currently in the DSL and have no official domestic pro experience, though Alberto Ciprian has played stateside for instructs/extended spring training. Now on to the rankings. Read the rest of this entry »

This deadline had its share of earthquakes, but it also featured smaller aftershocks, as teams improved their depth or addressed smaller, specific needs. So let’s run down some of the deals that might get buried by the higher-Richter scale shakes of the likes of Max Scherzer and Kris Bryant.

The Houston Astros acquired pitcher Phil Maton and catcher Yainer Diaz from the Cleveland Guardians for center fielder Myles Straw

This trade is actually a slightly unusual one, as the team in the playoff shot — it’s not Cleveland — is the one giving up the best player. Straw’s offensive profile will likely prevent him from being an actual star at any point, but he’s fast, plays enough defense, and gets on-base at a respectable enough level to be an average or even better starter in center; he’s already hit the 2-WAR threshold, after all. UZR, our defensive input for WAR, has him at +6.6 runs, while OAA has him at +5 runs and DRS has him at +2. I don’t think I’d ever play him except in a pinch, but Straw’s theoretical ability to at least stand at second or short in an emergency has some additional value, too. Read the rest of this entry »

One day after adding Kendall Graveman, one of this season’s best relievers, in a somewhat strange trade, the Astros picked up another bullpen arm on Wednesday, acquiring Yimi García from the Marlins. In exchange for García, the Marlins received a right-handed reliever of their own, Austin Pruitt, who was designated for assignment following Houston’s trade with Seattle, as well as minor league outfielder Bryan De La Cruz.

From a logistical standpoint, the deal is rather straightforward: The Marlins are not in contention and have a solidly performing reliever who is a free agent at the end of the season. The Astros, meanwhile, have dealt with a middling bullpen so far, one that certainly warrants additions to gear up for a playoff run. Through games on Tuesday, the Astros’ relief group ranked 19th in WAR, at 1.3, and 20th in WPA, at -1.24. There’s nothing wrong with adding a couple of extra arms for the home stretch, and that’s exactly what they did in acquiring Graveman and García.

Miami picked up García on a one-year, $1.1 million contract after was non-tendered by the Dodgers at the end of 2019. After a strong 2020 campaign — he only pitched 15 innings, but allowed just a single run, striking out 19 of the 60 batters he faced (31.7% strikeout rate), while walking just five (8.3% walk rate) — the Marlins decided to tender him a contract for this year. He is earning $1.9 million in 2021, and though the results have not been as sterling as they were during the COVID-shortened season — he’s pitched to a 3.47 ERA, a 23.2% strikeout rate and an 8.6% walk rate in 36.1 innings — García has been a dependable reliever, often pitching the ninth. He’ll be bumped to setup duty with the Astros, who now have a pretty strong group of arms to handle the late innings:

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