While Kendrys Morales’s consecutive-game home-run streak — which ended at seven games on Monday night — and the Blue Jays’ season-high five-game winning streak provided some distraction, this past weekend brought news that most people following the team probably already intuited, namely that Troy Tulowitzki will not play this year. The 33-year-old shortstop had undergone surgery to remove bone spurs in both heels in early April, and while there were initially hopes that he could return in late May or June, and optimism that he could still return this season as late as a month ago, he’s never gotten to the point of going on a rehab assignment. In fact, he hasn’t played a competitive game since July 28, 2017, when he sprained his right ankle running the bases. While he’s vowed to return, it’s difficult to be optimistic about his future.

Though he’s earned All-Star honors five times, won two Gold Gloves, and at one point appeared to be laying the foundation for a Hall of Fame-caliber career, Tulowitzki has always had problems remaining on the field. Since debuting with a 25-game cup of coffee in 2006, he’s played more than 131 games in a season only in 2007 (155 games), 2009 (151 games), and 2011 (143 games). He’s played 100 games in back-to-back seasons just once since 2010-11, and averaged just 115 games per year for 2007-17. In the words of Roseanne Roseannadanna, it’s always something.

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Baseballs have continued to fly out of the park in 2018, if not at a record pace — the current per-team, per-game rate of 1.15 is the fourth-highest of all time, after 2017 (1.26), 2000 (1.17), and 2016 (1.16) — then nearly so. Nonetheless, over the past week-and-change, the game has produced something previously unseen amid this recent surge: a player challenging the major-league record of homers in eight consecutive games, a feat last completed by Ken Griffey Jr. in 1993. Blue Jays designated hitter and occasional first baseman Kendrys Morales has homered in seven straight, something unseen in 12 years. Tonight in Baltimore, he’ll have a chance to put himself in the record books.

Here’s Morales’s entry from Sunday, a towering two-run blast off the Phillies’ Vince Velasquez:

Alas, the homer, Morales’s 21st of the season, wasn’t enough to help the Blue Jays continue their season-high five-game winning streak, which has been fueled by the 35-year-old switch-hitting slugger’s power burst.

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Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Johan Quezada, RHP, Minnesota Twins
Level: Low-A   Age: Turns 24 on Saturday   Org Rank: 46   FV: 35+
Line: 3.1 IP, 0 H, 0 BB, 0 R, 6 K

Notes
This was Johan Quezada’s first career appearance in full-season ball. An imposing mound presence at a towering 6-foot-6, he has recovered from the shoulder surgery that cost him all of 2017, and his velocity has returned. He sits 94-97 with extreme downhill plane created by his height, and he’ll show you an average slider every once in a while. Quezada’s breaking-ball quality and command need to develop as they’re understandably behind due to his limited pro workload. He’s a older-than-usual arm-strength/size lottery ticket. On the surface, he seems like a candidate for extra reps in the Arizona Fall League.

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It’s probably fair to say that batting average, as a shorthand for the quality of a hitter, has lost a bit of luster over the past decade or two as the public has become acquainted with metrics that correlate more strongly with scoring runs and winning games. That said, for a player to hit safely in 40% of his at-bats at any professional level is still incredibly rare and worthy of consideration.

Even if he weren’t to hit .400 this year, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. would still be worthy of consideration. As the son of a Hall of Famer, as a 19-year-old who has already reached Triple-A, there’s plenty that merits attention. But he’s also batting .389 in the middle of August, which means that Guerrero the Younger has a shot at a historic season.

Over at MLB.com, Jim Callis went through the list of minor leaguers who have hit .400 in a season. It’s not long. Back in 1999, Erubiel Durazo was a 25-year-old playing in Arizona’s system after a few years in the Mexican League. He hit .404 in 409 plate appearances between Double-A and Triple-A before his callup to the majors. He hit .329 for the Diamondbacks, putting his average at .381 for the full season. Back in 1961, Aaron Pointer hit .401, but almost all of that time was spent in Class-D, which was low in the stratosphere of minor-league affiliates — sitting below not only Triple-A, Double-A, and Single-A, but also Class-B and -C. Given the state of the minor leagues before the 1960s, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that the last time a a player hit .400 facing a reasonably high level of competition was Ted Williams in 1941, when he hit .406 on the season.

Guerrero missed time earlier in the year with a knee injury and has come to bat just 351 times this season. If he plays out the minor-league season and starts 13 of 15 game,s averaging 4.3 plate appearances per game, he’s only going to end up with around 407 plate appearances, which isn’t quite a full season. Assuming 3.1 PA per game over 136 minor-league games, one arrives at 422 PA as the standard for the high minors. Even if the Blue Jays brought Guerrero to the big leagues — more on that later — and gave him 20 starts, he’d still end up at roughly 493 plate appearances, just short of the 502 needed to qualify for the MLB batting title.

To determine Guerrero’s chances at hitting .400 in the minor league season, we have to approximate Guerrero’s talent level against minor leaguers. He has a .389 total batting average between Double-A and Triple-A with a .339 average in only 71 Triple-A plate appearances. With 56 presumed plate appearances left in the minor-league season, we can expect him to take six walks, which would be consistent with his 10% walk rate this season.

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Houston Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow is a very smart man. There’s not much dispute about that – he has an MBA (from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management) and degrees in economics and engineering. He’s developed a reputation for being well-prepared.

So after the club acquired Roberto Osuna for Ken Giles at the deadline, columnist Lance Zierlein was well justified when he wrote that “[t]here is no way the Astros haven’t done their homework on Osuna.” And while the organization’s public-relations department appears to have confused the word willfully with willingly (otherwise, this statement regarding Osuna would have a markedly different meaning), even Luhnow himself noted that his own office’s due diligence on Osuna was “unprecedented.” There’s no reason to doubt him.

That said, there are certain outcomes for which no amount of preparation can ultimately account — and that’s relevant to Osuna’s future with the Astros, because, while the right-hander has been punished by Major League Baseball, his criminal case in Canada remains pending. And the outcome of that case could have real consequences on Osuna’s career.

Osuna, for his part, doesn’t want to talk about it, “declin[ing] to provide specifics about the incident” according to ESPN’s Alden Gonzalez. There are multiple reasons why Osuna would refuse to address the charge. To avoid conflicts with an ongoing case, for example. Or to avoid revisiting an episode about which he’s ashamed.

Finally, it could be part of a legal strategy. As Gonzalez notes in his piece, Osuna’s attorney, Domenic Basile, “has entered a not guilty plea on Osuna’s behalf and is reportedly seeking a peace bond that would essentially drop the charges in exchange for good behavior.”

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Roberto Osuna made his major-league debut in 2015. Since then, among all relievers with at least 100 innings, he ranks in the 88th percentile in park-adjusted ERA. Even better, he ranks in the 95th percentile in park-adjusted FIP, and he ranks in the 95th percentile in strikeout-minus-walk rate. For the most part, when Osuna has been able to pitch, he’s been very, very good, and he’s blossomed into one of the game’s better closers. It’s just that he hasn’t pitched in the majors since May 6. Not because of an injury — Osuna’s arm, presumably, is just fine. Rather, he’s currently serving out a 75-game suspension for domestic violence. He’s eligible to return this coming weekend.

The Astros want for Osuna to return wearing their uniform. And so Monday has brought news of a trade.

Astros get:

• Roberto Osuna

Blue Jays get:

• Ken Giles
• David Paulino
• Hector Perez

The Astros are trying to repeat as World Series champions, and they identified an opportunity to land a cost-controlled, elite young reliever. Osuna’s controlled another two years after this one. The Blue Jays, meanwhile, identified an opportunity to buy low on a cost-controlled, potentially elite reliever. Giles is also controlled another two years after this one. Paulino and Perez, as well, are intriguing power-armed prospects. As a baseball trade, there’s enough here to be fascinating. But this isn’t just a baseball trade.

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Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In the nineteenth installment of this series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Marco Estrada, Brad Hand, and Jake Odorizzi — on how they learned and/or developed a specific pitch.

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Marco Estrada (Blue Jays) on His Changeup

“I never really threw a changeup in high school or college. When I got to High-A, I met a kid named Clint Everts who threw a really good changeup, so I asked him how he held his. It was a pretty simple grip. I grabbed it and threw it a couple of times, and it came out pretty good. I actually took it into a game two or three days after that, and got a lot of swings and misses on it. That’s basically where it began.

“The way I hold it has been the same ever since, although I feel the action on it has been a little different lately — last year and this year. There’s a lot of talk about the balls being different and whatnot, and maybe that’s affecting it a little bit? But I just don’t feel that it’s been what it was. There are days where I throw a good one and kind of tell myself, “What did I do different?’ It felt the exact same, so, is it the ball? I don’t know what it could be.

Marco Estrada’s changeup grip.

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Eugenio Suárez played in the All-Star Game earlier this month, so in some respects he’s not under the radar. But in many ways, he really is. The Cincinnati Reds third baseman is slashing .301/.387/.581, and he leads the National League in both wRC+ and RBIs. Were he playing in a bigger market, those numbers would make him… well, a star. Which he is… in relative anonymity.

Opposing pitchers certainly know who he is, and that’s been especially true this past week. Going into last night, Suárez had homered in five consecutive games, raising his season total to 24. That’s two fewer than last year’s career high, which came in his third season in Cincinnati. Count the Tigers’ former brain trust among those who didn’t see this coming. In December 2014, Detroit traded the then-23-year-old to the Reds for (gulp), Alfredo Simon.

“I don’t think anything has really changed,” Suárez claimed when I asked him about his evolution as a hitter. “I just play baseball like I did before. I’ve always been able to hit, just not for power like last year and this year.”

He attributes the power surge to maturity and hard work in the offseason. Asked to compare his current self to the 17-year-old kid who signed out of Venezuela in 2008, Suárez said the biggest difference is physicality. Read the rest of this entry »

The Blue Jays’ made their first move of the deadline last night, sending late-inning reliever Seung Hwan Oh to Colorado for two minor leaguers, CF Forrest Wall and 1B Chad Spanberger. They made their second one this afternoon, exchanging LHP J.A. Happ for IF Brandon Drury and Triple-A left fielder Billy McKinney of the Yankees.

Wall was a comp-round pick out of high school and played second base because of a 40 arm on which he underwent shoulder surgery as an amateur. He’s since moved to center field and is still the advanced hitter he was as a prep, but the game power hasn’t showed up yet and he’s had some minor injuries along with some streakiness. Given the complications along the way, Wall probably ends up as a hit-first, multi-positional fourth outfielder, with some chance of less (an up/down guy) or more (low-end everyday center fielder for a few years). He’s maintained his 45 FV preseason grade.

Spanberger had a hot finish to his draft year last spring at Arkansas, showing off his 70-grade lefty raw power. He’s a late-count power guy who will always strike out some and occasionally gets overeager to launch one, chasing at times. He’s below average in terms of speed, defense, and positional value — and he also has some contact questions — so the power needs to show up in games and he needs to be patient enough to allow it to happen. He’s 22 in Low-A, so he’ll also need to move quicker to avoid becoming a Quad-A slugger or pinch-hitter, the latter of which is a luxury for which most teams don’t have a roster spot. He’s a soft 40 FV, but that will likely change given how he performs next year against more advanced pitching.

McKinney was a first-rounder in 2013 by Oakland and was traded for Addison Russell in an exchange with the Cubs, then again in 2016 to the Yankees in the Aroldis Chapman deal. He’s been a similar player the whole time, a medium-framed left-field-only defender with fringe to average speed, a 40 arm, and an average glove in left. What’s changed is that, in the past few seasons, he’s gone from a line-drive, hit-over-power type (which would probably make him a platoon/bench player) to a power-over-hit type with lift (which fits more in today’s game). With this shift, the outcome looks something like a soft 50 hit grade with 55 game power and a 50 glove, the lefty-hitting side of a solid platoon — and with no service time, to boot. He’s still a 40+ FV for us, as some stuff still needs to go well in the big leagues to turn into a 45+ or 50 FV type player, and there’s no margin for error given his profile.

A day after Boston added starting-pitch depth from the Rays in the form Nate Eovaldi, the Yankees have followed suit this afternoon with another AL East team, acquiring left-hander J.A. Happ from Toronto in exchange for infielder Brandon Drury and outfielder Billy McKinney.

While this trade doesn’t preclude the Yankees from making a splashier acquisition for a starting pitcher, it wouldn’t surprise me if Happ is the only significant addition to the New York rotation. The team’s been linked to Cole Hamels in recent weeks, but that seems a curiously unsatisfying acquisition from New York’s perspective. At this point, Hamels’ reputation is still mostly derived from what he did in Philadelphia and, after a so-so 2017, he’s been hit hard and often in 2018. It’s tempting to disregard the inflated HR/FB rate as a fluke, but his 44.9% hard-hit rate this year is the second-highest among qualifiers — this after he set a career high in 2017. Now, that’s not enough to doom a pitcher by itself — Zack Greinke and Patrick Corbin are up there too and having fine seasons — but it does lend support to the notion that his homers allowed aren’t flukes.

Getting hit hard is a risk in Yankee Stadium, and the point of these types of deadline trades isn’t to maximize upside but rather to find some certainty. No, Happ wasn’t really the sixth-best starter in his 20-4, 3.18 ERA Cy Young-contending year in 2015, but he’s also a fairly safe pitcher at this point, one who has already been playing in the AL East and experienced plenty of success. The Yankees aren’t trying to make a David Price or a Johnny Cueto trade here; rather, they’re looking for someone more dependable than Sonny Gray to slot after Luis Severino, Masahiro Tanaka, and CC Sabathia down the stretch. Fourth starters do tend to make an appearance in the playoffs and, should the Yankees reach the ALDS — which our odds says isn’t about 70% likely to occure — it’s difficult to imagine they’d be comfortable turning to Gray, who has failed to complete the fifth inning in seven of his 19 starters in 2018. And with it looking more and more likely the Yankees are the first Wild Card rather than the AL East winner, that extra Wild Card game means they’re even more likely to require the services of that fourth starter.

In the ZiPS playoff odds, the addition of Happ to the rotation boosts the team by about a win over the course the rest of the season, moving their divisional odds from 23% to 28% in the projections. ZiPS believe the Yankees are a slightly better team than the Red Sox, but the 5.5 games baked into the cake, so to speak, are telling here. This is more a depth move for the Yankees than something intended to upend any playoff scenarios.

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