Triston McKenzie recorded double-digit strikeouts three times last season. That puts him in some good company — other pitchers who did so include Framber Valdez, Taijuan Walker, and Shane Bieber — but hardly elite territory. Carlos Rodón led the way with 11 double-digit strikeout games, and 19 different pitchers had at least four such outings.

Now let’s bump up the strikeout threshold. McKenzie recorded at least 11 strikeouts in a game three times last season. This feat was a little more unusual; other starters with three 11-strikeout games were breakout star Nestor Cortes and Cy Young winner Sandy Alcantara. Only nine pitchers had four or more appearances with 11-plus strikeouts. Shohei Ohtani led the way with seven such starts.

Let’s keep going. McKenzie recorded at least 12 strikeouts in a game three times last season. No pitcher in baseball had more such starts. The only pitchers to match his total were Ohtani, Rodón, Gerrit Cole, and Spencer Strider. That’s a damn good group to be a part of:

Hopefully, you’re starting to pick up on something atypical about McKenzie. He had three games with 12 or more strikeouts but never topped eight in his 28 other outings. He was one of only six pitchers to twirl a 14-strikeout game, yet he averaged seven strikeouts per start with a median of six. His name and numbers look wildly out of place in the company of Ohtani, Rodón, Cole, and Strider. 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 »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley lament the newly codified permanence of the zombie runner, rededicate themselves to “ghost runner” reeducation, and banter about a new position-player-pitching limitation, Andrew Chafin’s surprisingly modest contract, Derek Jeter joining Fox Sports, baseball’s leading newsbreakers vs. the leading newsbreakers in other sports, baseball officiating vs. football officiating, the schedule for Triple-A robo umps, and a 1937 proposal for baseball photo finishes. Then they continue their 2023 season preview series by discussing the Cleveland Guardians (35:09) with MLB.com’s Mandy Bell and the Texas Rangers (1:12:18) with The Athletic’s Levi Weaver, plus Past Blasts (1:55:08) from 1873 and 1968 and a few follow-ups.

Audio intro: Dawes, “Everything is Permanent”
Audio interstitial 1: 10cc, “I’m Mandy Fly Me”
Audio interstitial 2: Levi Weaver, “Dark Clay”
Audio outro: Dr. Dog, “Ebenezer Scrooge”

Link to rules announcements
Link to extra-innings pace study
Link to Ben on TLOU
Link to Eric Stephen thread
Link to Eno on pos. player pitchers
Link to WaPo on PPP
Link to Royals Review on PPP
Link to MLBTR on Chafin’s option
Link to MLBTR on Chafin’s signing
Link to Stathead on leading LHRP
Link to Leo Morgenstern on Chafin
Link to Jake Mailhot on LHRP
Link to Sheehan on NFL/MLB calls
Link to Super Bowl holding play
Link to MLB.com on Jeter
Link to Katie Baker on Fox pregames
Link to robo ump schedule
Link to Max Bishop SABR bio
Link to Craig Wright on Bishop
Link to 1937 photo finish source
Link to article on photo-finish camera
Link to film development source
Link to other film development source
Link to FG team projections
Link to payroll rankings
Link to Guardians offseason tracker
Link to Guardians depth chart
Link to Rangers offseason tracker
Link to Rangers depth chart
Link to Levi’s wins prediction
Link to Levi’s author archive
Link to FG’s SP projections
Link to FG’s LF projections
Link to 2022 LF WAR by team
Link to Bochy’s W-L record
Link to 1873 article source
Link to Rob Arthur on OF shifts
Link to Rob on OF depth
Link to 1968 article source
Link to second ’68 article source
Link to third ’68 article source
Link to David Lewis’s Twitter
Link to David Lewis’s Substack
Link to CBA AAV rule
Link to NHL contract rules
Link to old CPBL logo
Link to Brännboll wiki
Link to Brännboll video
Link to 1796 proto-baseball text
Link to baseball exceptionalism wiki
Link to A Christmas Carol ending

 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

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Late last week, the Reds and Guardians swapped young outfielders, with Cincinnati acquiring 24-year-old Will Benson from Cleveland in exchange for 21-year-old Justin Boyd, a 2022 second-round pick. The trade gives the Reds’ outfield mix a source of left-handed power, which they sorely lacked, as the Guardians pick up a long-term prospect in exchange for a player who was going to have a hard time emerging from a crowded field of similarly skilled young players on their own roster.

The 14th overall pick in the 2016 draft, Benson made his big league debut in 2022 and was in the majors long enough to exhaust rookie eligibility. Deployed almost entirely against right-handed pitchers — he took 55 of his 61 plate appearances against righties — he only managed to hit .182 in a small big league sample. Benson has had contact-related question marks since he was drafted; “will he hit enough?” was the big question about his prospectdom. Plus-plus raw power and arm strength gave him an everyday right fielder’s ceiling if he can.

Benson traversed the minors striking out at a 30% clip and never hit better than .238 at any level. But even as he struck out at an alarming rate, he has typically walked enough and gotten to enough power to perform above league average at each stop. In 2022, his age-24 season, his strikeout rate was suddenly a manageable 22.7%. There has not been a change to his swing that I can identify, though it’s worth noting that his raw swing rate is a measly 37%, which would be one of the lowest in all of MLB; in 2021, per Synergy Sports, it was 46%. It’s possible he has become discerning within the strike zone in a way that has helped his bat-to-ball skills play at a 40- or 45-grade, but visual assessment of his swing still generates a lot of concern around in-zone swing and miss, especially against fairly common letter-high fastballs. The 35+ FV grade with which Benson graduated (a grade befitting a narrow, situational big leaguer with one premium tool) would not change given this new information about his approach. Read the rest of this entry »

Colt Keith started to tap into his power last year. After going deep just twice in 2021 — his first professional season — the 21-year-old third baseman homered nine times in 48 games with High-A West Michigan before landing on the injured list with a dislocated shoulder in early June. Returning to action in October, Keith proceeded to hit three bombs in 19 Arizona Fall League games.

The increased power production by one of the top position-player prospects in the Detroit Tigers organization was by design.

“I changed my approach a little bit,” Keith told me during his stint in the AFL. “I started trying to hit balls out in front, and backspin them to all fields, looking for a little bit more power. A lot of people had told me I just needed to keep doing what I was doing, but looking at guys in the big leagues that I want to play like, they’re hitting 25-30 homers a year. I felt like I needed to move in that direction. At the same time, I want to keep my hit tool. Batting .300 with some home runs is what I’d like to do.”

That is what he did this past season. The 6-foot-3, 238-pound infielder — Keith has added meaningful size and strength since entering pro ball — augmented his regular-season round-trippers with a .301/.370/.544 slash line. In 2021, he’d slashed .320/.437/.422 with Low-A Lakeland before scuffling over the final month as a 19-year-old in the Midwest League. Read the rest of this entry »

When a pitcher throws the third ball of a plate appearance, it can start to feel like his back’s against the wall quickly. First base starts to seem awfully close without any more pitches to spare and a walk lingering. The batter knows this, too, and he’s digging in looking for a juicy pitch, thinking about doing more damage than just a walk if he sees it. It’s a stressful position for any pitcher: aim for the edge of the plate, and you risk a miss and a free pass; catch a little more of the plate, you risk getting clobbered by the barrel of an increasingly comfortable and aggressive hitter.

In 2022, the Guardians didn’t get the memo. In plate appearances that reached three balls, opposing hitters posted a .197/.500/.311 batting line, good for a best-in-baseball wOBA of .397. There’s a big difference between production levels on 3–0, 3–1, and 3–2, but Cleveland handled each about as well as anybody else; its .336 wOBA on 3–2 counts and .512 mark on 3–1 were each second in baseball, and its .630 clip on 3–0 ranked fourth. The club’s starters were even better, limiting opponents to a .165/.464/.289 line and a .371 wOBA. With all unintentional walks coming on three-ball counts, these are still ultimately pretty productive lines — ask (almost) any major leaguer if he’d sign up for a .371 wOBA next year — but by comparison with staffs across the league, Cleveland’s was able to limit damage in these tight spots better than any of its peers.

Baseball Reference carries a nifty splits statistic they call sOPS+, which compares a player’s OPS (or in pitchers’ cases, opponent OPS) under the conditions of a certain split to his peers, with 100 representing league average. It’s a helpful way to contextualize splits — that Trea Turner had a .601 two-strike OPS in 2022 is less intuitive than his 137 sOPS+ with two strikes, which tells us he was 37% more productive with two strikes than the league average. By sOPS+, Guardians pitchers were again the strongest in the league with their backs against the wall. In three-ball counts, they had an sOPS+ of 75, the seventh-lowest in 300 team seasons over the last decade. Read the rest of this entry »

Carter Hawkins knows the Guardians organization well. Prior to becoming the General Manager of the Chicago Cubs in October 2021, the 38-year-old Vanderbilt University alum spent 14 seasons in Cleveland, serving as a scout, Director of Player Development, and Assistant General Manager. With the Guardians’ well-earned reputation of being a progressive organization with an outstanding pitching-development program, I asked Hawkins a question during November’s GM Meetings:

How similar are the two organizations, and in which ways do they differ?

“I would say the best thing in terms of similarities is that there are a lot of team-first people in both places, as opposed to me-first people,” replied Hawkins. “The obvious market-size difference stands out. There are more opportunities in Chicago to utilize resources — you can have a higher risk tolerance — whereas in Cleveland there is the challenge of having to be very process-oriented to make a decision. If you have a lot of resources, you don’t necessarily have that pressure on you. At the same time, there is no reason that you can’t be just as process-oriented in a larger market.”

The disparity in payrolls is notable. Roster Resource projects the Cubs’ 2023 payroll at $184M, and Cleveland’s at just $91M. Last year those numbers were $147M and $69M. Read the rest of this entry »

Who was better, Joe Mauer or Chase Utley? I asked that question in a Twitter poll earlier this week and the result was… well, lopsided. The erstwhile Minnesota Twins catcher/first baseman garnered 79.5% of the 1,362 votes cast, while the former Philadelphia Phillies and Los Angeles Dodgers second baseman received just 20.5%. With both debuting on next year’s Hall of Fame ballot — one that will include numerous notable holdovers — that breakdown could be telling. While it seems unlikely that Utley will join the likes of Bobby Grich and Lou Whitaker as a one-and-done snub, might he poll just as poorly, or even worse, with BBWAA voters as he did in the head-to-head matchup with Mauer?

Utley finished his career with 61.6 fWAR and 64.5 bWAR.
Mauer finished his career with 53.0 fWAR and 55.2 bWAR.

Adrián Beltré, who will also debut on the ballot, is a shoo-in to be elected in his first year of eligibility. It is much for that reason that the Mauer-Utley comparison is meaningful — at least for the segment of voters that includes yours truly. Eight of the 10 candidates I voted for this year will be returning, and Beltré is a no-brainer. That leaves one open slot. Moreover, I’m not alone in this conundrum. A total of 54 voters put checkmarks next to 10 names, with eight ballots being identical to mine. Read the rest of this entry »

Checking in at no. 47 on our recently published Cleveland Guardians prospect list, Andrew Misiaszek was drafted in a round that no longer exists. Taken with the 23rd pick of the 2019 draft’s 32nd round, he had pitched four years at Northeastern University, serving mainly as a reliever and eventually as the team’s closer. Since being drafted, he has worked his way up the minor league ladder, finishing 2022 in Triple-A Columbus.

Beginning last season in Double-A, Misiaszek dominated to the tune of a 0.56 ERA in 32 innings. After he was promoted to the highest level of the minors, he threw 29.2 additional innings of 3.64-ERA ball while striking out over 32% of the batters he faced. I spoke with him early last December about the various mechanical adjustments he has made in the minors, as well as his progress in connecting the dots in his repertoire and how that has impacted his blueprint for success. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Cleveland Guardians. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the third year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but I use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »