Prospect writers Kevin Goldstein and Eric Longenhagen will sometimes have enough player notes to compile a scouting post. This is one of those dispatches, a collection of thoughts after another week of college baseball and the return of minor league play. Remember, prospect rankings can be found on The Board.

Kevin’s Notes

After nearly 600 days without them, it was sure nice to have minor league boxscores. It was also overwhelming in terms of thinking about who to highlight for today’s notebook. During a lunchtime call with Eric Longenhagen, we probably discussed 40 or 50 guys. To celebrate the long-awaited return of minor league baseball, I’ll push the draft aside for a week and talk about some prospects with real numbers next to their names for the first time in over a year. Instead of just finding five players, I decided to focus on a quintet of catchers who had big starts to the season. Catching prospects fascinate me as it’s the toughest position to find. There’s aren’t 30 legitimate starting catchers in baseball, but there are 30 teams, so while the bar is ridiculous on a defensive level, the necessary production in terms of offense is nowhere near that of other positions. Here are five real prospects — some big names, some sleepers — who have a shot at becoming that everyday guy.

Francisco Álvarez, C, New York Mets (Low-A St. Lucie)

Álvarez put up a .916 OPS in his 2019 stateside debut as a 17-year-old, and his 2021 is off to an impressive start. Eric ranked Álvarez as the best prospect in the Mets system this spring, and I support that ranking whole heartedly. Famous in the international community since his early teens, Álvarez commanded a $2.7 million bonus, and it’s easy to see why as there is the potential for the Venezuelan product to be an plus contributor both at the plate and behind it. He’s tightened up his meaty frame over the past year, which gives him good mobility in terms of block and receiving to go with a plus arm. With a bat in his hands, he has showcased an impressive approach for a teenager to go with real power that projects for 20-plus home runs annually when all is said and done. He’s not only the Mets’ best prospect, he’s on of the best catching prospects in all of baseball, a player who has the potential to be ready somewhere around the end of James McCann’s four-year deal. Read the rest of this entry »

Building off of yesterday’s American League conference call agendas, let’s move on to the National League and see what’s on the docket for the teams of the senior circuit.

Arizona Diamondbacks

• We’re over .500 and we’re banged up. This team is better than people on the outside thought. That said, I don’t think we’ll be exceptionally busy in terms of buying this summer. We’re not catching the Padres or Dodgers, and let’s not forget about the Giants. Let’s stick to the plan and just keep getting better long-term.
• The rotation has been up-and-down, and Corbin Martin is probably the only minor league piece with a chance to contribute in that area. Let’s get some ideas going as to how we get through 162 games with depth issues in that department.
• Let’s have some initial talks about draft strategy, as we’re picking sixth. It feels like there is a four-player tier at the top of the draft, so let’s see if there’s a tier-two player we like at six, or if we should be more creative and spread the wealth a bit.
• The offense overall has been good, but our infield is not hitting. There aren’t any immediate moves to make, but it sure would be nice to see Seth Beer get off to a nice start to gauge whether he can get some at-bats up here as a Christian Walker replacement.
• We love having the presence of Eduardo Escobar and Asdrúbal Cabrera, but there should be a market for both this July, and we should be listening. Let’s focus on arms in those discussions.
• The same goes for David Peralta, even though he’s been our second best hitter and is signed for next year as well. That extra year, which is a cheap one at that ($7.5 million), should help generate some interest.

Read the rest of this entry »

In a division that projected to include the league’s two strongest teams, improbably enough it’s the Giants (17–11) and not the Dodgers (17–12) or Padres (16–13) who sit atop the NL West as the calendar flips to May. It’s a welcome development for a team that’s finished below .500 in each of the past four seasons, and while our Playoff Odds still show them with just a 16.9% chance of holding onto a postseason spot, surprise contenders are certainly welcome. Generally speaking, it’s been the Giants’ run prevention that’s gotten them to first place, as the team has yielded an NL-low 3.21 runs per game but scored a middling 4.11 runs per game. What’s encouraging is that on the offensive side, the hitter who’s led the charge has been Buster Posey.

Perhaps you’ve heard of him? You might be forgiven if not. I kid, but it’s been awhile since the 34-year-old, six-time All-Star backstop was front and center. As a former MVP and three-time World Series winner, Posey was perhaps the highest-profile player to opt out last year amid the coronavirus pandemic, with his family’s new pair of prematurely-born adopted twins weighing heavily into his decision. Currently hitting .359/.423/.688 with six homers and a 199 wRC+ in 71 plate appearances, he has been by far the most productive of the opt-out returnees over the season’s first month (I set up a couple of custom pages to track their performances in case anyone is interested). That’s a particularly welcome rebound for a player who, in the two previous seasons before his absence, played just 219 games due to a variety of injuries including a torn right hip labrum that required season-ending surgery in 2018 and a concussion (his second in three years) and a hamstring strain in ’19.

Those injuries, particularly the hip one, sapped Posey’s power to a great degree, as his lower half wasn’t much help in his swing. He went homerless in his final 45 games before the surgery in 2018, the second-longest single-season drought of his career, and that dry spell continued for another 19 games once he returned in ’19. He homered just 12 times in 893 plate appearances across those two seasons, slugging .375. Some of that was owed to playing at Oracle Park (formerly AT&T Park), where the park home run factor for right-handed batters for both of those seasons was 90, the majors’ second-lowest, but Posey wasn’t hitting the ball very hard very often. This year is a different story.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Giants have been on a roll lately, winning their last three series thanks in large part to a surprisingly competent rotation, which Tony Wolfe detailed nicely earlier this week. Their latest victory, a 7–3 defeat of the Rockies on Wednesday, featured Alex Wood on the mound; he allowed just two runs and struck out nine over six innings en route to his third win in three starts. But his bold base running was what I want to focus on.

In the bottom of the sixth inning, looking to add to a 4–0 lead, Wood broke toward third before reliever Jordan Sheffield had started toward the plate. Sheffield stepped off the rubber and easily threw out Wood, who awkwardly tried to evade the tag by Josh Fuentes and somersaulted into the grass on the foul side of the bag. There’s something about the way Wood tumbled over the base while wearing his oversized coat that takes this past funny and into something special.

Alex Wood: Threat on the bases? ? pic.twitter.com/ul4QAqSaHy

— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) April 29, 2021

This steal attempt was a bizarre looking play. For starters, that big coat doesn’t seem very aerodynamic. But it’s rare in general for a pitcher to attempt to steal a base; I can’t remember the last time I’ve witnessed it. Sure enough, Wood’s scamper on Wednesday night has been the only stolen base attempt by a pitcher so far this season.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you pull up the Statcast batting leaderboards and sort by hard hit rate, the number one player won’t surprise you; it’s Giancarlo Stanton with a full two-thirds of his batted balls hit harder than 95 mph this year. But if you set the minimum batted ball filter to 40 events, the third name on the list is quite surprising: Evan Longoria. The 35-year-old third baseman is putting up some of the most encouraging offensive numbers since his heyday in Tampa Bay. And if you look a little further down, another veteran third-baseman shows up: Kyle Seager, who is carrying much of Seattle’s offense on his shoulders. These two veterans are simply crushing the ball right now and are enjoying late-career resurgences to help their respective teams get off to hot starts in April.

Longoria more than Seager has struggled offensively in the recent past. Since being traded to San Francisco prior to the 2018 season, he’s put up a 93 wRC+ in three seasons, accumulating just 3.1 WAR. That’s a significant step back from the peak of his career when he was widely considered to be one of the best, most consistent third basemen in baseball. After three disappointing years in the Bay area, his Statcast batting profile looks completely different this year. He’s posting career highs in average exit velocity, barrel rate, and hard hit rate leading to the highest power output of his career.

Of course, if you’ve been paying attention to the conversations around the changes in the ball introduced this year, you’d know that nearly every batter is seeing higher exit velocities on their hardest hit balls in play. Here’s what Justin Choi wrote in early April:

“The pressing issue, though, is that inflated exit velocities on batted balls force us to view the improvements of hitters with a rather healthy dose of skepticism. So far into the season, many players have surpassed their previous max EV highs; to my knowledge, 19 of them did so by a margin of 2 or more mph. But how can we tell which of those power surges are genuine? Did they make mechanical adjustments, or are they beneficiaries of the new baseball?”

Read the rest of this entry »

Like the rest of us, Aaron Sanchez’s 2020 caught him by surprise. A couple of weeks after a September 2019 anterior capsule surgery on his right shoulder — no easy thing to return from as a pitcher — he was optimistic when speaking with reporters, telling them, “I will pitch next year.” But he was non-tendered by the Houston Astros, and as the winter months came and went, he remained unsigned. Then the pandemic wiped out nearly four months of the 2020 season, and by the time baseball returned, teams weren’t in the mood to pay up for the remaining free agents. It wasn’t until February 21 of this year, 552 days after his most recent pitching appearance, that a team finally signed Sanchez to its big league roster.

That team was the San Francisco Giants, for whom Sanchez made his fifth start on Tuesday and threw 4.2 innings of two-run, one-hit baseball that included five walks and six strikeouts. The lack of certainty surrounding both his health and effectiveness entering the 2021 season seemed destined to make Sanchez an odd fit for the team that took a shot on him, but in San Francisco, his kind is actually right at home. The Giants’ rotation is filled with pitchers who have some kind of major injury in their recent history. In many cases, the return from those injuries hasn’t been graceful; some of those pitchers have found themselves moving to the bullpen in an effort to reclaim some of their value. Many were free agents last winter, with no guarantee they’d be given a starter’s job with their next team. Somehow, the Giants built a rotation out of these guys. And a month into the season, that rotation might be the best in baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

It feels like only yesterday that the Yankees snatched Mike Tauchman from the Rockies for a pittance and unleashed him on the AL East. In 2019, Tauchman was electric; his .277/.361/.504 slash line buoyed the Yankees in a season where they desperately needed it. Injuries (and 100 PA in the minors) kept him from playing a full year, but even in only 296 plate appearances, he managed 2.6 WAR, sixth among Yankees batters.

That performance didn’t carry over into 2020. Despite the team’s intermittent injury problems, the Yankees used him as a fourth outfielder and defensive replacement. He didn’t hit a single home run, a concise summary of what went wrong: his power disappeared overnight. By the start of this year, he was barely playing and out of minor league options, which makes last night’s development unsurprising: the Yankees traded him to San Francisco in exchange for Wandy Peralta and a player to be named later, as Jack Curry first reported.

Tauchman had lost his spot in the Yankees’ outfield, and it’s not hard to see why. Aaron Judge and Aaron Hicks are playing everyday, which left one outfield spot for three outfielders: Tauchman, Clint Frazier, and Brett Gardner. Tauchman and Gardner fulfill similar roles, and the team was giving Gardner the majority of the playing time while carrying no backup shortstop. Frazier is the only outfielder with options, but he’s playing far more than Tauchman, which meant Tauchman was the odd man out — the team needed to trade him to avoid exposing him to waivers. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the San Francisco Giants. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. As there was no minor league season in 2020, there are some instances where no new information was gleaned about a player. Players whose write-ups have not been meaningfully altered begin by telling you so. Each blurb ends with an indication of where the player played in 2020, which in turn likely informed the changes to their report if there were any. As always, I’ve leaned more heavily on sources from outside of a given org than those within for reasons of objectivity. Because outside scouts were not allowed at the alternate sites, I’ve primarily focused on data from there, and the context of that data, in my opinion, reduces how meaningful it is. Lastly, in an effort to more clearly indicate relievers’ anticipated roles, you’ll see two reliever designations, both on my lists and on The Board: MIRP, or multi-inning relief pitcher, and SIRP, or single-inning relief pitcher.

For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed, you can click here. For further explanation of Future Value’s merits and drawbacks, read Future Value.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It can be found here.

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about MLB.TV repetition, Yadier Molina throwing out Jose Siri, teams opting to end innings early, the effect of Jarred Kelenic’s injury on the Mariners service-time controversy, the Astros signing Jake Odorizzi, and teams being more brazen about lowering their competitive balance tax assessments, then preview the 2021 Blue Jays (21:50) with Kaitlyn McGrath of The Athletic and the 2021 Giants (1:06:14) with Grant Brisbee of The Athletic.

Audio intro: Zeus, "At the Risk of Repeating"
Audio interstitial 1: Neil Young, "Far From Home"
Audio interstitial 2: Old & In the Way, "Old and in the Way"
Audio outro: Sloan, "Everything You’ve Done Wrong"

Link to sentient-baseballs email episode
Link to MLB Film Room
Link to Molina/Siri play
Link to Evans/Phillips face-off
Link to Ichiro/Cameron simulated game
Link to story about Kelenic’s knee injury
Link to rule about “rolling” innings
Link to Dan Szymborski on the Odorizzi signing
Link to Odorizzi contract terms
Link to drafts and competitions spreadsheet
Link to story on Kovalchuk’s 17-year deal
Link to story about Kovalchuk penalty reduction
Link to story about Blue Jays’ radio feed
Link to story about Blue Jays’ free agency premium
Link to Kaitlyn on where the Jays will play
Link to Kaitlyn on Vlad
Link to Dan on Vlad as a breakout candidate
Link to Kaitlyn on the Jays’ pitching depth chart
Link to Kaitlyn on the Jays’ new complex
Link to story on the Jays’ high performance department
Link to story on Biggio and the less lively ball
Link to Spin Rate podcast
Link to Ben Carsley on the Giants
Link to Matt Trueblood on Yastrzemski
Link to Grant on Yastrzemski
Link to the Giants’ giant coaching staff
Link to Andrew Baggarly on Alyssa Nakken
Link to Grant on the Giants’ old lineup
Link to Grant on the Giants’ rotation depth
Link to Grant in 2017 on AT&T Park offense
Link to Grant on Oracle Park offense in 2020
Link to Baggs & Brisbee podcast

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It’s performance review week at my day job, which means I get to find out how many WAR my manager thinks I accrued last year. Based on that, she’ll assign me into one of four buckets: poor, developing, strong, and top. It’s one of those systems where the top and bottom levers are rarely exercised but the road to a “strong” is traversable ground.

At my workplace, annual compensation adjustments are directly tied to which category an employee falls into. In the lowest bucket — I’m sure someone’s fallen into it but I’ve yet to see or hear about it — you won’t receive anything, but after that it’s smooth sailing. The next rung up gets a cost of living bump or a little more, and the raises only increase from there.

It’s not a perfect system, of course. A couple of the performance inputs feel a little BABIP-ey, subject to the whims of Google’s search algorithms and the ability of our teammates. Speaking of teammates, clubhouse chemistry undoubtedly matters here: The camaraderie of your team and your relationship with management are like park factors, invisible mechanisms adding or subtracting a thousand bucks from what our $/WAR suggests we should earn. Still, the criteria is reasonably clear and the process about as transparent as I could ask for.

***

Poor: Performance often falls below the expectations of the role despite support, follow-up and feedback. Read the rest of this entry »