Bo Bichette is one of the best young hitters in the game. Just 23 years old, the Toronto Blue Jays shortstop has a .299/.345/.509 slash line to go with a 128 wRC+ and 35 home runs — 19 of them coming this season — in 795 big-league plate appearances through Tuesday’s action. Drafted 66th overall in 2016 out of a St. Petersburg high school, the 2021 American League All-Star is the son of former major-league slugger Dante Bichette.

Bichette talked hitting prior to a recent game at Fenway Park.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with one of my favorite Talks Hitting ice-breaker questions: Do you view hitting as more of an art, or more of a science?

Bo Bichette: “That’s an interesting question. I’d say it’s a combination of both, but I would lean more toward it being an art. I think hitting is more mental than anything, and science kind of equates to mechanics and all that. So I would say art.”

Laurila: Hitting analytics have obviously become a bigger part of the game…

Bichette: “Yes, but for me, no. I think the analytics are more how we’re evaluated as players. Everybody has their own things that click in their head. I haven’t really looked at the analytics all that much. The one thing is that pitchers pitch up in the zone more often, so you definitely practice hitting that pitch a little bit. But I don’t pay attention to my launch angle, exit velocity, and stuff like that.”

Laurila: Is your stroke conducive to hitting the elevated fastball? 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 »

With the trade deadline looming, today the Blue Jays bolstered their rotation, trading two prospects — shortstop/outfielder Austin Martin and right-handed pitcher Simeon Woods Richardson — to the Twins for right-hander José Berríos. As recently as early this week, the Twins did not expect to trade Berríos, but they decided to listen on him and the market well-exceeded their expectations. With Minnesota acquiring a pair of Top 100 prospects in return, it looks more and more like the Dodgers pulled off an exceptional deal last night, paying a similar amount for Max Scherzer and Trea Turner. Ben Clemens analyzed what Berríos means for the Jays; here we will concern ourselves with Martin and Woods Richardson.

The fifth overall pick in the 2020 draft out of Vanderbilt, Martin was seen as one of, if not the best pure hitters in last year’s class as a proven performer at one of the top programs in the country with outstanding swing decisions, truckloads of contact, and flashes of average power. His future position was in the to-be-determined category, but with an athletic toolset, he was seen as simply ending up somewhere up the middle.

Unable to make his professional debut until 2021, the Blue Jays challenged Martin with an initial assignment to Double-A New Hampshire, and the results have been both good and confusing. On paper, his .281/.424/.383 line has Martin meeting that challenge with aplomb. But evaluators have left their looks this summer scratching their heads a bit. After striking out just twice in 69 plate appearances during Vanderbilt’s shortened 2020 season, Martin has racked up a 21.2% strikeout rate this year, while some feel his propensity for drawing walks (14.8%) also frequently puts him into bad counts he can’t fight his way out of. Data-minded evaluators also point to a loss of power, and while a dip would be expected during a transition from metal to wood bats, Martin’s exit velocities are down a whopping 8 mph from his college days. Read the rest of this entry »

If it feels like the Blue Jays have been on the cusp of breaking through for years, that’s because they have. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette and crew have put together a fearsome offense (with some help from the friendly confines of Dunedin and Buffalo). Hyun Jin Ryu and Robbie Ray have provided some pitching, but not enough; only three teams have gotten fewer innings out of their starters, and the Jays’ bullpen has been no great shakes either.

To compete this year, Toronto needed another starter, and now it has one. Per Ken Rosenthal, the Jays have acquired José Berríos from the Twins in exchange for prospects Austin Martin and Simeon Woods Richardson, a move that will have implications for both teams for years to come.

As is customary when prospects of such lofty stature are involved, Kevin Goldstein and Eric Longenhagen will cover the specifics of the two in a separate piece. In this one, you’re stuck with me, and we’ll try to assess how this trade affects the two squads without diving into the nitty-gritty of what Martin has been doing with the New Hampshire Fisher Cats.

The Jays have conflicting interests at this deadline. They’re 4.5 games out of the second wild card spot and had a 25.9% chance of reaching the playoffs before adding Berríos to the mix. That’s a great reason to go for it, but it also merits caution; the team is so stacked and so young that this might be the worst Toronto squad of the next three or four years, not the best. Trading for a bevy of rentals two years too early would hardly be a crippling blow, but with such a talented roster, building for the future and the present would beat doing only one or the other.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Toronto Blue Jays made a small addition on Thursday, picking up reliever Brad Hand from the Washington Nationals for catcher Riley Adams. Hand had a 3.59 ERA and 4.33 FIP in 41 games for the Nats as Daniel Hudson’s successor at closer. Adams struggled in his brief major league debut this season, going 3-for-30, but has played better for Buffalo with a .239/.371/.487 line in 35 games.

Before Hand’s acquisition, our depth charts ranked the Jays’ bullpen 27th in baseball, making them one of only two serious playoff contenders with a ‘pen in the bottom third of the league. That wasn’t entirely Toronto’s fault, as the relief corps has been decimated by injuries this season. It started with Kirby Yates needing Tommy John surgery before throwing a single regular season pitch for the Jays, and continued with the loss of Julian Merryweather a couple of weeks later, David Phelps and A.J. Cole in May, and Carl Edwards Jr., Tyler Chatwood, and Anthony Castro in the last six weeks. The team has increasingly leaned on Jordan Romano and Tim Mayza, and if it weren’t for Tayler Saucedo‘s solid debut and Adam Cimber’s recent acquisition, the wheels might have come off the bus already.

Adding Hand helps staunch the bleeding, but he’s no longer the kind of pitcher who can heal the wound. On paper, his 2020 was excellent (he posted a 2.05 ERA and a 1.37 FIP), but there were signs of trouble, including a dip in velocity and Hand’s worst xFIP since his days as a Marlins swingman without an out pitch. Cleveland placed Hand on waivers last October, but the erosion of his skills was such that no team wanted to commit to picking up his $10 million option that early in the offseason. He later signed a one-year, $10.5 million deal to join Washington. Read the rest of this entry »

On the strength of his monster home run and an additional RBI groundout, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. took home MVP honors from the All-Star Game at Coors Field on Tuesday night. In doing so, the 22-year-old slugger — who also nearly decapitated National League starter Max Scherzer with his hardest-hit ball of the evening — became the youngest player ever to win that award. The performance was just the latest chapter of Guerrero’s breakout, as he lives up to the high expectations set by his pedigree and his precocious development.

If for some reason you haven’t seen his highlights from Tuesday night, here’s Guerrero’s first-inning plate appearance, where his 111.1 mph rocket back through the box produced such a close call that Guerrero felt obliged to apologize to Scherzer, who remarked after the game, “I’m alive… that’s the success story… I’m just grateful I still have a blue eye and a brown eye”:

Vlad Guerrero Jr. almost takes Max Scherzer’s head off and then apologizes ? pic.twitter.com/oTv06MiY5o

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) July 14, 2021

And here’s Guerrero’s third-inning homer off Corbin Burnes:

The 468-footer was the longest All-Star Game homer of the Statcast era, surpassing Kris Bryant’s 2016 shot by a good 58 feet. With it, Guerrero became the second-youngest player to go yard in an All-Star Game, after Johnny Bench did so in 1969 at the age of 21 years and 228 days. In winning MVP honors, Guerrero, at 22 years and 119 days, surpassed Ken Griffey Jr., who was 117 days older when he won in 1992. Meanwhile, Guerrero and dad Vlad joined the Griffeys and Bobby and Barry Bonds as the only father/son combinations to homer in the All-Star Game.

With the single-game spotlight and honors behind him, Guerrero is now angling to become the youngest position player to win a regular season MVP award; he won’t surpass pitcher Vida Blue, who was 22 years and 64 days old on the final day of the 1971 season, but would surpass Bench, who was 22 years and 298 days on the final day of the ’70 season. He and his father, the AL MVP in 2004, would be the first pair to win the award. Of course, the competition for Guerrero to win is daunting given the ongoing tour de force of Shohei Ohtani. A month ago, Guerrero led the AL in all three Triple Crown categories and WAR, kindling a debate over the merits of that combination relative to Ohtani’s pitching. At that point, Dan Szymborski estimated Vladito’s chances of winning the Triple Crown at 19.1%, but the five-homer lead he held over Ohtani has become a five-homer lead for Ohtani (33-28) thanks to the Angels’ superstar’s recent flurry. Guerrero’s .332 batting average and 73 RBI both still leads the AL, as does his .439 on-base percentage, 189 wRC+, and 4.6 position player WAR, though Ohtani has taken over the combined WAR lead at 5.5, and has a slugging percentage 40 points higher than Guerrero’s .658.

Regardless of whether he’s first or second in any category, Guerrero has taken a massive leap forward from his performances in 2019 and ’20, which were solid enough for a 20- or 21-year-old, but hardly All-Star caliber. After batting .272/.339/.433 (105 wRC+) in 2019, he showed more power last year, hitting .262/.329/.462 (112 wRC+); his ISO jumped by 37 points, and his home run rate rose from 2.9% to 3.7%, a gain of about 28%.

Guerrero is showing even greater in-game power this year — his display in the 2019 Home Run Derby provided more evidence of raw power than anyone this side of Iggy and the Stooges — as you can see from the basic numbers, but before discussing that, it’s worth acknowledging his improved plate discipline. He’s cut his rate of swinging at pitches outside the strike zone from 31.6% as a rookie to 27.4% last year and then 25.3% this year; among qualifiers, he’s climbed from the 46th percentile to the 70th and now the 83rd. As a result, he’s posted the majors’ fifth-largest gain in walk rate from 2020 to ’21, jumping 5.7 percentage points to 13.9%; only Starling Marte (+7.9%,), Joey Gallo (+7.7%), Carlos Correa (5.9%), and Andrew McCutchen (+5.8%) have gained more. While Guerrero is striking out more as well (up two points to 17.6%), he’s still in the 70th percentile in that category.

The biggest difference in his performance relative to 2020, though, is how much harder he’s hitting the ball:

Guerrero’s exit velocity already ranked in the 93rd percentile last year, but he was hitting grounders about twice as often as fly balls. He still hits more grounders than flies, but his 9.8 percentage point drop in groundball rate is the majors’ fourth-largest behind Jonathan Villar (-14.0%), Kyle Schwarber (-10.6%), and Kevin Pillar (-9.9%). He’s nearly doubled his average launch angle (from 4.6 degrees to 8.4), and with it, has nearly doubled his barrel rate while increasing his already-high hard-hit rate. A picture is worth a thousand words:

Guerrero has improved in every Statcast-tracked category here — even the ones that pertain to his speed and defense, the evidence of the better conditioning and work he’s put into learning a new(ish) position — except for maximum exit velocity, where he already ranked in the 99th percentile. In case you were worried that he was stagnating, he has actually shown improvement there nonetheless, from last year’s 116.1 mph to 117.4 (for what it’s worth, he topped both with a 118.9 mph single in 2019). Fittingly, where last year’s hardest-hit ball was a lineout to second base, this year’s was a home run off the Rays’ Ryan Yarbrough, the first of the two he hit on May 24 at the team’s temporary Dunedin home:

That first one had a projected distance of 461 feet, four short of his regular season career long, set just eight days earlier off the Phillies’ Brandon Kintzler, also in Dunedin:

Guerrero’s All-Star Game homer topped that, albeit with an assist from Coors Field’s altitude (which added 32 feet, according to Weather Applied Metrics’ Ken Arneson) if not the wind (which took away 10).

On the subject of harnessing his incredible bat speed towards improving his ability to get the ball in the air, in April our own Carmen Ciardiello wrote about the possibility of Guerrero improving what he called his attack angle to better launch the ball. Using an approximation based upon the top 5% of each player’s hardest-hit batted balls, Ciardiello compared Guerrero to the other mighty sluggers with similar maximum exit velocities and estimated his attack angle at 8.71 degrees. Only Giancarlo Stanton (8.74 degrees) had one nearly as flat, while Ronald Acuña Jr. had the highest angle at 17.86 degrees, followed by Trout at 16.94. In my attempt to track this as a potential explanation for Guerrerro’s year-to-year improvement, I calculated that based upon his top 5% of hard-hit balls, his attack angle has actually dipped to an average of 6.69 degrees; five of his 13 hardest-hit balls thus far have negative launch angles, meaning that they were hit on the ground, while only four are double-digit positives, all of them homers. I’ll leave it to Ciardello for further interpretation of those results.

Looking at Guerrero’s year-to-year improvement by pitch type what quickly becomes apparent is that he’s now a serial murderer of four-seam fastballs; he’s gone from a .254 AVG, .465 SLG, and .356 wOBA against them last year to a .386 AVG, .830 SLG, and .538 wOBA. Among players with at least 100 PA ending in four-seamers, only Juan Soto has a higher average, while those other two figures are tops. Guerrero’s 18 runs above average against four-seamers is the highest of any player against any pitch, and represents a full 18-run gain relative to last year as well. His other big improvements are against sliders, where he’s gained eight runs (from +1 to +9) primarily by improving from .576 SLG to .633, and sinkers, where he’s gained six runs (from +3 to +9) primarily by improving from .485 SLG to .614.

Using 200-PA cutoffs for both last year and this one, Guerrero owns the majors’ biggest gains in both slugging percentage and wRC+. Here’s the top 15 for the former:

And here’s the latter:

I should point out that my somewhat arbitrary choice of 200 PA as a cutoff for both seasons — made in part because I wanted batting title qualifiers for 2020, but then 186 PA just looked weird — meant leaving Ohtani off the tables given that he had just 175 PA last year. His 332-point gain in slugging percentage (from .366 to .698) and 98-point gain in wRC+ (from 82 to 180) dwarf the gains of Guerrero and the rest, so if you want to imagine a version of the tables with him on top, you’re free to do so.

So long as we’re talking improvements, it’s worth noting Guerrero’s progress on the defensive side. After a rough introduction to the majors at third base in 2019 (-9.4 UZR, -3 DRS, and -19 OAA in just 824 innings), he split last season between first base (-1.8 UZR, -4 DRS, -2 OAA in 324 innings) and DH. Particularly given his weight and conditioning issues — he showed up to summer camp somewhere in the vicinity of 285 pounds — his future appeared to tilt towards the latter slot, limiting his ceiling. After apologizing to his teammates for showing up out of shape last summer, he lost 42 pounds this past winter and appears to have kept the weight off. His mobility and flexibility have improved and so have his defensive numbers, which are now within hailing distance of average (-0.5 UZR, -2 DRS, and 0 OAA in 576.2 innings).

Vladdy's split stats: Good
Vladdy's splits: Also good ? pic.twitter.com/KzX2N8YFNC

— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) April 14, 2021

Even for a player who was so heavily touted as a prospect — recall that he was the consensus number one heading into 2019 — Guerrero has come a long way in a short time, and what he’s doing at such a young age puts him alongside the likes of Soto and Fernando Tatis Jr., not to mention some of the game’s other recent prodigies:

Right now, Guerrero has the highest slugging percentage and wRC+ of any of the bunch, though preserving that distinction is no small challenge given the amount of season remaining. Our rest-of-season projections forecast him to add another 2.3 WAR, which would tie him with Seager for fifth on the list. At the rate he’s going, it would hardly be a surprise if he climbs higher.

Bryson Stott had a pretty good idea of what to expect coming into the 2019 draft. Ultimately taken 14th overall by the Philadelphia Phillies, the now-23-year-old shortstop out of the University of Nevada Las Vegas had reason to believe that he would be selected in that neighborhood of the first round. Our own mock draft had him going one pick earlier, while Baseball America ended up being spot-on with their prediction.

Stott likewise knew that several of his friends would be taken in the first round, albeit not necessarily by which organizations. He and a handful of former USA Baseball teammates would periodically update each other on what they’d been hearing, as well as any pre-draft workouts they’d been invited to. Specific expectations were couched in caution.

“As I’m sure you know, you don’t really get much before the draft,” Stott told me earlier this month. “It’s kind of, ‘You hear one thing and then something else happens.’ So it’s a weird time, and an exciting one, but still pretty stressful.”

As Stott pointed out, the entire 2018 USA team infield went in the first round the following year. Andrew Vaughn was at first base, Braden Shewmake was at second, Stott played short, and Josh Jung covered the hot corner. Will Wilson was an extra infielder, while Shea Langeliers and Adley Rutschmann were the catchers. Last year’s first-overall pick, Spencer Torkelson, was also on the team.

“It was a pretty good infield,” said Stott, in what could rightly be called an understatement. Read the rest of this entry »

MLB passed the halfway mark of the 2021 season over the long holiday weekend, providing a convenient spot to take a break, look back over the preseason projections, and hopefully not cringe too much about how the predictions are shaking out. Since this is the big midseason update, I used the full-fat ZiPS model for individual players in addition to the normal depth chart reconfiguring, with all the high-fructose algorithms rather than the leaner one used for daily updates.

Let’s start with the American League standings.

I was making a “do not panic” argument on behalf of the Yankees back when they were 5–10 and some people were digging for their doomsday preparedness kits, and while it might not be time to find where you left those water purification tablets, the situation is bleaker now than it was three months ago. Not that the team is actually worse; New York has been on an 88-win pace in the games since that reference point. But an 88-win pace isn’t nearly enough to get out of an early-season hole in a division where there are three other teams with more than detectable pulses. Even projected to play solid baseball the rest of the season, the Yankees have gone from the favorite to the projected fourth-place team.

Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Brendan Gawlowski, who will be chipping on Daily Prospect Notes once a week. Read previous installments of the DPN here.

Today, we’ll review some live looks, watch at a little video, and head off the beaten path for a bit. It should be fun, and apologies in advance for highlighting a few performances from earlier in the week. Onward!

CJ Van Eyk, RHP, Toronto Blue Jays
Level & Affiliate: High-A Vancouver Age: 22 Org Rank: 10 FV: 40+
Line: ⅔ IP, 4 H, 7R, 1 SO, 3 BB

It was a night he’d like to forget. The line probably oversells how rough he looked — a couple of gork singles extended the inning — but Van Eyk’s primary developmental goal this season is to pound the zone, and only 17 of his 33 pitches were strikes on Tuesday night. He often missed badly to his arm side with his fastball and curve, and a lack of competitive pitches limited him to just one true swing and miss.

Mechanically, Van Eyk has a loose arm, clean arm swing, and still head, all of which should help him throw strikes. His landing spot is very inconsistent though, and that seems to affect his ability to throw strikes. Sometimes he lands in a clean fielding position; on other occasions his left foot lands so awkwardly that he practically falls off the mound toward the first base dugout (you can see footage of that in action in Tess Taruskin’s notes from a few weeks back). Up to 94 with a curve that flashes plus, there’s good stuff here if he can find a delivery that facilitates more strikes. Read the rest of this entry »