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 »

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.
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Just moments before trading away Zack Greinke in the blockbuster move of deadline day, the Arizona Diamondbacks made an addition to their rotation, acquiring Mike Leake from the Seattle Mariners. It is the second time Leake has been traded since he signed a five-year, $80-million contract with the St. Louis Cardinals before the 2016 season, and the third time overall that he has been traded in-season. According to arizonasports.com’s John Gambadoro, the D-Backs will be responsible for just $6 million of the roughly $20 million still owed to Leake on his contract. The Mariners received 22-year-old infielder Jose Caballero in the deal.

Leake, 31, has been good for about league-average production and a lot of innings eaten throughout his career, and the same remains true for his 2019 season. With a 4.40 ERA in 22 starts, his ERA- sits at 101, which just so happens to line up perfectly with his career mark. His FIP, however, has jumped to 4.74, thanks to a career-worst HR/9 mark of 1.71.

The Leake deal was one of several the Diamondbacks made on Wednesday, though it was the only one that involved the organization actually taking on an established big leaguer. Greinke — along with $24 million of the $77 million owed to him on his contract — was sent to Houston in exchange for a mighty haul of prospects just before 4 p.m. On a much smaller scale, Arizona also traded backup catcher John Ryan Murphy to the Atlanta Braves, and in a rare flip of notable prospects, sent shortstop Jazz Chisholm — ranked the D-backs’ No. 1 prospect by Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel — to the Miami Marlins for right-handed pitching prospect Zac Gallen. Arizona was heavily rumored to be shopping left-handed starter Robbie Ray throughout the week, but no deal ever came to fruition. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve reached that time of year once again: the day when Mike Rizzo trades several intriguing prospects for bullpen relief. After earlier acquiring Daniel Hudson from the Blue Jays, the Nationals acquired Roenis Elías and Hunter Strickland from the Mariners in exchange for Aaron Fletcher, Elvis Alvarado, and Taylor Guilbeau. The Nats hope Elías and Strickland, who won’t be free agents until 2022, will be a stabilizing force in the middle of their bullpen for years to come, or at the very least a cromulent bridge to the stars of the pen.

As seems to happen every year, the Nationals came into 2019 with a plan to fix the bullpen. They signed Trevor Rosenthal and traded for Kyle Barraclough in the offseason, both interesting arms with velocity to spare and control issues. They also signed Tony Sipp just before the start of the season, promoted Tanner Rainey, who they acquired from the Reds in a Tanner swap with Tanner Roark, and signed Jonny Venters when the Braves released him in May. It’s clear, in other words, that they knew they had a bullpen problem and attempted to fix it.

As Nationals fans already know, they didn’t fix it. The Nationals bullpen has been among the worst in the majors this year. They’ve compiled a collective 5.99 ERA, last in baseball, and an equally horrific 5.07 xFIP (though their FIP is slightly better, at 4.80). As bad as that 5.99 ERA sounds, though, their results have been even worse than that due to poor timing. The bullpen has been worth -7.98 WPA, meaning they’ve cost the team a staggering eight wins on the year. Eight wins is the difference between fighting for a Wild Card spot, where the Nats find themselves now, and having the second-best record in the NL.

It’s safe to say that the team has a clear objective, but the way they’re addressing it differs from past years. They’ve previously traded middle relievers with years of team control left for dominant closers, sending Felipe Vázquez to the Pirates for Mark Melancon and Blake Treinen plus prospects to the A’s for Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson. Those trades came back to bite the team — Vázquez and Treinen have since been among the most effective relievers in baseball, while Melancon and Madson left in free agency. Read the rest of this entry »

Edgar Martinez’s story — at least as recounted in Edgar: An Autobiography, written with veteran Seattle sports scribe Larry Stone and published by Triumph Books earlier this month — reads like something of a fairy tale. Born in New York City in 1963, he moved to Puerto Rico when his parents split, and was raised in the Maguayo neighborhood of Dorado by his maternal grandparents, whom he chose to stay with at age 11, even after his parents reconciled and returned to New York. Though his love for the game was kindled by the heroics of Roberto Clemente in the 1971 World Series, and his development stoked by his relationship with cousin Carmelo Martinez, who spent nine years in the majors (1983-91), he didn’t sign a professional contract until just before his 20th birthday; putting aside $4-an-hour work on an assembly line, he received just a $4,000 bonus from the Mariners. Despite hitting a homerless .173 in his first professional season (1983), and battling an eye condition called strabismus, in which his right eye drifted out of alignment, the Mariners stuck with him.

While Martinez debuted in the majors in 1987, he spent three seasons trying to surmount the Mariners’ internal competition at third base, wound up shuttling back and forth to Triple-A Calgary, and didn’t secure a full-time job until 1990, his age-27 season. Though he won a batting title in 1992, a slew of injuries — shoulder, hamstring, wrist — threatened to derail his career until the Mariners convinced him to become a full-time designated hitter. Once he did, he became one of the AL’s most dominant players; from 1995-2001, he hit .329/.446/.574 for a 162 wRC+ (third in the majors) and 39.9 WAR (seventh, less than one win behind teammate Ken Griffey Jr.).

His heroics not only helped the Mariners reach the playoffs for the first time in 1995 (a year in which he also won his second batting title), but he became a one-man wrecking crew in that year’s Division Series against the Yankees, capping his .571/.667/1.000 performance with a series-winning double in Game 5 that basically saved baseball in Seattle. Remaining with the team for the duration of his career, which lasted through 2004 and included three other postseason appearances, further endeared him to a city that watched Griffey and fellow Mariners Randy Johnson and Alex Rodriguez depart for greener pastures. When he retired, Major League Baseball renamed its annual award for the best designated hitter in his honor. Earlier this year, in his 10th and final cycle of eligibility, he was elected to the Hall of Fame, that after more than tripling his support from just four years earlier.

Martinez’s arc seems so improbable, and yet it’s all true. Over the course of Edgar’s 352 pages, Martinez candidly details the highlights and lowlights of his career, the big decisions, unlikely events, and tactics that helped him surmount so many obstacles. Stone provides testimony from his former managers, coaches, and teammates in the form of sidebars that offer additional perspectives and enhance the narrative.

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Less than a year ago, Tom Murphy was catching in Triple-A Albuquerque, batting eighth for the Isotopes and wrapping up a fourth consecutive season in which he failed to register 100 big-league plate appearances. Now platooning with Omar Narvaez in Seattle, Murphy’s .366 wOBA is sixth among big-league catchers with as many trips to the plate, and he has past the century mark on that count two weeks before the 4th of July. Since June 1, he’s hit five home runs for the Mariners, matching his career high for a single season in a month that’s not over yet.

To hear Murphy tell it, his sustained success in the major leagues this year — he’s always been a good Triple-A hitter — has been driven by three major adjustments, made meaningful by the opportunity he’s getting to play so often. The first is to the pitches he’s hunting. The second is to the way his upper body helps him get to those pitches in time to make contact. The final adjustment is to the physical foundation that lets him do damage when he makes contact.

During his first four seasons in the big leagues, Murphy swung at 74% of the fastballs he saw up in the zone (64 of 86), which was about the same rate at which he swung at fastballs in the middle and bottom thirds, too. (He swung at 70% of those pitches, or 116 of 165 he saw.) This year, by contrast, he’s swinging at pitches in the top third nearly 81% of the time (34 of 42 pitches), and pitches in the bottom two-thirds just 64% of the time (63 of 99). That’s the first adjustment.

But just swinging at different pitches won’t make much of a difference if you can’t hit those pitches when you try to. Murphy told me that this off-season, he switched from taking pitches off a tee to training off an Iron Mike pitching machine almost exclusively. The resultant change in training velocity — from literally zero to something more closely approximating game speed — exposed what, to Murphy, had become an unhelpful amount of “slack” in his upper body. Read the rest of this entry »

Edwin Encarnacion is 36 years old now, but age hasn’t stopped him from mashing baseballs. Among qualified American League hitters, he ranks 12th in wRC+ (139), leads the league in home runs (21), and is fourth in isolated power (.290). He’s accrued 1.7 WAR, which is pretty good at this point of the season, especially given his subpar defense. Of course, nobody is employing Encarnacion for his glove.

When Seattle acquired Encarnacion this past offseason, everybody knew he’d be traded sooner rather than later. The Mariners are in the midst of a rebuild and are reportedly “trying to trade everyone” before the July 31 deadline. Encarnacion, with his age and contract, was an obvious candidate to be moved.

It only took until the middle of June for the Mariners to find a suitor. The Yankees now employ Edwin Encarnacion.

Yankees Get:

• 1B/3B/DH Edwin Encarnacion (though it’s likely he’ll primarily be a DH)

Mariners Get:

• RHP Juan Then

Let’s touch on the Mariners’ return first before talking about the big parrot in the room. Juan Then was actually a Mariners farmhand two years ago. The Yankees acquired Then (and minor league hurler JP Sears) during the 2017-18 offseason in exchange for Nick Rumbelow.

Then is only 19 years old and he’s still in rookie ball. Prior to this season, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel ranked Then as the No. 31 prospect in New York’s system, noting that he is “advanced for his age” but has “middling stuff and physical projection.” It’s worth noting that Then seems to have developed a better fastball in the Yankees system. But again, it’s awfully hard to project a 19-year-old who hasn’t reached full-season ball. We know he’s a young arm of some promise, but the delta in his potential outcomes is very wide.

As an interesting side note, reports suggest that the Mariners chose to deal Encarnacion to the Yankees because New York was willing to absorb more money than other interested clubs. By prioritizing salary flexibility, Seattle’s move is somewhat reminiscent of how the Marlins handled the Giancarlo Stanton trade, in which the Yankees gave up significantly less player value to bring in another slugger because they were able to take on big money. It’s not ideal for rebuilding teams to prioritize monetary value over player return on transactions, but it is what it is. Money is a big part of how organizations operate, and sometimes you’re going to see deals like that. Read the rest of this entry »

On May 8, Kyle Seager hurt his left hand. This was bad news for Seager and for the Mariners, but good news for Daniel Vogelbach. With Seager out, Ryon Healy moved from first to third base, covering for Seager; Edwin Encarnación, in turn, moved into the first base slot vacated by Healy, and Vogelbach — who had not previously had a path to much playing time — became the Mariners’ primary designated hitter. Since then, and despite a mixed May that dropped his wOBA from a terrific .481 through April 30 to a diminished but still distinguished .385 after the weekend’s action, Vogelbach has shown all the power that his brawn has always promised and the plate discipline that has always been his calling card to boot. His .313 ISO is now ninth in the game, and behind only Joey Gallo and George Springer in the American League.

Let’s start with the power, both because there aren’t too many people who can do the damage Vogelbach does when he really connects with a baseball, and because it provides a clue to what’s changed this year. When Vogelbach connects, as he did on May 27 at the expense of José Leclerc, the camera tends to pan so far up that it’s clear the operator, like everyone else in the ballpark, has no idea where the baseball is or where it’s going to land. All that is clear, for the few long seconds the ball is airborne, is that it’s gone an awfully long way. After this bomb (only the third in the history of the park to hit the third deck, and the first since Carlos Delgado did it way back in 2001), the Mariners put up a traffic cone and taped over the seat. That’s just fun to watch. Read the rest of this entry »

It remains one of the game’s unsolved mysteries. A batter hits a pop-up near the mound and the person closest to it — a professional athlete wearing a glove — isn’t expected to catch the ball. Moreover, he’s not supposed to catch the ball. That job belongs to any one of several teammates, all of whom has traversed a greater distance. As often as not they’re climbing a slope to get under the descending baseball.

Chaos can ensue as the infielders and the catcher converge. The multiple “I’ve got its,” are drowned out by crowd noise and suddenly what should be a routine out becomes an adventure. We’ve all seen it. A bumper-car-like collision occurs and the catch is made clumsily… or not at all.

Just last week, Red Sox right-hander Rick Porcello was charged with an error when he failed to catch a pop up in front of the mound. Not because of ineptitude, but rather because he was veritably mugged by his catcher as the ball was about to arrive comfortably in his glove.

Why aren’t pitchers expected to handle simple pop-ups? They’re perfectly capable, so it makes sense that they should be catching them. Right?

“I don’t know why, and yes, they should be,’ said Seattle’s Perry Hill, whom many consider the game’s best infield instructor. “They’re on on the field of play when the ball is in play, so they should be able to make a play. It’s practiced in spring training. That little short pop-up that nobody can get to. The third baseman is playing way back. The first baseman is way back. The pitcher is the closest guy to the ball. He’ll catch that ball.”

Scott Servais sees it somewhat differently than his first base coach. Read the rest of this entry »

Hitters deploy their craft in different ways. Not all have the same mechanics, nor do they employ the same approaches. Another thing that differs is the way they articulate their ideas. Proof in that pudding can be found in six similar-themed interviews that have run here at FanGraphs over the past two months. Daniel Murphy, Nolan Arenado, Drew Ferguson, Michael Lorenzen, Jesse Winker, and Matt Chapman have all expounded on the art (or is it a science?) of hitting, and each of their perspectives has been unique.

Mitch Haniger’s is unique, as well. The Mariners outfielder once told me that his hitting approach is complex, which made circling back to gain further insight on what makes him tick a veritable no-brainer. I caught up with the 28-year-old Cal Poly product when Seattle visited Fenway Park this past weekend.

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David Laurila: When we spoke in 2013 — you were playing in the Arizona Fall League at the time — you called your hitting approach “pretty complex.” How would you describe it now?

Mitch Haniger: “It’s simple to me. It’s not simple to explain. There are so many factors that go into your approach, based on who you’re facing and what the situation is. How many outs are there? Where in the game are you? Are you facing a starter or a reliever? Not every at-bat is the same. That said, my main focus is essentially to get a good pitch, and hit the ball as hard as possible while taking a nice easy swing.”

Laurila: Getting a good pitch to hit is Hitting 101. How do you balance the simplicity of that approach with the multiple factors you referred to?

Haniger: “I look at pitchers’ tendencies and see how they try to pitch guys. For instance, most pitchers drastically change with runners in scoring position. I’ll look at previous at-bats against a guy and see what he’s typically doing. But really, the overwhelming majority of the time I’m looking for a fastball and trying to stay in the center of the field.”

Laurila: Can you elaborate on “most pitchers drastically change with runners in scoring position”? Read the rest of this entry »