The Cleveland Indians front office places a high value on organizational culture. From the lowest rungs of the minors to the big leagues, they want their managers, coaches, and players to embrace both a collaborative process and a forward-thinking mindset. For that reason, they also highly value leadership skills. Luke Carlin, a 38-year-old former big-league catcher with a Bachelor of Science degree from Northeastern University, possesses those attributes in spades.

Carlin has managed in the Cleveland system for each of the past four seasons, most recently the Lake County Captains in the Low-A Midwest League. He’s viewed by many as a future major league coach or manager, and his interpersonal skills, paired with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge — analytics-based and otherwise — is a big reasons why. In a nutshell, he exemplifies what one might dub, “The Cleveland Way.”

Carlin shared his thoughts on leadership and teaching following the conclusion of the Captains’ season.

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Luke Carlin: “To me, managing and player development go hand in hand. I’m passionate about teaching, and it’s an awesome feeling when you have a clubhouse firing on all cylinders and pulling in the same direction. When you’re trying to earn the trust of the team, it’s not just interpersonal skills; it’s also a bunch of content-based stuff. Can you get the guys better? Can you help them develop? I think that really clicks within the information-rich environment that players today are coming up in.

“I’m finishing my master’s right now, at Northeastern, in organizational leadership. And it’s not just leadership theory, but also organizational-behavior theory and team dynamics. Piggyback that with what I’m learning here with the Indians. There are biomechanics, motor learning, teaching-and-coaching pedagogy… we’re basically trying to create a recipe to where we can interact with the people around us, and do a better job of developing high-performance than everyone else. Read the rest of this entry »

September call-ups, both high-profile and totally innocuous, have been trickling in over the transaction wire for the last several days. As always, there are some who will have real impact on the playoff race and some who are interesting for the purposes of player evaluation, like your usual spare lefty reliever and catcher (by far the most common types of September additions). Some teams with no new names at all. Below I’ve compiled notes on every player brought up by an American League team since the start of the month, no matter how inconsequential; I’ve slipped some rehabbers and August 31 acquisitions in here, too. It’s a primer for you to get (re)acquainted with players who might impact the playoff race or the seasons to come. (The National League’s complement can be found here.)

Contenders’ Reinforcements

Houston Astros– OF Kyle Tucker, C Garrett Stubbs, RHP Josh James, RHP Jose Urquidy

Kiley and I have Tucker projected as an above-average regular, ranked 15th overall among prospects in baseball. I have no idea what kind of playing time he might get this month. Stubbs (24th in the org) has begun playing a little bit of second base and outfield. A part time, multi-positional role might help keep his tiny frame from breaking down, and enable Houston to get his long-performing bat in the lineup, as well as create flexibility on other parts of the roster.

James was 94-97 in rehab outings before he returned, then reached 99 on Monday. Urquidy projects as a strike-throwing fifth starter.

New York Yankees– OF Clint Frazier, RHP Jonathan Loaisiga, RHP Ryan Dull, RHP Chance Adams, LHP Tyler Lyons, INF Brenny Escanio (prospect)

I think it’s likely Frazier, who many scouts/teams continue to think has everyday ability, gets traded this offseason, both because he’s part of a crowded outfield/DH mix and because he and the org don’t seem to be a great fit. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2019 Arizona Fall League rosters were (mostly) announced today, and we’ve created a tab on THE BOARD where you can see all the prospects headed for extra reps in the desert. These are not comprehensive Fall League rosters — you can find those on the AFL team pages — but a compilation of names of players who are already on team pages on THE BOARD. The default view of the page has players hard-ranked through the 40+ FV tier. The 40s and below are then ordered by position, with pitchers in each tier listed from most likely to least likely to start. In the 40 FV tier, everyone south of Alex Lange is already a reliever.

Many participating players, especially pitchers, have yet to be announced. As applicable prospects are added to rosters in the coming weeks, I’ll add them to the Fall League tab and tweet an update from the FanGraphs Prospects Twitter account. Additionally, this tab will be live throughout the Fall League and subject to changes (new tool grades, updated scouting reports, new video, etc.) that will be relevant for this offseason’s team prospect lists. We plan on shutting down player/list updates around the time minor league playoffs are complete (which is very soon) until we begin to publish 2020 team-by-team prospect lists, but the Fall League tab will be an exception. If a player currently on the list looks appreciably different to me in the AFL, I’ll update their scouting record on that tab, and I may add players I think we’re light on as I see them. Again, updates will be posted on the FanGraphs Prospects Twitter account, and I’ll also compile those changes in a weekly rundown similar to those we ran on Fridays during the summer.

Anything you’d want to know about individual players in this year’s crop of Fall Leaguers can probably be found over on THE BOARD right now. Below are some roster highlights as well as my thoughts on who might fill out the roster ranks.

Glendale Desert Dogs
The White Sox have an unannounced outfield spot on the roster that I think may eventually be used on OF Micker Adolfo, who played rehab games in Arizona late in the summer. He’s on his way back from multiple elbow surgeries. Rehabbing double Achilles rupturee Jake Burger is age-appropriate for the Fall League, but GM Rick Hahn mentioned in July that Burger might go to instructs instead. Sox instructs runs from September 21 to October 5, so perhaps he’ll be a mid-AFL add if that goes well and they want to get him more at-bats, even just as a DH. Non-BOARD prospects to watch on this roster include Reds righties Diomar Lopez (potential reliever, up to 95) and Jordan Johnson, who briefly looked like a No. 4 or 5 starter type during his tenure with San Francisco, but has been hurt a lot since, as have Brewers lefties Nathan Kirby (Thoracic Outlet Syndrome) and Quintin Torres-Costa (Tommy John). Dodgers righty Marshall Kasowski has long posted strong strikeout rates, but the eyeball scouts think he’s on the 40-man fringe. Read the rest of this entry »

After struggling for the first few months of the season, both José Ramírez and Cleveland broke out in a big way with Ramírez discovering his old form and Cleveland going on a big run to catch the Minnesota Twins for first place at one point this month. Cleveland couldn’t quite keep up that pace over the last few weeks, falling a few games back of the Twins, but still looked to be in great shape for the wild card race. With news of a broken hamate bone and the resulting surgery for Ramírez, the team is losing their best hitter for the rest of the season, leaving a massive hole in the lineup and at third base. The club’s path to the playoffs just got a lot more narrow.

Just two weeks ago, I discussed the remarkable turnaround Ramírez made in his game, eschewing an approach designed to be beat the shift but costing him power and going back to the pull-heavy, fastball-hunting approach that made him a star in the first place. In the second half of the season, Ramírez has put up a 168 wRC+ to go with 2.3 WAR that ranks behind only Anthony Rendon, José Altuve, Mike Trout, and Ketel Marte among position players. On the season, Ramírez had finally moved his wRC+ up to 100, and with solid baserunning and fielding, he was up to 2.9 WAR on the season. These totals are a huge drop from the 6.4-WAR average he produced over the three previous seasons, but 2019 was still shaping up to be a productive year despite his awful start. Unfortunately, Ramírez isn’t likely to get any more time to improve his numbers further.

One month of any one player isn’t likely to matter a whole lot to a team’s playoff chances over the course of an entire season, but when there’s only 31 games left and the player in question was set to be worth a full win over those 31 days and his substitutes are replacement level, that month can matter a great deal. To provide some sense of what Cleveland loses in terms of projections and playoff odds, here’s where the club stood after Saturday’s games compared to where they stand now with Ramírez’s injury factored in. Read the rest of this entry »

Before Cleveland Indians right-hander Mike Clevinger exited his second start of the season with an injury, he was throwing some of the most dominant stuff in baseball. He left his April 9 start against the Toronto Blue Jays with five innings of one-hit baseball under his belt, and over his first two starts combined, he had allowed no runs, surrendered just four walks, and struck out 22 batters in 12 innings. A strained muscle in his upper back, however, meant that the Indians would have to wait more than two months for him to return to the mound. In his first two starts back in June, he got roughed up to the tune of 12 runs allowed on eight hits, six walks, and nine strikeouts in 6.1 combined innings. Then the calendar turned to July, and Clevinger turned back into the version of himself he teased in April.

Since July 1, Clevinger has made nine starts. He has thrown 54 innings, struck out 74 batters, walked just 14, and allowed four home runs. His ERA of 2.17 in that timespan ranks 10th in the majors, but his 2.33 FIP is second, and his 2.55 xFIP is first. That kind of performance is no mere return to being healthy for the 28-year-old veteran; It’s the best he’s ever looked.

Clevinger finished his first three seasons in the big leagues with FIPs of 4.86, 3.85 and 3.52, respectively. In 72 innings this season, he’s lowered that all that way down to 2.47. That figure is weighted down by the lowest walk and home run rates of Clevinger’s career, but mostly, it’s down because his strikeout rate has skyrocketed. After entering 2019 with a career K/9 rate of around 9.5, he’s elevated that figure to over 13 to this point in the season.

That explosion in strikeouts coincides with a major step forward for Clevinger’s stuff in just the past year or so. Over the past three years, he has seen his average fastball velocity increase each season — not an easy task, considering that he didn’t break into the majors until he was 25 years old. Most pitchers lose a tick or two in velocity between their mid and late 20s, but Clevinger has gone the other direction. According to Statcast’s pitch data, from the beginning of the 2017 season until June 9, 2018, Clevinger registered an average fastball velocity of at least 94 mph in just two games, both of which were relief appearances. In starts, he tended to average 92-93 mph. Then, on June 14, his average fastball velocity spiked to 94.9 mph in a seven-inning, one-run, 10-strikeout performance against the White Sox. His average velocity was above 94 mph in three of his next five starts, and reached at least 93.9 mph in each of his final nine starts of the season. In those nine starts, his ERA was 2.03, and he struck out 63 batters in 53.1 innings. Read the rest of this entry »

Jack Little may well become a big-league pitcher. Ditto a member of a big-league front office. Drafted in the fifth round this year out of Stanford University, the 21-year-old right-hander possesses the potential to do both. For now, he’s taking the mound for the Great Lakes Loons, the low-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

On Friday, I asked Little about the genesis of his low-three-quarter arm slot.

“That’s a good question, honestly,” replied the righty, who has a 2.05 ERA in 22 professional innings. “In high school I was more high three-quarters — a normal three-quarters slot — but then I kind of just naturally moved lower. It wasn’t intentional, I just did it.”

Success followed. Little began getting more swings-and-misses with his fastball, and unlike many pitchers who move to a lower slot, the movement wasn’t downward. “I started missing above barrels a lot more,” Little explained. “I became more deceptive, and while I’m not 98 [mph] — I’m only low 90s — it kind of gets on the hitter, and plays more up in the zone.”

His slider is his best secondary pitch, which didn’t used to be the case. Prior to moving into the closer role at Stanford in his sophomore season, Little’s changeup was his go-to off-speed. He subsequently became fastball-heavy, with his changeup in his back pocket, and his slider a reasonably reliable No. 2 option… this despite its being, as he now knows, markedly unrefined. Read the rest of this entry »

We have a sizable collection of players to talk about this week because the two of us have been busy wrapping up our summer looks at the 2020 Draft class over the last couple weeks. This equates to every prospect added to or moved on THE BOARD since the Trade Deadline.

Top 100 Changes
We had two players enter the 50 FV tier in Diamondbacks SS Geraldo Perdomo and Padres C Luis Campusano. Perdomo is in the “Advanced Baseball Skills” player bucket with players like Vidal Brujan, Brayan Rocchio and Xavier Edwards. He’s added visible power since first arriving in the States and had as many walks as strikeouts at Low-A before he was promoted to the Cal League, which has been Campusano’s stomping ground all summer. He’s still not a great catcher but he does have an impact arm, big power, and he’s a good enough athlete that we’re optimistic he’ll both catch and make the necessary adjustments to get to his power in games down the line.

We also moved a D-back and a Padre down in RHP Taylor Widener and 1B Tirso Ornelas. Widener has been very homer prone at Triple-A a year after leading the minors in K’s. His fastball has natural cut rather than ride and while we still like him as a rotation piece, there’s a chance he continues to be very susceptible to the long ball. Ornelas has dealt with injury and swing issues.

On Aristides Aquino
Aristides Aquino was a 50 FV on the 2017 Reds list; at the time, he was a traditional right field profile with big power undermined by the strikeout issues that would eventually cause his performance to tank so badly that he became a minor league free agent. A swing change visually similar to the one Justin Turner made before his breakout (Reds hitting coach Turner Ward comes from the Dodgers) is evident here, so we’re cautiously optimistic Aquino will be a productive role player, but we don’t think he’ll keep up a star’s pace. Read the rest of this entry »

Nearly three months into this season, José Ramírez was one of the worst hitters in the game. On June 24, Ramírez had played in 77 games, come to the plate 328 times, and put up a 66 wRC+ which ranked 153rd out of 160 qualified batters. Only good baserunning and decent defense kept Ramírez above replacement level. Since June 25, Ramírez has come to bat 172 times and put up a 143 wRC+ and 1.8 WAR, with both figures ranking among the top 25 players in the game. Before the season, Ramírez was projected for a 138 wRC+ and 6.3 WAR, so he went from one of the worst hitters in baseball for half a season to nearly the exact player he was projected for the last quarter of a season. While slumps and streaks invariably have a lot of contributing factors, it certainly seems like Ramírez spent the first part of the season not trying to crush the game and simply flipped a switch in late June.

The dates used above aren’t exactly arbitrary. On June 25, I wrote a post entitled José Ramirez Isn’t That Far Off. In that piece, I discussed a few different theories behind Ramírez’s struggles, including too many fly balls at poor angles and failures in attempting to adjust to the shift. Ultimately, I went down a plate approach rabbit hole and concluded Ramírez was swinging and making contact on too many pitches when behind in the count instead of just looking and swinging at pitches he could drive. I concluded with this:

Ramírez simply isn’t commanding the strike zone like he used to, and it is showing up in increased swings on breaking and offspeed pitches out of the zone. Ramírez needs to be able to hunt for those fastballs in the plate, and to do so, he has to be able to avoid the breaking stuff. He hasn’t done a poor job of that relative to other players, but part of what made Ramírez a very good hitter was getting in favorable counts and taking advantage. The league might have caught up to him a little bit, but the problem appears to be more on Ramírez’s end and swinging at pitches he didn’t used to. That also means the issue could be fixable. Bad luck has certainly played some role in Ramírez’s big drop, as it might not be as bad as it appears, and if Ramírez can control the plate like he has in seasons past, he just might turn things around.

Ramírez has certainly made me look good over the past couple months, but we can take a closer look at the analysis from June and see if the reasoning still fits. First, let’s look at Ramírez’s swings by count type compared to last year, the early part of this season, and his recent hot streak. Read the rest of this entry »

In modern baseball, it’s hard to win if you can’t develop talent, particularly as the sport’s best teams get even better at turning raw ingredients into functional ballplayers. The best example these days is Houston’s pattern of acquiring pitchers with high-spin fastballs or curveballs and polishing them into All-Stars. As has been detailed at length here and elsewhere, Houston’s success with that breed has powered the club to the top of baseball’s hierarchy. They’ve worked wonders with Gerrit Cole, Charlie Morton, and Ryan Pressly. They may run it back again with Aaron Sanchez and Joe Biagini.

But the Astros aren’t the only team with a competitive advantage on the mound. Before Morton and Cole exploded, Cleveland was widely considered the gold standard at developing pitching talent. They earned that reputation: former and current rotation stalwarts like Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco, Trevor Bauer, Danny Salazar, Mike Clevinger, and Shane Bieber all became significant contributors in just the last several years. Of those, only Bauer and Carrasco had major prospect hype, and even those two took their lumps in other organizations before straightening things out in Ohio. Indeed, Cleveland’s ability to turn wayward arms into productive contributors sparked their mini-dynasty in the AL Central, and may again prove decisive in this year’s playoff push.

Cleveland’s player development staff has worked its magic on a variety of pitchers; Salazar and Kluber, to name two, are very different hurlers. One commonality, though, is that they end up with a lot of right-handed pitchers who are really good at tunneling on the glove-side corner. Kluber is perhaps the best at this: The late action on his slider and two-seam fastball make the pitches perfect for starting near the corner and forcing hitters to guess which direction it’s going to move.

Increasingly, it appears that this is a replicable strategy. The latest guy to carry the mail? Aaron Civale, a 24-year-old righty who barely snuck onto Cleveland’s top prospect list earlier this spring and has flourished in three big league starts this summer. Through 18 innings, he’s allowed just two runs and has whiffed a batter per frame while walking only four. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2019 trade deadline has passed and, with it, dozens of prospects have begun a new journey toward the major leagues with a different organization. We have all of the prospects who have been traded since the Nick Solak/Peter Fairbanks deal ranked below, with brief scouting snippets for each of them. Most of the deals these prospects were a part of were analyzed at length on this site. Those pieces can be found here, or by clicking the hyperlink in the “From” column below. We’ve moved all of the players below to their new orgs over on THE BOARD, so you can see where they rank among their new teammates; our farm rankings, which now update live, also reflect these changes, so you can see where teams’ systems stack up post-deadline. Thanks to the scouts, analysts, and executives who helped us compile notes on players we didn’t know about.
Read the rest of this entry »