Below are the updated summer top-10 prospect lists for the orgs in the American League East. I have notes beneath the top 10s explaining why some of these prospects have moved up or down. For detailed scouting information on individual players, check out the player’s profile page which may include tool grades and/or links to Daily Prospect Notes posts in which they’ve appeared this season. For detailed info on players drafted or signed this year, check out our sortable boards.

Baltimore Orioles (Preseason List)

1. Chance Sisco, C
2. D.L. Hall, LHP
3. Ryan Mountcastle, OF
4. Austin Hays
5. Cedric Mullins, OF
6. Cody Sedlock, RHP
7. Keegan Akin, LHP
8. Hunter Harvey, RHP
9. Jomar Reyes, 3B
10. Anthony Santander, OF/1B

Read the rest of this entry »

CLEVELAND — When I asked Josh Donaldson about being a founding father of the fly-ball revolution recently in the visiting clubhouse at Progressive Field, he re-directed the credit. The creator of the air-ball, upper-cut philosophy was Ted Williams, he noted.

Donaldson knows his history.

Williams, of course, co-authored the book The Science of Hitting. He talked about impacting the lower half of the ball. It seems like that should be required reading for all professional hitters, but I wonder what is the actual percentage of pro hitters who have read the book?

What is interesting to this author is how Donaldson arrived at his philosophy. It wasn’t from watching grainy black-and-white video of Williams. In my conversation with the right-handed slugger, he did not reference having read Williams’ thoughts as being the impetus for his belief changes. No, Donaldson arrived and adopted the #GroundballsSuck concept through what he describes as his “first love”: golf. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is a ranking of the prospects traded this month, tiered by our Future Value scale. A reminder that there’s lots of room for argument as to how these players line up, especially within the same FV tier. If you need further explanation about FV, bang it here and here. Full writeups of the prospects are linked next to their names. If the player didn’t receive an entire post, I’ve got a brief scouting report included below. Enjoy.
Read the rest of this entry »

Evaluating relievers is difficult given their small sample of work in any given year and their volatility from year to year. But, given the fact that the most active sector of the trade deadline ended up being relievers, it makes sense to put them all in one place and wonder who got the best one. Might there be a surprising answer since the Padres ended up holding Brad Hand’s production on their roster?

Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros acquired Francisco Liriano in exchange for Nori Aoki and Teoscar Hernandez. Below are the projections for Hernandez, who is the sole prospect headed to the Blue Jays. WAR figures account for the player’s first six major-league seasons. KATOH denotes the stats-only version of the projection system, while KATOH+ denotes the methodology that includes a player’s prospect rankings.

Teoscar Hernandez, RF (Profile)

KATOH: 3.9 WAR (93rd overall prospect)

KATOH+: 4.7 WAR (96th overall prospect)

Hernandez has technically had stints in Houston both this season and last, but has spent most of 2017 with the Astros’ Triple-A affiliate. He only played one game with the Astros this season, coming in as a defensive replacement for Carlos Beltran. In Triple-A, he flashed his typical power-speed combination, racking up 12 homers and 12 steals in 79 games (though he was caught stealing seven times). In addition to his power and speed, Hernandez also draws a healthy amount of walks and has played solid right-field defense this year. He struck out in an acceptable 21% of plate appearances this year, which is a huge improvement from where he was a few years ago. Read the rest of this entry »

Cleveland’s bullpen has been very good this season, but it could still be improved upon. Some of the members at the back end — or the front end, depending on your perspective — could be upgraded. Enter Joe Smith, who was acquired from Toronto as we entered the final hour before the trade deadline this afternoon.

Here’s the deal, with details from Cleveland.com’s Paul Hoynes:
Read the rest of this entry »

For a second straight deadline period, Francisco Liriano is reportedly on the move. This time the lefty is heading from the Blue Jays to the Astros for outfielder Nori Aoki and a outfield prospect Teoscar Hernandez

The #Astros are on verge of acquiring Francisco Liriano from #Bluejays, but deal not yet complete. @Ken_Rosenthal 1st mentioned in talks

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) July 31, 2017

Read the rest of this entry »

Monday’s non-waiver trade deadline is a mere five days away. As it nears, we’ll be treated to all the rumors and hypothetical proposals the internet is capable of providing. Many of them will be nonsensical. Some won’t. In every case, though, we’re likely to evaluate the likelihood of a prospective deal based on the same sort of variables considered by Dave Cameron in his annual Trade Value series — variables like projected WAR, salary, team control, etc.

But those aren’t the only factors at play when real people from real front offices attempt to work out a trade. There are other questions to ask. Which teams link up often and which teams avoid each other? What’s the role of familiarity in trade deals? Does it matter if the teams belong to the same division?

With the help of crack data and visualizations man Sean Dolinar, I went to work trying to answer some of these questions. Below are five statements supported by the historical data.

Read the rest of this entry »

Pretty much every contender in baseball is looking for a reliever or two right now. The changing strategies relating to playoff baseball mean you can never have too many quality bullpen arms, and as the Cubs showed last year, you can’t necessarily count on guys who were good in the regular season being able to still go in the postseason. Even teams with strong current bullpens are kicking the tires on available arms because you can’t be certain that what you have now will still be ready to pitch at an elite level in a few months.

Which is why the price for relievers is always pretty high this time of year. And while there aren’t many Aroldis Chapmans or Andrew Millers available right now — Zach Britton would qualify if he were definitely healthy, but the Orioles sticking with Brad Brach as their closer right now is a pretty big red flag — we’re going to see a lot of bullpen arms traded over the next two weeks. The Nationals already paid a real price to add Ryan Madson and Sean Doolittle to their beleaguered pen, and they probably aren’t done adding relievers.

With all this demand and a somewhat limited supply, it’s not easy to find a decent arm to help for the stretch run that doesn’t cost something a team really doesn’t want to give up. But I think there might be one reliever who could probably be had who might not cost a fortune and could really help a team this year and maybe in the future as well. If you’re bargain hunting for a reliever right now, I’ve got one name for you: Danny Barnes.

Read the rest of this entry »

 
At the beginning of the season, the Blue Jays were a clear playoff contender. In the American League, only Boston, Cleveland, and Houston had higher playoff odds than Toronto’s 52.1%. On June 1, those odds had dropped considerably, down to 36.3%, but were still near the top of the heap. The only other AL team that had passed them in those first two months of the season were the New York Yankees. Things improved briefly afterward, but then they took a turn south again. Let’s take a look:

That dark blue line on top represents the Blue Jays. Well, it’s on top for a portion of the graph on the left — the equivalent of a few weeks — before descending to roughly 25%, where it meets up with the rest of the pack. Now, Toronto’s no longer the top dog in the race for the second Wild Card, they’re just… dog.

All told, Toronto’s probability of qualifying for the postseason in any form has declined from 36.3% to 18.0%, including their loss yesterday in Detroit. In other words: not great.

But as Craig Edwards noted just over a month ago, there are quite a few American League clubs with a reasonable chance of claiming a Wild Card spot. Today, I’d like to focus on Toronto, specifically — and, in particular, why the odds might be in their favor.

No Strong Reason To Sell

Toronto doesn’t have a player who’s due to hit free agency after the season who’s also likely to bring back a sizable return. Some of their free agents to be — Darwin Barney, Chris Coghlan, Marco Estrada, J.P. Howell, Francisco Liriano, Miguel Montero, and Joe Smith — would fetch something of marginal value, but not the sort of package that’s going to kickstart a major rebuild.

Two of the club’s players, meanwhile — Russell Martin and Troy Tulowitzki — are well into their 30s and are signed to long-term contracts that will prevent a return of great substance. Tulowitzki might not even be tradeable at this point. As for Josh Donaldson, he would absolutely receive interest from many clubs. Given that he missed time this year and didn’t make the All-Star team, though, the Blue Jays wouldn’t exactly be selling high on him. The better strategy may be to let him remind everyone of his true MVP form and move him in the offseason.

Offense Can’t Be Any Worse

If you look at the team leaderboards, you’ll see that the Blue Jays appear near the bottom in terms of Offense. Specifically, they place 24th, when you take out pitchers’ hitting. But much of that stems from their horrid April. In April, the team’s wRC+ was just 71. It hasn’t been as bad since — 114 in May, 91 in June, and 85 in July. Obviously there’s a downward trend there since May, but April is still dragging down their season numbers. Also, some of the players who haven’t been hitting are either not playing now (Coghlan, Luke Maile) or are localized to one position (like Barney and Ryan Goins at second base).

More importantly, the projections haven’t given up on them. Our depth charts still see Toronto as possessing the seventh-best offense the rest of the way. Looking at season-to-date wOBA vs. projected rest-of-season wOBA, all of the team’s regulars save Justin Smoak and Russell Martin are expected to post wOBAs 10 points or more higher the rest of the way.

Second Base Can Be Upgraded

The depth-chart projections also reveal that the Blue Jays are projected to derive 0.0 WAR from their second-base situation the rest of the way. Literally replacement level. Devon Travis is an impressive talent, but he is frequently hurt. In his place, Barney and Goins have been a terrifyingly terrible platoon. Enter Dee Gordon rumors. It’s hard to know what the cost would be for the Marlins’ second baseman, given the possibility that the Marlins will take less if the team to which they deal him agrees to eat a bunch/all of his contract. Toronto has shown a willingness to do just that in the past, and may do so again. It would create a headache for the team when Travis is healthy enough to return, but the bet is that Travis could work his way into the outfield mix to stay in the lineup.

Gordon makes sense because he would not only be an upgrade for the rest of this season (0.6 WAR), but he’s signed to a cheap, long-term contract. But there could be other keystone players on the market. It’s not hard to see the Padres trading Yangervis Solarte or the Phillies dealing Howie Kendrick. Perhaps if Neil Walker can get back on the field the Mets will deal him. There will be options. When your current players are literally replacement-level players, then most anyone represents an upgrade. The Blue Jays can upgrade, in other words, without breaking into the vault.

The Bullpen Is Fine

One of the reasons the Blue Jays can avoid the fire sale for another year is that they really don’t need to upgrade their bullpen. As Jeff wrote last week, Roberto Osuna has been just about perfect, and with Aaron Sanchez back in the rotation, Joe Biagini is transitioning back to the bullpen. He’s working low-leverage situations for now, but it probably won’t be long before he’s back in a setup role. This is good news for Toronto. Biagini’s season splits for start vs. relief look similar now because he was rocked in his second relief stint back just before the break, but from the beginning of the season until May 3rd (before he was put in the rotation), he posted a 3.38 ERA / 2.82 FIP / 3.18 xFIP, with a 58.3% ground-ball rate and 19.7-point strikeout- and walk-rate differential (K-BB%).

Biagin will join Osuna, Danny Barnes, Joe Smith (who is set to return this week), seasoned-lefty killer Aaron Loup and less-seasoned lefty killer Jeff Beliveau. It’s not a group filled with household names, but they’ve been getting the job done. All told, they’ve been the eighth-best unit in the game by WAR.

Teams that need to spend big at the trade deadline to improve their bullpen are often in a precarious spot. Why make a big push to add players who may not make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things to aid a playoff push that may only result in one extra game? This may be the case for teams like the Mariners and Rays, but it won’t be the case for Toronto.

Aaron Sanchez

Last season, the California native posted a 3.00 ERA, and his 3.9 WAR was the 17th best among all pitchers and eighth best in the AL. This season, he’s made just seven starts and tossed just 32 innings while dealing with right-middle-finger issues. But he’s back now, and in his second start back from the disabled list on Friday, he threw six innings of one-run ball against Detroit. By Game Score v 2.0, it was his second-best start of the season, with his best coming in his season debut back in April. A healthy Sanchez will make a big difference for a starting rotation that has held its own without him.

Not much has gone right for Toronto this season. They started out as one of the favorites and have slunk further and further back to the pack as the season has progressed. But they should start hitting better, they have one of their best starting pitchers back, and they have a good bullpen. Second base is a major black hole, but it can be upgraded without costing them their future. Things have looked better for the Blue Jays, but don’t count them out just yet.