Ever since Michael Brantley left as a free agent after the 2018 season, Cleveland has had an extremely difficult time fielding a competent outfield. During the past two seasons, the team’s outfielders have collectively accumulated just four WAR in total, the sixth worst mark in the majors. Those struggles go back even further than the last two years, though. In the past decade, Cleveland has had just six qualified outfielders post a wRC+ over 100; five of those seasons were from Brantley, and the sixth was from Shin-Soo Choo back in 2012.

That long stretch of outfield futility may come to an end in 2021, as Cleveland agreed to a one-year, $8 million deal with Eddie Rosario last Friday. Fans in Northeast Ohio should be well acquainted with Rosario, who has spent his entire career with the division-rival Twins, and who should immediately provide some stability and an infusion of talent to an outfield that sorely needs it.

In six seasons with the Twins, Rosario posted a 106 wRC+ and 11.4 WAR. That may not look like much on the surface, but he took a big step forward in 2017, cutting his strikeout rate from 25.7% the year before to 18.0% and upping his ISO from .152 to .218. His numbers from that season on: a 111 wRC+ and 8.1 WAR. Excepting the shortened 2020 season, he’s hit more than 24 home runs in every year of that span, and his strikeout rate has continued to drop. While that power and contact are nice, they’re borne from an extremely aggressive approach at the plate that’s limited his career walk rate to just 4.7% and made him an extremely streaky hitter at the plate. When his balls are falling in for hits, his peaks can be high, but that means his overall production is at the whims of the BABIP gods.

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It was a busy day for free agent infielders yesterday. A flurry of moves saw Marcus Semien, Andrelton Simmons, and Tommy La Stella find new homes in Toronto, Minnesota, and San Francisco, respectively. Those big names overshadowed a couple of smaller signings that occurred earlier in the day. Cleveland re-signed Cesar Hernandez to a one-year, $5 million deal with a club option for 2022, while Baltimore signed Hernandez’s former double-play partner, Freddy Galvis, to a one-year, $1.5 million contract.

Both switch-hitting infielders came up through the Phillies farm system and established themselves at the major league level around the same time. Galvis left the Phillies in 2018 and bounced from San Diego to Toronto to Cincinnati over the last two years. Hernandez lasted in Philadelphia a little longer; 2020 was his first season on a new team. Both are defensively-minded infielders who have holes in their offense that have held them back from bringing in a bigger payday.

Hernandez is clearly the better of the two. He’s the reigning AL Gold Glove winner at second base and has quietly been one of the better second basemen in the league since claiming a full-time role in 2015. During that window, he’s sixth in the majors in WAR among qualified second basemen, accumulating 14.3 wins. Last year, Cleveland signed him to a one-year, $6.25 million deal to be their primary second baseman. That deal worked out nicely and they’ve returned to the same well, albeit with a new shortstop installed to his right — either Amed Rosario or Andrés Giménez.

His keen eye at the plate has always been the strongest part of his offensive profile, but he saw his walk rate dip to 6.7% in 2019 after posting a 11.1% rate over the previous four years. The most confusing aspect of his 2019 was his swing rate. He was much more aggressive at the plate, upping his swing rate to 45.5%. That would explain why his walk rate fell but he made enough contact with all those additional swings that his strikeout rate actually fell, though it didn’t offset the lack of free passes. Last Fall, Tony Wolfe wrote about Hernandez’s slipping plate discipline in his final year in Philadelphia:

“There is some real head-scratching to be done over Hernández’s 2019 season, but the numbers we’ve seen seem to indicate this year saw him employ a completely different approach from the one he’d used throughout his career. That provides an easy excuse for his struggles, but it also makes him more difficult to project. His changes resulted in a few positives, but overall, they didn’t make him a better hitter.”

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Mitch Keller has only thrown 69-and-a-third big-league innings, and he’s already had a remarkable career. The baseball gods are a big reason why. In his 2019 rookie season, the now-24-year-old Pittsburgh Pirates right-hander had a 7.13 ERA to go with a 3.19 FIP, and this past season he had a 2.91 ERA to go with a 6.75 FIP.

Hello, BABIP.

In an almost-inexplicable quirk of fate, Keller followed up a .475 BABIP — the highest one-season mark in MLB history — with a .104 BABIP in 2020. No pitcher who threw 20-or-more innings in last year’s pandemic-truncated campaign had a smaller percentage of balls put in play against him fall safely to the turf. This happened with an average exit velocity of 88.5 mph, which was higher than the 87.6 he’d allowed in 2019.

Ben Lindbergh wrote about Keller’s snake-bit season for The Ringer last spring, and the conversation they had prior to publication is what brought the data to the fore.

“I remember getting off that phone call and looking it up myself,” said Keller. “I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness. That’s crazy.’ I knew that I had a high BABIP, but I had no idea it was the highest in history. Once he told me, it wasn’t like I was coming back to the dugout thinking, ‘Man, I think I’m having some bad luck.’ It was actually on paper, as a stat. It was, ‘No, seriously. I was having bad luck.” Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Perez didn’t get many opportunities to swing the bat during his seven big-league seasons. As a short reliever who played primarily in the American League, that was to be expected. Somewhat less expected was what happened when he did have a chance to dig into the batters box.

“I had two [plate appearances], and I’m bitter about one of them,” Perez told me recently. “In 2008, my rookie year with St. Louis, we were in Florida at the old stadium, playing the Marlins. I came into the game in the eighth inning with one out, and got a double play with the bases loaded. When I went back to the dugout, Tony La Russa told me, ‘Hey, Chris, you’re still in there. Stay focused, because you’ve got the ninth.’”

The Cardinals were up by a run at the time, and Perez was due up sixth in the top half. Three hits and two outs later — an insurance run having crossed the plate — La Russa approached Perez again. This time the message was less welcome: “Go up to the plate and look dangerous, but don’t swing. I want you to take every pitch.”

La Russa was a veteran manager on his way to the Hall of Fame. Perez was a fresh-faced rookie. He took every pitch. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve written many words talking about the blockbuster deal that sent Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco to the Mets, and rightly so: It’s rare for two players of such impact to be acquired by a single team in the same trade. We know that the Mets are now a better team than they would have been if not for the trade, at least if you hold onto the apparently quaint notion that bringing in superior players makes your team win games and, as a result, is desirable. But just how much better? Read the rest of this entry »

Lucas Sims was one of Cincinnati’s best pitchers in 2020, and his slider was a big reason why. The Reds right-hander threw the firmer of his two breaking balls 34.1% of the time while registering a 2.45 ERA, and 11.9 strikeouts per nine innings, over 20 relief appearances. Per StatCast, opposing batters slugged a paltry .133 against the pitch. The story behind it reflects the vagaries of the art of pitching itself.

“I learned my slider from from Sonny [Gray], but it’s Sonny’s curveball grip,” explained Sims. “I was toying around with it one day — this was in 2019 — and when I threw it, it swept a lot. His is a downer curveball. I thought, ‘Well, that’s a little bit different.'”

So was the manner in which he unveiled the pitch. Sims spent a few days experimenting with Gray’s grip, but only on flat ground. It wasn’t until he toed the rubber in a game that he delivered one off a mound. The Reds were playing Pittsburgh, and Starling Marté at the plate with a two-strike count.

“I was like, ‘You know what? I might as well try it,’” recalled Sims, whom the Reds had acquired from Atlanta the previous year as part of the Adam Duvall deal. “I didn’t want to hang it — I wanted to make sure it didn’t get deposited — and ended up spiking it in the [left-handed] batter’s box. But then I threw another one and got a swing-and-a-miss. I decided, ‘All right, this is going to be a new pitch for me.”

Which brings us to the offering itself. Is Sims throwing a slider with Gray’s curveball grip, or does Gray throw a curveball with a slider grip? Read the rest of this entry »

For years, rumors have circulated that Francisco Lindor was available in trade. Cleveland, ever penny-pinching, always looked unlikely to sign him to an extension. He’s due to reach free agency after this season, which put a clock on the situation. Today, that clock struck midnight. As first reported by Jeff Passan, the Mets have acquired Lindor and Carlos Carrasco in exchange for Amed Rosario, Andrés Giménez, Josh Wolf, and Isaiah Greene.

It’s easy to like New York’s side of the deal. Lindor is one of the 10 or so best position players in baseball, and at 27, he’s just entering his prime. In addition, he’s one of the best defensive shortstops in the game, a huge upgrade for a team that induces a ton of grounders.

He’s a free agent after this year, of course, which limited Cleveland’s return for him, but the Mets have talked all offseason about signing marquee free agents, and Lindor blows this year’s crop out of the water. None of the available free agents this winter project for more than J.T. Realmuto’s 4.1 WAR, and none of the top 10 are younger than 30. Lindor is better, younger, and arguably more marketable than anyone on that list, and it’s not particularly close.

Most of the best hitters in baseball get there by, well, hitting. Lindor does that too — Steamer and ZiPS think he’ll be the third-best batter at the shortstop position in 2021 — but he gets an outsize proportion of his value from defense. From 2018 to 2020, he’s been the second-best shortstop defender in baseball per UZR, behind only Andrelton Simmons. DRS has him fourth, behind Simmons, Paul DeJong, and Nick Ahmed. Per Outs Above Average, he’s second only to Ahmed. No matter how you slice it, his defense is stellar.

If you plug Ahmed or Simmons (and probably DeJong, too) into your lineup, you’re sacrificing offense for defense. Not so with Lindor. His worst season at the plate was 2020, but even then, he managed a .258/.335/.415 line, good for a 100 wRC+. For his career, he’s a .285/.346/.488 hitter, a line buoyed by his phenomenal contact skills. Despite an aggressive approach at the plate, he strikes out only 14.1% of the time while walking at an average rate, which gives him a high floor.

Though he brings plenty of other positive qualities to the table, that contact skill is his only true standout offensive ability. He displayed shocking power in 2018, barreling up 9.3% of his batted balls on the way to 38 home runs, but for the most part, he gets to his stats by being roughly average when he makes contact while making far more contact than the average hitter. In his career, he’s accumulated a .383 xwOBA on contact and a .380 actual wOBA on contact, a hair higher than the .376 and .370 marks the league as a whole has accrued over the same time period. Even average power plays up when you get so many opportunities, though, which is how he put together three straight 30-homer seasons from 2017 to 2019. Read the rest of this entry »

The quiet that had descended over baseball since San Diego’s flurry of trades was shattered by the Mets on Thursday as the team landed Francisco Lindor, the most-coveted player likely available this winter, in a trade with Cleveland. And since most good ideas become even better with a bit of fit and finish, the team also secured the services of Carlos Carrasco, adding crucial depth to the rotation. In return, the Mets are sending Amed Rosario, Andrés Giménez, Josh Wolf, and Isaiah Greene to play at the Jake.

Full trade, per sources:

To Mets: Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco.

To Indians: Amed Rosario, Andrés Giménez, Josh Wolf, Isaiah Greene.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) January 7, 2021

At this point, it would have been more surprising if the Cleveland didn’t trade Lindor before the start of the 2021 season. This move was long expected, but the “where” has been one of baseball’s long-burning questions. Lindor’s 100 wRC+ in the abbreviated 2020 and his 114 wRC+ from 2019 were both well below the 130 he spiked in 2018, but at this point, we’re simply quibbling on degrees of superstardom. The Mets were serious second-tier contenders in the National League – San Diego and Los Angeles are in their own class — and even if you like Rosario and Giménez, you can’t pass up the opportunity to acquire a top-five shortstop in Lindor (he’s third in our Depth Charts, first in ZiPS). Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in Cleveland’s farm system. 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 altered begin by telling you so. For the others, the blurb ends with an indication of where the player played in 2020, which in turn likely informed the changes to their report. As always, I’ve leaned more heavily on sources from outside the org than within for reasons of objectivity. Because outside scouts were not allowed at the alternate sites, I’ve primarily focused on data from there. Lastly, in effort to more clearly indicate relievers’ anticipated roles, you’ll see two reliever designations, both in 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.

Editor’s note: Josh Wolf and Isaiah Greene were added to this list following their trade to Cleveland as part of the Francisco Lindor deal.

Angel Genao was added to this list after he agreed to a deal with Cleveland on January 15.

MLB managers not named Tony La Russa did Zoom calls with members of the media this past week. Today’s column features highlights from several of those sessions.

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Two of the topics Dusty Baker addressed on Monday were job-related. One was the position he currently holds with the Houston Astros, the other was a role that’s never appealed to him. The latter is anathema to baseball’s Most Interesting Man in the World because it wouldn’t allow him to kick back and ruminate on life.

“One reason I never wanted to be a general manager is because you don’t really have an offseason,” Baker told a cohort of reporters. “He works all year, and doesn’t have much time off, but for the general manager, and front office people, this is the most busy time of the year.”

Baker is 71 years old with 23 managerial seasons under his belt. How much longer he’ll sit in that chair is a question he can’t answer, but he’s been around long enough to know that life can come at you from different directions. Much for that reason, he’s simply going with the flow.

“Depends on how I feel [and it] depends on how the team feels about me,” said Baker, who was hired by Houston prior to last season. “Changes are going to come about in life. I tend to think in terms of Walter Alston and Tom Lasorda. Those guys signed a series of 20 one-year contracts. I’m not lame anymore. You know what I mean? A lame duck can’t fly. But my wings aren’t clipped no more. I can always fly.” Read the rest of this entry »