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

These daily notes are going to be different/sporadic this week, as I’ll be in Southern California for the Area Code Games in Long Beach and then PG All American in San Diego over the weekend. In today’s edition, I’ve got notes on some of the players I saw in Arizona over the weekend, and a reflection on a few specific aspects of our process as it relates to pitcher injuries.

First, a look at Dodgers lefty Julio Urias, who is rehabbing from surgery to repair a tear of his left shoulder’s anterior caspule. Urias threw 1.2 innings against the White Sox’ AZL team on Saturday in his second rehab appearance of the summer. He allowed just one hit and struck out four. His fastball sat 88-91 and topped out at 92, well below the velocity band he has displayed throughout his career, which was typically in the 92-95 range. A scout who was in attendance at Urias’s first rehab outing earlier in the week told me they also had Urias topping out at 92, which conflicts with what was reported just after that outing. Urias’s fastball command was much better in this brief look than it was in his often frustrating big-league appearances, and it has flat, bat-missing plane up in the zone. Overall. though, it’s a 45 fastball right now.

Urias’s secondaries were a bit less crisp than pre-surgery. I saw one slider and several curveballs (flashed plus, mostly average) which were also thrown with less velocity (71-74 mph) than Urias exhibited before injury (75-80). The pitch has good depth and tight snap when it’s down, perhaps not playing within the strike zone quite as well. Urias threw a few average changeups (including a first pitch cambio that Luis Robert foul-tipped) in the 80-83 mph range, but he lacked feel for keeping the pitch down and hung several of them in the top of the strike zone or above it.

Obviously, Urias is returning from a serious shoulder injury, and it’s possible his stuff will tick up with continued work. The Dodgers expect him to contribute to the bullpen in September and he need only wield a competent breaking ball remain left-handed for the next eight weeks to do that. Long term, it’s hard to say what’s going to happen here. Urias was once 6 fastball, 6 breaking ball, above-average changeup, plus command projection. Right now he’s a bunch of 45s and 50s.

Some Thoughts on Process

Before I start discussing some process-oriented stuff on our end, I want to give newer readers a crash course on how we assign FV grades to players and what they mean. A more detailed explanation can be found here.

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The Dodgers have seemingly courted Brian Dozier for years. Last offseason, they seemed to settle for Logan Forsythe to fill their second-base needs. But the desire lingered and, in the final hour leading up to Tuesday’s 4 p.m. non-waiver trade deadline, the Dodgers and Dozier finally got together.

The price of Dozier on Tuesday was cheaper than it was two years ago when the Twins refused an offer of Jose De Leon, who was later shipped to the Rays for Forsythe. To acquire Dozier, the Dodgers sent Forsythe and minor-league pitcher Devin Smeltzer and corner bat Luke Raley to the Twins. Neither was ranked by FanGraphs among the Dodgers’ top 21 prospects in the spring.

While the cost came down, Dozier, 31, is nearly two years older and perhaps not the same player. He’s also headed to free agency after the season. Still, this is a trade about today for the Dodgers. Second base is a real need for Los Angeles, and even a subpar Dozier, whose 91 wRC+ represents a six-year low, is a real upgrade.

Dodgers second basemen have produced an anemic .213/.303/.287 slash line to date, ranking 28th in the majors in wRC+ (66) and 27th in second base WAR (-0.3). Forsythe (55 wRC+), Chase Utley (84 wRC+), and company were just not getting the job done, producing a drag effect on the lineup.

The Dodgers have ridden the game’s macro-level trends about as well as any team in recent years. They’ve manipulated the 10-day DL, have employed an opener, limited pitchers’ trips through lineups, and were willing to give more dollars and years than any other club to Rich Hill’s unconventional pitch mix two winters ago. (Hill’s usage is now becoming more and more conventional.) Justin Turner has preached the power of the air ball to teammates like Chris Taylor. In Dozier, they get another hitter with natural loft and pull-side power.

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After arriving in the majors back in 2012 as a relatively unheralded prospect, Twins second baseman Brian Dozier entered the 2018 campaign having produced five consecutive above-average seasons. The All-Star middle infielder’s 2016-17 performance (11.2 WAR) places him second among qualified second basemen during that time, behind none other than Jose Altuve. Even accounting for his 2018 struggles — a relative term, since he is still tracking for league-average performance — Dozier ranks third among all second basemen over the last three calendar years, trailing Altuve by a sizable margin and Robinson Cano by a half-win.

Roughly two-thirds of the way through a season in which the Twins expected to contend — having acquired Lance Lynn, Logan Morrison, Addison Reed (among others) all at market value or less — the Twins haven’t succeeded on that front, having struggled in a very weak AL Central. They find themselves seven games under .500 and trail the Indians by eight full games; as you might expect, they are expected to be less productive than the Indians for the remainder of the season, too.

With that serving as background, the club dealt one of their central pieces today. A combination of ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick and NBC LA’s Michael Duarte reported the deal, as follows.

Dodgers get:

• 2B Brian Dozier

Twins get:

• INF Logan Forsythe
• 1B Luke Raley
• LHP Devin Smeltzer

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Fringe Five Scoreboards: 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013.

The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a few years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.

Central to the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion among the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above who (a) was omitted from the preseason prospect lists produced by Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com, John Sickels, and (most importantly) FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel* and also who (b) is currently absent from a major-league roster. Players appearing within Longenhagen and McDaniel’s most recent update — and the updates published by Jeffrey Paternostro of Baseball Prospectus and John Sickels at Minor League Ball — have also been excluded from consideration.

*Note: I’ve excluded Baseball America’s list this year not due to any complaints with their coverage, but simply because said list is now behind a paywall.

For those interested in learning how Fringe Five players have fared at the major-league level, this somewhat recent post offers that kind of information. The short answer: better than a reasonable person would have have expected. In the final analysis, though, the basic idea here is to recognize those prospects who are perhaps receiving less notoriety than their talents or performance might otherwise warrant.

Tony Gonsolin, RHP, Los Angeles NL (Profile)
This represents Gonsolin’s third consecutive appearance in this weekly exercise, and it’s possibly his most deserving. Since last Friday’s edition of the Five, the right-hander has made two starts. In 13.0 innings between them, Gonsolin recorded a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 18:3 against 50 batters.

Gonsolin’s profile isn’t the most common sort for a future major-league starter. He was a two-way player in college, not drafted till the ninth round, and features some traits on the mound (pronounced over-the-top delivery, effort) that are atypical for starters. He’s made it work thus far, however. He’s also continued to exhibit a strategies for contending with left-handed hitters, six of whom he faced in his second-to-last start (box).

Here’s a 92 mph slider to a lefty from that game for a called third strike:

And a curveball at the back foot for a swinging strike:

And a change with splitter-type action, also for a swinging strike:

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Let’s play a little game. Here’s a table ranking five pitchers in a mystery stat for 2018:

One of these pitchers is not like the others. One of these pitchers didn’t get any All-Star consideration and, barring a miracle, won’t get any Cy Young votes at the end of the year. Obviously, it’s not Sale or Scherzer, who started the All-Star Game, and it’s not Bauer, who was on the AL squad.

That leaves Paxton and Maeda, and you can bet that AL manager A.J. Hinch was thinking about the former much harder, at least before his recent struggles and lower back stiffness, than NL manager Dave Roberts was about the latter — and Maeda is Roberts’ own pitcher!

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When I approached Ross Stripling at the All-Star Game media session, I knew that he was in the midst of a breakthrough season. The 28-year-old Los Angeles Dodgers right-hander went into the midsummer classic with a record of 8-2, a 2.08 ERA, and a 10.2 K-rate in 95-and-a-third innings.

I didn’t know that he was a nerd.

“Are you taking about things like spin rate and spin efficiency? I’m a believer in that for sure,” was Stripling’s response when I asked if he ever talks pitching analytics with anyone in the organization. “When I got called up in 2016, I thought that what made me good was my high arm angle leading to good downward angle on my fastball, so I should pitch down in the zone. But I tried that, and I was getting walloped.”

Then came a conversation that jumpstarted his career. Optioned to the minors in midseason to help limit his workload — “I was basically down there sitting on innings” — Stripling picked up a ringing cell phone and was soon standing at rapt attention. The voice on the other end belonged to Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers have shaken off their early-season blues and climbed from 10 games below .500 to 10 above in the space of two months. They just made a huge splash with their Manny Machado acquisition — you can read about their lineup upgrade, their improved odds and the prospects they surrendered — but that doesn’t mean that president of baseball operations Andrew Freidman and general manager Farhan Zaidi can lie back in their hammocks sipping daiquiris through the July 31 nonwaiver trade deadline, as the team still has at least one other area of glaring need: the bullpen.

Before digging into their need to relieve their relievers, it’s worth considering the state of their rotation. The Dodgers have dealt with a variety of injuries thus far such that they have just one pitcher who’s made at least 18 starts — one who has spent the whole season in the rotation without interruption, basically — namely Alex Wood. Whether by accident or design, only four other teams can make that same claim: the upstart A’s (Sean Manaea), resourceful Rays (Blake Snell), and two also-rans, the Blue Jays (J.A. Happ) and Marlins (Jose Urena). The fading Angels, who have been working with a six-man rotation (more or less), have no starter who’s taken more than 17 turns.

From the Dodgers’ original starting five, Kenta Maeda (16 starts), Clayton Kershaw (13), Rich Hill (11), and Hyun-Jin Ryu (six) have all spent time on the disabled list, with Ryu still present there due to a groin strain so severe that you’d be excused for crossing your legs reflexively. Fill-ins Ross Stripling (14 starts) and Walker Buehler (10) began the year in the bullpen and the minors, respectively. Including call-ups Caleb Ferguson (three starts) and Brock Stewart as well as openers Daniel Hudson and Scott Alexander (one apiece), the team has used 11 starters, as many as the Marlins and more than all but the A’s, Angels, Mets (12 apiece), and Rays (14).

Despite the patchwork arrangement, the Dodgers have gotten very good work up front. Their starters’ 10.2 WAR is second in the NL and fourth in the majors, and by both ERA- (86) and FIP- (83), they’re first in the NL. The group has pounded the strike zone (19.8% K-BB, first in the league and second in the majors) while also keeping the ball on the ground (45.7% GB rate, tied for third in the NL and the majors) and in the ballpark (1.03 HR/9, third in the NL and fifth in the majors).

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Zach Pop isn’t the biggest name going from the Dodgers to the Orioles in the Manny Machado trade. But he does have the most electric arm, as well as an impressive track record against A-ball competition. In 35 professional games, the 21-year-old Brampton, Ontario native has allowed just 27 hits — only one of them a home run — in 48.1 innings. His ERA is a minuscule 0.93.

A seventh-round pick last year out of the University of Kentucky, Pop profiles, at least stylistically, as a right-handed version of Zach Britton. His signature pitch is a sinker that not only dips and dives but also sits in the mid-90s and ticks even higher. The worm-killer certainly proved to be an anathema to Midwest and California League hitters this season. Pitching for the Great Lakes Loons and Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, Pop boasted a 64% ground-ball rate and a .168 batting-average-against before being promoted to Double-A earlier this week (and subsequently swapped to the Dodgers, who are reportedly assigning him to the Bowie BaySox).

Pop talked about his aggressive approach on the mound and his decision to not sign with his then-favorite team out of high school, prior to the trade from Los Angeles to Baltimore.

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Pop on how he gets outs: “For me, it’s being able to throw that two-seam sinker — whatever you want to call it — to both sides of the plate, and mixing in the slider. I’ll go in with the four-seam, as well, to give a little bit of a different look, but everything starts off with the two-seamer sinker. That’s my strength. I like to stay down in the zone.

“I’m hunting outs any way I can get them. My goal is to induce weak contact, and if they want to swing at the first or second pitch and make an out before I can get a strikeout opportunity, than so be it. I haven’t really struck out that many guys this year with the Quakes, only around one per inning, maybe a little less. For the most part, I’m just trying to be efficient. I’m trying to break a barrel or just keep the ball on the ground.”

On his sinker and his delivery: “I do [have good velocity]. Yesterday, I hit 99 with my two-seamer. It used to be the case that I’d throw harder with my four-seam, but now it’s kind of equaled out. The only thing that’s really different is the movement. I get some pretty crazy numbers on my sinker. I think I have something like 20 inches of horizontal, and five inches of vertical, movement.

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Well before the rumors of a deal between the Dodgers and Orioles surfaced this week, Manny Machado was — as a legitimate star with an expiring contract on a team unlikely to contend — considered the prize of this year’s trade deadline. The 2018 season has done nothing so far to invalidate that notion, Machado bouncing back considerably from a surprisingly unimpressive 2017 season to hit .315/.387/.575, all three parts of that slash line representing career bests. The move back to shortstop hasn’t been quite as successful, but even a narcoleptic Jeff Blauser would have significant value with this kind of offensive contribution.

It took about 92 games longer than expected, but the Dodgers entered the All-Star break in first place, caressing a half-game lead over the Arizona Diamondbacks in the NL West. Nor is it a two-team race: the Colorado Rockies sit just two games back and the team’s traditional rivals, the San Francisco Giants, are still hanging on four games behind despite a bevy of nasty surprises in the rotation this season. There are reasons to believe that the Dodgers are in better position than their slim divisional lead might suggest, their somewhat modest record due more to underperformance than any fatal flaw in how the roster is designed. Even before the Machado trade, the updated ZiPS projections saw the Dodgers as the strongest National League team in terms of the strength of roster and the likely depth-chart configuration.

There are areas where ZiPS produces different results than the official postseason odds calculated from the combined Steamer/ZiPS projections. ZiPS, for example, has long preferred the Braves, Brewers, and Phillies while being a bit Nationals-skeptical, but both the ZiPS and FanGraphs methodologies agree that the Dodgers had the best roster in the National League before the trade. The problem the Dodgers faced is that, while the mean projections obviously look quite favorably on their prospects, mean projections also don’t account for the uncertainty around the numbers, which can be quite significant. Even firmly believing that the Dodgers had the strongest roster in the NL West, ZiPS still called for them — after a million years of game-by-game matchups — to lose out on the division about once every three times.

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The prospect package acquired from Los Angeles in exchange for Manny Machado is deep on warm bodies who are likely to wear a big-league uniform and produce some kind of value. One or two of those new Orioles has a realistic chance of producing two wins or better annually and making enough noise to drown out the howls of a fanbase that’s losing its most talented player since Cal Ripken.

The collection of talent sent to Baltimore is headlined by 21-year-old Cuban OF Yusniel Diaz and 22-year-old righty Dean Kremer, the latter of whom had recently been promoted to Double-A. Up-and-down utility infielder Breyvic Valera, 21-year-old reliever Zach Pop, and 21-year-old breakout performer INF Rylan Bannon were also acquired in the deal.

Diaz, whom Kiley and I saw this weekend at the Futures Game, is a career .288 hitter who leaves behind a .314/.428/.477 slash line at Double-A Tulsa. Diaz homered twice on Sunday, once to right-center, once to left-center, and had one of the better batting-practice sessions on the World team.

For all that, Diaz hasn’t exhibited much over-the-fence power as a professional, even during his 165-game stay in the Cal League between 2016 and -17. He’s an all-fields line-drive hitter who keeps his hands inside the ball and peppers the right-center-field gap. He’s much more likely to display doubles power in games, which could cap his ceiling a bit, as the offensive bar in left field, where Diaz projects due to speed and arm-strength limitations, is quite high.

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