The Cardinals are trying to trade for Giancarlo Stanton. They’ve made no secret of their off-season plan to consolidate some of their young talent into a trade for an impact hitter, and Stanton seems to be Plan A. But they aren’t the only team trying to trade for the reigning NL MVP, and reports have suggested the Giants might be the most aggressive bidder so far. Additionally, Stanton might have some preference for playing on the west coast, and since he has a full no-trade clause, Stanton could just veto a trade to STL if he thought he had some chance of going to SF instead.

So the Cardinals might want Giancarlo Stanton and even line up best with the Marlins in a trade, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. And thus, the Cardinals should have some kind of Plan B. So let me suggest that, while the Blue Jays continue to say they aren’t trading their star player, the Cardinals should be pestering Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins about making a deal for Josh Donaldson.

Because a Donaldson-to-STL trade might make even more sense than a Stanton trade.

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Not every team approaches the offseason looking to get better in the same way. That much is obvious: budget alone can dictate much of a club’s activity on the free-agent market. A little bit less obvious, though, is how the present quality of a team’s roster can affect the players they pursue. Teams that reside on a certain part of the win curve, for example, need that next win more than teams on other parts. That can inform a team’s decisions in the offseason.

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“The best for the group comes when everyone in the group does what’s best for himself and the group.”

–American mathematician John Nash

Shohei Ohtani is fascinating for a number of reasons. We start with the dual talent, of course.

While injury limited him to just five starts as a pitcher in 2017, he struck out 29 and allowed only 13 hits in 25.1 innings — as a 22-year-old. He produced a .332/.403/.540 slash line in 230 plate appearances. In 2016, he went 10-4 with a 1.86 ERA over 20 starts in the NPB. He struck out 174 and walked 45 in 140 innings. He also OPS’d 1.004 with 22 home runs in 323 at-bats in 104 games.

He was named the league’s best pitcher and best DH.

While Clay Davenport’s deadly accurate statistical translations don’t appear to be available for 2017 NPB play, Davenport’s 2016 translations are available to the public.

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When a baseball player dies, as Roy Halladay did yesterday, it can be difficult to know what to say. I never met Roy Halladay. I don’t have any personal anecdotes to share or any insight into who he was as a person. I don’t know his family. I only knew him through the television, when I watched him work. And you can’t really know a person that way.

The people that really did know Roy Halladay seemed enamored of him. In awe of him, not just as a player, but as a person. In the last 24 hours, the universal reaction within the baseball community has been that the game lost not just a guy who was great at pitching, but an ambassador for the sport. The stories that have emerged are both heartbreaking and inspiring. Stories like Jayson Werth’s:

“For a guy that was very serious, quiet and reserved, I can remember it like it was yesterday, the look on his face to see us waiting for him to celebrate together,” Werth said. “He loved the game but played for his teammates, for us to love him back like that you could tell it meant a lot. I’d never seen him so genuinely happy. I’ll never forget the expression on his face.”

I never got to see that Roy Halladay. Most of us probably don’t have that kind of connection with him, but yet, there is still the natural desire to mourn. For most of us, Roy Halladay wasn’t really part of our lives anymore, but it still feels like we lost something. So, today, while acknowledging that our loss cannot compare to the sort endured by those who knew him in a more personal way, I’d like to honor the Roy Halladay I did know.

This guy.

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Ten months ago, Jose Bautista hit the free-agent market. Even coming off a down year, he looked like one of the best hitters available. However, Bautista was caught up in the cratering market for bat-only sluggers and, after a few months of just moderate interest, eventually re-signed with the Blue Jays on a one-year deal.

Now, with that contract expiring in a few weeks, it looks quite possible that not only will Jose Bautista not be returning to Toronto next year, but we might be seeing the last few weeks of Bautista’s major-league career.

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No respectable prospect list has ever read as a leaderboard of minor-league on-base percentages. There are a million other important considerations, details that help to fill out a profile. That being said, the best hitting prospects tend to avoid making too many outs, and when you don’t make outs, you get a high OBP. Vladimir Guerrero Jr.‘s OBP this year was .425. Bo Bichette‘s OBP was .423. Lewis Brinson’s OBP was .400, and Rhys Hoskins‘ OBP was .385. Scouts are always repeating that minor-league numbers aren’t that important, but then, minor-league competition is awfully good, and the numbers show who’s most often winning the battles.

Guerrero and Bichette are both in the Blue Jays organization, and they’re considered two of the better position-player prospects anywhere. They wrapped up their seasons with High-A Dunedin, but the teenagers opened with Single-A Lansing. Down there, they were the stars of the roster, but they had one particularly unusual teammate. A teammate who fell short of Guerrero’s OBP by only four points. This player reached base in more than two-fifths of his plate appearances. He also registered a hit in barely one-fifth of his at-bats. He knocked all of one single home run, out of just about 300 opportunities. There’s nobody else quite like Nick Sinay.

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

8/23

Mike O’Reilly, RHP, St. Louis (Profile)
Level: Hi-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: NR  Top 100: NR
Line: 6 IP, 9 H, 0 BB, 2 R, 7 K

Notes
A 27th rounder out of Flagler College last year, O’Reilly was promoted to High-A Palm Beach in late July after a dominant four-game stretch of Midwest League starts that included a complete game, one-hit, 12-strikeout performance. O’Reilly doesn’t throw all that hard, sitting 88-91, but he’s deceptive, he can locate his breaking ball for strikes, and he flashes a plus changeup. There’s some risk that O’Reilly’s fastball won’t be effective against upper-level hitters, but he has quality secondary stuff, throws strikes, and overall has a profile in line with valuable upper-level pitching depth.

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

Victor Robles, CF, Washington (Profile)
Level: Double-A   Age: 20   Org Rank: 1  Top 100: 8
Line: 3-for-5, 2B, HR, SB

Notes
Robles is slashing .320/.375/.505 since his promotion to Double-A and has tallied a career-high 51 extra-base hits already this year. Many of those are doubles hooked down the left-field line that Robles turns into extra bases because of his plus-plus speed. Though he still has occasional lapses out there right now, that speed is likely to make Robles a very good defensive center fielder at maturity as he runs down balls in the gaps that many center fielders cannot. Scouts anticipate Robles will hit around .300 with some pop — though probably not quite as much as he’s shown this year — while playing good defense in center field. As a point of reference, Lorenzo Cain, a good defensive center fielder, has slashed .295/.360/.440 this season with strikeout and walk rates within 1% of Robles’ career marks. Cain has generated 3.3 WAR in 119 games this year. That appears to be a very reasonable outcome for Robles, who is one of baseball’s best prospects.

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Marcus Stroman is one of the very best pitchers in baseball. Since the beginning of last season, his 6.7 WAR is 13th in the league, right behind Jon Lester, Stephen Strasburg, and Jose Quintana — and just ahead of Jacob deGrom, Madison Bumgarner, and Zack Greinke. If you’re a believer in ERA, you probably didn’t think much of his 4.37 mark last year but are much more impressed by this season’s 2.99 figure. His FIP has remained steady, right around 3.70.

Despite a listed height of 5-foot-8, Stroman has recorded one of the league’s higher average fastball velocities. While there’s typically a relationship between velocity and strikeouts, that’s never been integral to Stroman’s success. His game is about inducing ground balls. It works well for him, but it does also leave room for some to regard him as something less than an ace.

As far as the ground-balling goes, Stroman’s elite. His 60.1% ground-ball rate topped all pitchers last season. He’s actually improved upon that figure this year, recording a 62.6% rate so far. The right-hander’s 61.2% ground-ball rate in 2016 and 2017 is the second-highest over a two-year period (min. 300 innings pitched) this decade behind Dallas Keuchel’s 62.6% mark in 2014 and 2015. Tim Hudson is the only other pitcher to exceed 60% grounders over a two-year period since 2010.

Inducing a lot of ground balls is a good thing, largely because ground balls can’t become homers. Stroman’s 0.87 HR/9 over the last two years is indicative of that; it places second among qualified starters only to Michael Fulmer’s 0.80 mark. Even after dropping the inning requirement to 250, Stroman sits behind only Fulmer, Clayton Kershaw and Kyle Hendricks. Stroman’s ability to limit homers helps make him one of the league’s better pitchers, even without an abundance of swings and misses.

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I have followed Justin Smoak’s career with interest.

Before I was covering major league baseball, I reported on college athletics in South Carolina, first covering the Chanticleers of Coastal Carolina and later Clemson. During this period, Smoak became regarded as one of the best college players in the game while at the University of South Carolina. Mark Teixeira comps were being placed on him and some felt the Texas Rangers got a steal when he fell to the 11th overall pick in the 2008 draft. He was a switch hitter with power, batting skills and plate discipline. Read the rest of this entry »