Archive for Diamondbacks

David Ross was 38 years old and still strapping on the tools of ignorance when he was featured here at FanGraphs in February 2016. The title of the piece was David Ross: Future Big League Manager, and as many in the industry had suggested it would, that supposition soon came to fruition. The longtime catcher is currently embarking on what will be his fourth season at the helm of the Chicago Cubs. I recently asked Ross how he approaches the job philosophically now that he’s firmly in the trenches.

“My style — the way I approach being a manager — is leadership and direction, but I’m also still a player at heart,” Ross told me. “I understand what these guys are going through, competing for jobs and different roles. Communicating through that as a former player, someone who experienced it, I can relate to them. I try to keep a player’s mindset as part of my decision-making.”

Jed Hoyer was the club’s General Manager when the Cubs hired Ross following the 2019 season. I asked the now President of Baseball Operations about the process that informed that decision. Read the rest of this entry »

Every time a young star signs a contract extension, we all breathlessly mention the total guarantee. Did you hear Corbin Carroll is getting one hundred and ten million dollars? You could buy a pretty nice house with that, or several nice houses, or live comfortably for the rest of your life and set your kids up to succeed in the bargain. It’s natural to focus on something like that. It is, after all, the main part of the deal.

In almost every one of these extensions, there’s an additional feature: one or more years of team options tacked on to the end of the contract. Our collective analytical view of those tends to be more or less a shrug. “Oh, yeah, and two team options, so that’s nice,” we say, or “well, that makes sense.” I wouldn’t call our evaluations of these options particularly nuanced.

I don’t think that’s going to change on the whole, but the Carroll extension spurred me to at least delve a little deeper into the dollars and cents side of those team options. I’ve already done some work on opt outs from the player perspective, and conveniently enough, I can lift a lot of the mathematical methods from that treatment and use them to evaluate things from the team side. Read the rest of this entry »

The Diamondbacks left a huge hole in their outfield when they traded Daulton Varsho to Toronto a few days before Christmas. He was not only Arizona’s leader in position player WAR but also the top defensive outfielder in baseball in 2022, according to UZR and outs above average. He brought back a significant haul— an elite young catcher in Gabriel Moreno and a potent corner bat in Lourdes Gurriel Jr. — but left a significant hole to fill in the outfield. Will Diamondbacks pitchers suddenly suffer endless bloop hits and doubles to the gap in his absence?

“There have been times when I’ve been in center, Alek’s been in left, Corbin’s been in right, kind of mismatching all over,” says Jake McCarthy. “When there’s a ball in the gap or over someone’s head, you never assume it’s a hit.”

There’s plenty of competition for playing time among Diamondbacks outfielders this spring. But in an ideal world, Arizona will line up with McCarthy and the two teammates he mentioned — Corbin Carroll and Alek Thomas — to form the fastest outfield in baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve reached the point in the offseason when it’s time for one of my favorite/most hated preseason traditions: my attempt to predict breakouts and busts. Since those are beyond what a projection system suggests are naturally going to be low-probability outcomes, there’s a high probability of me looking pretty silly — something writers generally try to avoid. Let’s start by looking back at how smart I was last year…or how foolish:

Thank goodness I had a weaker year than average overall, as I included a few of my favorite players in the mix! Being right for breakouts is a lot of fun, but being right on the busts is a bit depressing, a definite sign that I’ve mellowed as I enter middle age. Trout’s contact rate didn’t bounce back, and his BABIP crashed by well over 100 points, but his newfound grounder proclivity disappeared, and the power boost more than compensated for an OBP nearly 50 points below his career average. Riley’s BABIP also predictably fell, but he hit the ball harder and became a more well-rounded hitter, crushing most pitches instead of predominantly fastballs. Most of the rest came in at the middle-third of the ZiPS projections, which is a victory for the computer rather than me — all that is except for Schwindel, who didn’t just regress toward the mean; he lapped it.

Now, let’s turn to this year’s picks, as I throw myself upon the tender mercies of fortune. Read the rest of this entry »

Spring is for extensions. As surely as swallows flock to Capistrano or salmon charge upstream, major league teams spend February and March offering their young stars sackfuls of money in exchange for years of team control. Sure enough, the Diamondbacks and Corbin Carroll followed the path of least resistance over the weekend in agreeing to an eight-year deal worth $111 million, with a ninth-year option for $28 million and $20 million in various contract incentives.

That sounds like a lot of money. Carroll, after all, has only played 32 games in the major leagues and has accrued only 772 professional plate appearances. But do the math, and you can see why Arizona offered this deal, and also why Carroll accepted it.

Carroll isn’t some random recent debut. He’s the number two prospect in baseball, a power-contact-speed-and-defense threat who has dismantled every level of competition he’s faced. That includes the major leagues; that 32-game debut saw Carroll hit .260/.330/.500 with superlative baserunning and defense. He looked like an All-Star right away, and truthfully, he’s always looked like an All-Star. That’s how you end up as the number two prospect in baseball as a 5-foot-10 outfielder so quickly despite missing nearly two consecutive seasons of playing time thanks to the pandemic and then injury. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an evaluation of the prospects in the Arizona Diamondbacks farm system who readers should consider “imminent big leaguers,” players who can reasonably be expected to play in the majors at some point this year. This includes all prospects on the 40-man roster as well as those who have already established themselves in the upper levels of the minors but aren’t yet rostered. Any Top 100 prospects, regardless of their ETA, are also included on this list. Reports, tool grades, and scouting information for all of the prospects below can also be found on The Board.

This is not a top-to-bottom evaluation of the Diamondbacks farm system. I like to include what’s happening in minor league and extended spring training in my reports as much as possible, since scouting high concentrations of players in Arizona and Florida allows me to incorporate real-time, first-person information into the org lists. However, this approach has led to some situations where outdated analysis (or no analysis at all) was all that existed for players who had already debuted in the majors. Skimming the imminent big leaguers off the top of a farm system will allow this time-sensitive information to make its way onto the site more quickly, better preparing readers for the upcoming season, helping fantasy players as they draft, and building site literature on relevant prospects to facilitate transaction analysis in the event that trades or injuries foist these players into major league roles. There will still be a Diamondbacks prospect list that includes Deyvison De Los Santos, Yu-Min Lin, and all of the other prospects in the system who appear to be at least another season away. As such, today’s list includes no ordinal rankings. Readers are instead encouraged to focus on the players’ Future Value (FV) grades. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Manny Machado’s extension, whether the Padres have spending constraints, and what the team’s future might look like, then (18:51) discuss their impressions of the pitch clock in spring training so far and offer a brief update on their podcast editor search (30:42). After that, they continue their 2023 season preview series by discussing the St. Louis Cardinals (33:55) with Katie Woo of The Athletic, and the Arizona Diamondbacks (1:09:31) with Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic, plus a Past Blast from 1974 (1:44:41).

Audio intro: Robyn Hitchcock, “1974”
Audio interstitial 1: Ween, “Stay Forever”
Audio interstitial 2: Rotten Mind, “Serpent Eyes”
Audio outro: David Crosby, “1974”

Link to Dan S. on Machado
Link to MLBTR on Machado
Link to WaPo on the Padres
Link to payroll breakdown
Link to next year’s FA class
Link to Colbert Stat Blast
Link to game-ending violation video
Link to game-ending violation story
Link to Sawchik’s game-time thread
Link to Ben on spring training
Link to Jeff on spring training pace
Link to FanGraphs playoff odds
Link to Cardinals offseason tracker
Link to Cardinals depth chart
Link to Katie’s spring preview
Link to Katie on players to watch
Link to Katie on bounceback players
Link to Katie’s author archive
Link to D-backs offseason tracker
Link to Diamondbacks depth chart
Link to BJOL regression article
Link to Nick’s spring preview
Link to Nick’s author archive
Link to 1974 article source
Link to 1959 article source
Link to Trueman’s CSUN page
Link to Trueman’s book
Link to Trueman’s other book
Link to David Lewis’s Twitter
Link to David Lewis’s Substack
Link to Britton on Mets pickoffs
Link to Woodward on Mets pickoffs

 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
 Twitter Account
 EW Subreddit
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Harry Ford is one of the top prospects in the Seattle Mariners organization, and he is also unique among his peers. Born Harrison Michael Ford, in Atlanta, 20 years ago this week, the right-handed-hitting catcher is the son of English immigrants. His mother spent her childhood in London, while his father — “a real Brit; he still has an accent”— came to the U.S. a little over two decades ago from Oxford. Moreover, his multi-national upbringing included his family’s having hosted exchange students from Argentina, Brazil, and Germany.

If the above list of countries has you wondering if football — soccer to us here in the States — has been a part of his life, the answer is yes. Ford’s father is a huge Arsenal fan who used to play in a competitive men’s league, while the youngster impressed on the pitch in his schoolboy days before turning his full attention to baseball. Given that Ford is a muscular 5-foot-10, 200-pounds and has been called a unicorn due to the speed that augments his frame, how good might he have been had he pursued his father’s favorite sport rather than America’s national pastime?

“I think I’d go crazy in soccer!” was Ford’s fun-loving (and quite possibly accurate) response to that question, meaning that he would excel. Instead he is excelling on the diamond, and he’s doing so at a position that belies his athleticism. How he found himself wearing the tools of ignorance was a matter of happenstance.

“I was always a third baseman, but when I was eight or 10 we needed someone to play catcher,” explained Ford, whom the Mariners took 12th overall in the 2021 draft. “I remember that there was this royal blue, really ugly gear, and I was like, ‘I’ll try it. Why not? ‘I got back there and liked it, and haven’t left it since.”

As uncommon as it is for elite athletes to end up behind the plate, it has been an even less common destination for African Americans. Black catchers have been few and far between in MLB history. To Ford’s mind, “It will be cool to change that stigma.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Arizona Diamondbacks currently have one of baseball’s best farm systems and an improved player development system is playing a big role in its success. Led by Josh Barfield since 2019, the department has seen the likes of Corbin Carroll and Alek Thomas make their big league debuts in just the past year, and other high-ceiling prospects — Jordan Lawlar is among the notables — are coming fast. Moreover, the pipeline includes not just position players, but also promising pitchers. Playing in a powerhouse division that includes the Dodgers, Giants, and Padres, the D-backs will be counting on their young core as they strive to reach the postseason for the first time since 2017.

Barfield discussed a few of the team’s top prospects, and a pair of under-the-radar players to keep an eye on, in a recent phone call.

———

David Laurila: You had a relatively short playing career. Looking through the lens of your current job, how might you have been better developed?

Josh Barfield: “That’s a good question. I think having a better understanding of what I did well, the areas that I struggled in, and spending more time on [the latter]. A lot of times, guys will… it’s always fun to work on the things you’re good at, but I think the best players — the most talented ones I’ve been around — have done a really good job of recognizing their weaknesses and attacking those areas on a daily basis. Offensively, defensively, whether it’s a movement efficiency… training today is just so much more individualized compared to 20 years ago when I was coming up.” Read the rest of this entry »

Josh Barfield had a relatively short big league career. Now the farm director for the Arizona Diamondbacks, the 40-year-old son of 1980s outfielder Jesse Barfield played for the San Diego Padres in 2006, and for the Cleveland Indians from 2007-2009. I asked the erstwhile infielder whom he considers the most talented of his former teammates.

“I think I’d have to say Grady Sizemore,” replied Barfield. “He was ridiculously talented. He could do just about everything on the field. Probably the best player overall — the best career — was Mike Piazza, but for pure talent it would be Grady.”

Sizemore debuted with Cleveland and accumulated 27.3 WAR — — only Albert Pujols, Chase Utley, and Alex Rodriguez had more — from 2005-2008 in his age 22-25 seasons. He made three All-Star teams, won two Gold Gloves, and logged a 129 wRC+ with 107 home runs and 115 stolen bases over that four-year-stretch. A string of injuries followed, torpedoing what might have been a brilliant career. When all was said and done, Sizemore had just 29.7 WAR.

Other former teammates who stand out for Barfield were Adrian Gonzalez, Mike Cameron, and Victor Martinez, the last of whom he called the most gifted hitter of the group. Read the rest of this entry »