It has one grip, and one sign, but Jake Arrieta’s slider has many shapes. Ask him if it’s a slider or a cutter, and he says it’s both, and more. As much as anything was the secret to his breakout last year, the slider — in its many forms — might be the best answer.

“I can manipulate the velocity, I can manipulate the break, depending on the situation, depending on the hitter, depending on the count,” the pitcher said last week in Spring Training. Look at the movement and velocity of all the balls labeled slider or cutter by PITCHf/x over the past two years, and it just leaps out at you: it looks like he has three sliders.

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Cubs third-base prospect Kris Bryant produced one of the top minor-league seasons in recent history last year, recording a weighted batting line approximately 90% better than league average over 594 plate appearances between Double- and Triple-A while also playing a seemingly competent third base. Were minor-league WAR a thing, Bryant would have recorded the best one of those in all of affiliated baseball — roughly the equivalent of nine wins.

Largely as a result of that wildly successful 2014 season, Bryant enters 2015 featuring the top WAR projection among all rookie-eligible players — and one of the top WAR projections realistically possible for a player who’s made zero major-league appearances. His performance over the first couple weeks of spring training indicates — to the degree that spring-training performance can indicate such things — that he’s, at the very least, unlikely to be overwhelmed by major-league pitching.

Before Kris Bryant led all the minors in home runs, he led all the NCAA in home runs, too. In 2013, as a junior at the University of San Diego, Bryant hit 31 homers. That June, he was selected second overall in the draft by the Cubs. The next month, he was presented with the Golden Spikes Award.

Technically, the Golden Spikes Award is presented each year to the best amateur player in the country. In practice, however, the award has been given to a college player (either the four-year or junior-college variety) every year since its inception in 1978. Bob Horner was the Golden Spikes recipient that year following his junior campaign at Arizona State — a performance which convinced Atlanta not only to select him first overall in the draft that year, but also to send him directly to the majors, where he produced a 2.3 WAR in 359 plate appearances.

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Ask top prospect Kris Bryant about his swing, and he’ll tell you something you may have never heard before. You’ll probably also have to ask a few knowledgable people to help explain what he means.

After talking to Bryant in Spring Training last week, I asked FanGraphs prospect maven Kiley McDaniel, professional hitting consultant Dan Farnsworth, and prospect video guru Steve Fiorindo of the Prospect Pipeline to comment on the things Bryant said about his own swing. It’s an analysis of a self-analysis, if you will, with some of the moving images below provided by Carson Cistulli.

Kris Bryant: I stood straight up in high school. I haven’t changed anything since my college years, that’s when I widened out. Sophomore year I widened out so I could get to the low pitch easier. I got more power from it too because I started using my hips and legs and I was firing through the zone a lot quicker. Now that I’m wider, I have a whole lot more power.

Kiley McDaniel: I note when a batter has a low stance, since it’s easy to notice and is descriptive, but as with pitcher arm actions and the general idea of a guy’s swing, things like wide setup/power hitter, these aren’t things you can usually change with any success. So having an opinion about it in general usually doesn’t matter, since you’re so unlikely to be able to change it long-term even if you think you have a better answer.

Steve Fiorindo: I think the widening of the stance minimizes other movements, it helps for a quiet swing, but you have to be pretty strong to do it (obviously he is). Wide base, little or no stride = less opportunity for swing to break down. I know some guys like the big leg kick, (I say do whatever works for you), but the big leg kick often leads to foot getting down and body shifting weight over the front foot too so the swing breaks down and there is nothing behind it.

Dan Farnsworth: While there’s no magic distance between the feet that can create the most power in general, on the individual level it can definitely make a big difference. For Bryant, I would imagine his base being wider allows him to more easily activate his glutes than when he was more narrow.

Think of it like doing a squat with a narrow base versus a wide base. There’s certainly a sweet spot dictated by individual anatomy that allows for the quickest firing of the strongest muscles in the lower half. The swing isn’t strictly an upward move like a squat, but the same muscles utilized to push into the ground go through much of the same movement to turn that linear force (straight into the ground) into rotational force. His best position for creating power is just a reflection of how the muscles and bones in his lower half are built, and his previous swing base probably wasn’t in as optimal of a position.

Kris Bryant: It’s almost like a rubber band between your hips and your hands. Your hips go and you have your hands kept back as long as possible, until the last second, then they have to come through and so it’s like a rubber band effect, essentially.

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Kris Bryant hit two more home runs yesterday for the Chicago Cubs during the Will Ferrell extravaganza. He stands tall among prospects, ranking number one according to Kiley McDaniel. The FanGraphs Depth Charts have given him a conservative 100 games played, and he still manages to top 3 WAR. The ZiPS projections give him closer to a full season, and he tops four wins despite never having taken an at bat at the major league level. He is not even on the Cubs’ 40-man roster. Despite that inexperience, he is going to make the Cubs look very bad for sending him to the minor leagues to start the season. It brings back memories of the Los Angeles Angels in 2012 holding back Mike Trout in the minors to start the season, but Kris Bryant’s situation is very different from Mike Trout’s.

In 2012, Mike Trout, like Bryant today, was one of the very best prospects in all of baseball and likely ready to play in the majors, but the Angels sent him to Triple-A to start the season. The Angels started the season 6-14, recalled Trout from Salt Lake, went 83-59 the rest of the way, and missed the playoffs by four games. Looking back at Trout’s excellence now, it might be easy to draw the conclusion that the Angels likely make the playoffs with Trout for the entire season and that the Angels were manipulating Trout’s service time to save money. The former is impossible to determine, but the latter is highly unlikely.
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The art and science of swing mechanics is largely opaque even to those among us who watch the game regularly and/or played competitively as amateurs. Augmenting the confusion is the surfeit of coaches who, though well-intentioned, provide instruction that is sometimes in direct contradiction of those properties which physics itself suggests ought to appear within the optimal swing.

Dan Farnsworth is a swing instructor currently based in Los Angeles (although relocating to New York soon). He’s written a number of posts for FanGraphs on swing mechanics — including, most notably, a thorough documentation of the improvements J.D. Martinez had made to his swing a few months before he was signed by Detroit and proceeded to produce a nearly four-win season in 480 plate appearances.

What follows is series of three brief conversations with Farnsworth regarding swings by Cubs prospects Jorge Soler, Javier Baez, and Kris Bryant — which threesome recorded consecutive home runs, in that order, during Tuesday’s Cactus League game against Cleveland (box). In each case, the author has allowed his unbridled naivete to guide the course of conversation and relied on Farnsworth to provide clarity.

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The first thing you might notice about Kris Bryant is not the prodigious power. You’d have to watch a couple of plate appearances before you could really understand that side of him.

The first thing you would probably notice about Kris Bryant is that he’s tall. But when you ask him how that’s affected his plate discipline, you’ll stump him for a second.

At least when it comes to walks, Bryant hasn’t worried too much about having a bigger strike zone. “I haven’t been 6’5″ my whole life,” he laughed. He may not be an Eddie Stanky, but as he’s grown, he’s “figured out” his own strike zone, and begun focusing on getting to pitches in order to use his length as a strength.

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With the Red Sox recently adding Yoan Moncada to the fold last week (details and audio interview), the biggest international domino has fallen and now there’s more certainty for teams and agents going forward about what teams can spend on July 2nd. In an early draft of this article, I was going to point out that MLB still hadn’t told teams what their international bonus pools were, in an effort to discourage teams from agreeing to verbal deals since they wouldn’t know the exact figure of what they could spend. MLB sent out those figures this week, and they fell in line with what teams expected: last year’s slots with a 5-7% bump.

I reported back in December that up to 12 teams were rumored to be considering or had already put enough agreements in place to exceed their bonus pool. I conceded that nowhere near that many would do it and that looks to be true, with closer to five teams looking likely to go over, but many more looking to spend their full pool and maybe trade for a little more, along with rumors of teams considering going over in 2016. Part of the reason for the uncertainty about which teams are going over is the uncertainty surround young Cuban players.

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Earlier, I published a post including this graph:

Of all the things that stand out, perhaps nothing stands out quite like the Cubs. Over the last 10 years, they’ve won 55 fewer games than they’ve been projected to win, and while there are some quibbles you can have with blending all the years and all the projection systems, at the end of the day, projections aren’t too dissimilar and they haven’t changed super dramatically over the decade, and no one comes particularly close to matching the Cubs’ level of disappointment. At -55, they’re separated from the next-lowest team by 19 wins.

I don’t think there’s really anything predictive, here. I’d never bet on a given team beating or undershooting its next-year projection. Certainly not based on what it just did. But -55 seems worthy of investigation. What can we find out, about why this might’ve happened? What traits or events might’ve contributed to the Cubs coming off as such a disappointment?

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The Chicago Cubs scored a preliminary victory on Thursday in the lawsuit filed last month by the owners of several of the rooftops looking into Wrigley Field.  As I explained at the time the suit was filed, the case is the latest in a series of legal proceedings challenging the on-going Wrigley Field renovations, and in particular the Cubs’ construction of two new outfield scoreboards.   Unlike earlier legal challenges to the project – which are focused on trying to overturn the city’s approval of the renovation plans – the rooftop owners’ suit against the Cubs charges the team with a variety of legal violations (antitrust, defamation, unfair business practices, breach of contract).

Last week, the rooftop owners asked the court to issue a temporary restraining order (“TRO”) preventing the team from building the scoreboards until the case is resolved.  Following four hours of argument on Wednesday, Judge Virginia Kendall issued a decision on Thursday morning denying the rooftops’ request, helping clear the way for the Cubs to move forward with construction of the disputed scoreboards.

In order to receive a TRO, the rooftops generally had to show that they: 1) were likely to prevail in the case, and 2) would suffer an “irreparable” injury (i.e., one that cannot be fully remedied by money) if the restraining order was not granted.  The rooftop owners believed they had established both requirements, arguing in particular that the imminent construction of the scoreboards would destroy their business. Meanwhile, the Cubs argued that the rooftops were unlikely to prevail on any of the claims they had asserted in the lawsuit, and that they could easily be compensated for any damage to their business resulting from the construction of the scoreboards through the payment of monetary damages.

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Yesterday, we gave you a little bit of a tease, giving you a glimpse into the making of FanGraphs Top 200 Prospect List. This morning, however, we present the list in its entirety, including scouting grades and reports for every prospect rated as a 50 Future Value player currently in the minor leagues. As discussed in the linked introduction, some notable international players were not included on the list, but their respective statuses were discussed in yesterday’s post. If you haven’t read any of the prior prospect pieces here on the site, I’d highly encourage you to read the introduction, which explains all of the terms and grades used below.

Additionally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you towards our YouTube channel, which currently holds over 600 prospect videos, including all of the names near the top of this list. Players’ individual videos are linked in the profiles below as well.

And lastly, before we get to the list, one final reminder that a player’s placement in a specific order is less important than his placement within a Future Value tier. Numerical rankings can give a false impression of separation between players who are actually quite similar, and you shouldn’t get too worked up over the precise placement of players within each tier. The ranking provides some additional information, but players in each grouping should be seen as more or less equivalent prospects.

If you have any questions about the list, I’ll be chatting today at noon here on the site (EDIT: here’s the chat transcript), and you can find me on Twitter at @kileymcd.

Alright, that’s enough stalling. Let’s get to this.

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