Joe Nathan has had Tommy John surgery before. Joe Nathan will need to have Tommy John surgery again. He has proclaimed that he intends to come try to return, but the odds are against that — 41-year-old major league pitchers are in short supply (there are just two this season). Whether he does or doesn’t make it all the way back, any subsequent seasons are unlikely to add much to his statistical ledger. And an impressive ledger it is.

A sixth-round pick in the 1995 draft, Nathan has been one of the few players left in the game who saw action back in the 90s, as he debuted for the Giants back in April of 1999. He was a starter back then, though he wasn’t particularly good. He only struck out three more batters than he walked in those 14 debut season starts. He would get another crack at starting the next season, but in his 15 starts in 2000 he struck out four fewer batters than he walked, and that was the end of that chapter.

Well, sort of. He would be a starter for the bulk of the next two seasons, at age 26 and 27, but he would do so in the minor leagues. His 2001 was an unmitigated disaster — he struck out 54 against 70 walks in Double-A and Triple-A — he walked more guys than he struck out at both levels. He was better in 2002 — 117 Ks against 74 walks, all at Triple-A Fresno — but he allowed 20 homers, had a 1.647 WHIP and 5.60 ERA. Better, but not good. He would come back up to San Fran in September for four scoreless relief appearances, and never looked back.

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As I tweeted yesterday, Bahamas-born and recently but shortly American-educated shortstop Lucius Fox was declared an international free agent by Major League Baseball. He won’t be eligible to sign until July 2nd when the 2015-16 signing period opens and the team bonus pools reset, but he would’ve waited until then to sign anyway, since most of the 2014-15 signing pool money had been spent.

Fox was always seen as likely to land as an international prospect since he was born in the Bahamas and moved back home, but it wasn’t a slam dunk because MLB is very aware of player moving out of the U.S. to potentially get more money by ducking the draft. Many elite domestic prospects have investigated this process and found the red tape to make it nearly impossible to work through.

As I wrote last week, the 2015 international signing markets, which opens on July 2nd, is already mostly shaken out at this point. I currently project 25 players to get $1.2 million or more and it appears that 22 of them have deals already. Of those three, the highest bonus should be about $1.5 to $1.7 million while the five top bonuses in the class range from $3.0 million to $4.4 million.

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Yesterday, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the champion San Francisco Giants. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not San Francisco’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Giants system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.

Below are the top-five prospects in the San Francisco system by projected WAR. To in this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.

Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.

t4. Clayton Blackburn, RHP (Profile)

Blackburn is projected as a reliever here. That’s not the capacity in which he’s made the vast majority of his minor-league starts, nor is it the role he’s likely to assume this year at either Double- or Triple-A. It is the role in which he made all six of his Arizona Fall League appearances, however, and that might be what’s influencing Steamer here. It matters with regard to the projection because it renders the rate stats more attractive but the overall WAR figure less so. It matters less, however, because Blackburn’s promotion to the majors isn’t imminent. In either case, he’s something slightly better than replacement level.

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Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, D’Backs, Twins, Astros, Cubs, Reds, Phillies, Rays, Mets, Padres, Marlins, Nationals, Red Sox, White Sox, Orioles, Yankees, Braves, Athletics, Angels, Dodgers, Blue Jays, Tigers, Cardinals, Brewers, Indians, Mariners, Pirates, Royals & Giants

Top 200 Prospects Content Index

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

Draft Rankings: 2015, 2016 & 2017

International Coverage: 2015 July 2nd Parts One, Two & Three, 2016 July 2nd

The Giants aren’t the most prolific system in baseball, annually ranking in the bottom third of the league in terms of org system rankings. Due to the big league club’s payroll and success, they’re generally picking near the bottom of the round and recently haven’t had much in their international and domestic bonus pools, in addition to generally not trading for prospects. San Francisco tends to play the draft straightforward, taking the best player at each spot, recently avoiding huge bonuses in the international markets and not being a huge player with Cuban free agents.

The Giants have their idea of the kind of player they like, don’t usually fall into industry-wide consensuses and it’s hard to complain about their results. This system has produced Pablo Sandoval, Buster Posey, Brandon Belt, Joe Panik, Brandon Crawford, Zack Wheeler, Tim Lincecum, Madison Bumgarner and Matt Cain, among others. You can choose to not like the process, but the same guys have been in charge for this whole run and they built a multiple time World Champion team mostly from within, which is the whole point of having a farm system, so kudos to them.

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The situation for Cuban free agent infielder Hector Olivera is still a bit muddled, even though he’s now a free agent that may sign any day now. Here’s a more complete background with a full scouting report, recap of his workout that I scouted last month and a breakdown of which teams fits him best. Here’s the video from that workout:

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Spring Training statistics might not matter, but injuries can certainly make an impact on a team’s outlook heading into the season. After being hit by a pitch in yesterday’s game against the Chicago Cubs, Hunter Pence is expected to be out six to eight weeks with a broken forearm. Missing the first month of the season is far from a catastrophic loss for the San Francisco Giants as they defend their World Series crown, but if they want to fill Pence’s vacated role from outside the organization, there are multiple teams with too many outfielders.

The Los Angeles Dodgers, Boston Red Sox, San Diego Padres, and Cleveland Indians are all teams that should be willing to move outfielders this spring, per Jay Jaffe of Sports Illustrated. The Dodgers currently have Yasiel Puig, Carl Crawford, Andre Ethier, Joc Pederson, and Scott Van Slyke in their outfield with Andre Ethier apparently the odd man out. The Dodgers are eager to move Ethier and are reportedly willing to pay around half of the $56 million owed to Ethier over the next three years. A trade with the Dodgers is not impossible for the Giants, but as Dave Cameron recently noted, some rivals rarely trade with each other. The Giants and Dodgers have completed just one trade since 1985, when they traded Mark Sweeney to the Dodgers in August 2007 for a player to be named later that turned into Travis Denker.

Outside of the difficulty of trading with a rival, the Giants current outfield poses problems with taking on a long term deal for a player who expects to start. The Giants currently have an interesting composition of present and future. At 31, Pence is the youngest projected outfield starter for the Giants with Angel Pagan and Nori Aoki expected to start in center field and left field, respectively. Pence is also signed through 2018 and has the contract with the longest duration among the Giants outfielders. He is not the only Giant signed past 2015. Angel Pagan has one more year to go after 2015 and is scheduled to receive $10 million in 2016. The Giants have a club option on Aoki for 2016 at just $5.5 million. It is conceivable that the Giants projected outfield for 2015 will be the same for 2016. The age, term, and relatively small amounts owed to Pagan and Aoki do not preclude a long term solution for the outfield. However, even if Ethier were to cost the Giants under $10 million per year, a three year commitment through his Age-35 season to cover one month of missed time is likely more than the Giants would want to take on.
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What you probably already know is that next winter’s free agent starting pitching crop has the potential to be historic, not only due to the amount of talent currently unsigned beyond 2015 but for the hundreds of millions of dollars they’ll surely command. With the obvious caveat that extensions for some of these guys are possible before they hit the market, just bask in the names entering the final years of their contracts.

There’s David Price, and Jeff Samardzija, and Johnny Cueto. Over there, you’ve got Rick Porcello and Mark Buehrle and Doug Fister. Next to them, Jordan Zimmermann and Yovani Gallardo and Scott Kazmir. Say hi, Mike Leake and Hisashi Iwakuma and Mat Latos, and also Justin Masterson and Kyle Lohse. There’s Bud Norris and Ian Kennedy and Wei-Yin Chen out there as well, to say nothing of the near-certainty that Zack Greinke exercises that opt-out.

It’s a simply stunning collection of names, and it’s going to make the July trading season fascinating, as well as provide Philadelphia even more incentive to move Cole Hamels while they can. Lefties, righties, young, old, flamethrowers, junkballers, whatever you want in a pitcher, you’ll be able to find it on the menu.

Oh, and there’s also Tim Lincecum. Hi, Tim Lincecum. Read the rest of this entry »

You play 81 games at home a year, so it seems like it might be a good idea to think about that park when you’re building your team. Then again, you play 81 games on the road, maybe it’s not a good idea to worry too much about one half of the ledger, particularly if your home park is an extreme one.

Extreme parks lead to extreme home-road splits. That part seems obvious, but it bears out in the winning percentage, too. Take a look at how teams that have called extreme parks home have faired over the last five years compared to the middle.

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There in the Giants clubhouse, behind the stars you’ve heard everything about, are two rare players. They’ve made a circuit that very few players have made before. After surviving the gauntlet, they took some time to pass on what they learned with their travels East.

New Giants’ third baseman Casey McGehee was pretty sure his Major League Baseball career was over when he packed his bags for Sendai in Japan. “Going over there, that was one of the toughest parts, I knew the chances of coming back weren’t great,” the player said before FanFest last week.

But both McGehee and Ryan Vogelsong made it back, and to the same team no less. Of the 167 foreigners that have played in Nippon Professional Baseball since 1998, Brian Cartwright found that only 11 position players have managed more than 100 plate appearances back in America, and only Julio Franco and McGehee managed as much as 300 in one season. Only nine pitchers pitched for more than one season after returning from Japan.

Or: nobody has come back from Japan since 1998 and become a full-time starter like McGehee, and only Eric Stults, Colby Lewis, and Ryan Vogelsong have returned and managed more than 100 innings twice in the big leagues.

Though the game itself isn’t very different there — they bunt a little more, swing a little more, and play for one run more often — it could be that the trip over has that sense of finality to it that you hear from McGehee. You don’t usually come back and become an important part of a good team.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

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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