As baseball re-adjusts to the typical rigors of a 162-game marathon, the enormity of the season looms large. The rush of new beginnings has already subsided after cresting atop pomp, circumstance, and red, white, and blue bunting. Seven months of this stuff can take a toll on the mind, because even though the gatekeepers of fun want the players to act more robotic, they’re still hopelessly human.

To break up the monotony – to prevent the edges from blurring together – life needs texture. The smoothness of everyday things, people, and feelings must be offset by secondary and tertiary characters, those who remind us what it’s like to experience things in technicolor rather than dull gray. For most of us, it’s the fun extended family member who you only see every so often, or the friend of a friend who’s always good for a chuckle.

For Ronald Acuña Jr., it’s games against the Miami Marlins. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Miami Marlins. 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 meaningfully altered begin by telling you so. Each blurb ends with an indication of where the player played in 2020, which in turn likely informed the changes to their report if there were any. As always, I’ve leaned more heavily on sources from outside of a given org than those within for reasons of objectivity. Because outside scouts were not allowed at the alternate sites, I’ve primarily focused on data from there, and the context of that data, in my opinion, reduces how meaningful it is. Lastly, in an effort to more clearly indicate relievers’ anticipated roles, you’ll see two reliever designations, both on my 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.

To begin, I want you to take a look at this screenshot from Saturday’s game between the Mets and Marlins at Citi Field. What do you think happened? What might have been the outcome?

First things first: That’s Jacob deGrom on the mound. He’s the best pitcher on Earth, as well as other inhabited worlds we have yet to discover. And as expected, he’s been mowing down the Marlins. In the first inning, he dismantled Corey Dickerson on four fastballs that went 99.9, 99.8, 100.4, and 100.1 mph. Next, he struck out Starling Marte with two fastballs, both above 99 mph, and a wicked slider. Could Jesús Aguilar, the next batter, save face for his team? Nope; unable to keep up with deGrom’s heater, Aguilar popped out to Pete Alonso in foul territory.

After deGrom retired two more Marlins — both on strikeouts — we’re back to the moment in the screenshot. In the batter’s box is Jazz Chisholm, one of Miami’s many promising young players. Today, in addition to manning second base, he’s tasked with facing a pitcher who has been dominant thus far. It won’t be easy.

Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s docket has several marquee matchups, but we respect your intelligence enough not to explain why Shane Bieber vs. Lucas Giolito or Yu Darvish vs. Dustin May is worth watching. Instead, turn your attention to three games where the visiting pitcher will return to their old stomping grounds, and don’t gloss over Tuesday night’s game in Atlanta either.

Wednesday, April 14, 6:35 PM ET: Joe Musgrove vs. Tyler Anderson

Joe Musgrove is baseball’s hottest pitcher at the moment, and after becoming the first Padres pitcher to throw no-hitter, he’ll try to become the latest ex-Pirates pitcher to make Pittsburgh look silly for having traded him. Musgrove, who Pittsburgh traded to San Diego in January, is looking to join Gerrit Cole and Tyler Glasnow as the latest pitcher to take another leap forward ditching his black and gold threads, and his early-season showing has been superlative. Still only 28, Musgrove was deemed unlikely to help the next good Pirates team (he’s a free agent after the 2022 season), and was traded for prospects. Over his three-year stay in Pittsburgh, during which the team had the majors’ seventh-lowest winning percentage, Musgrove was the Pirates’ best pitcher by nearly two wins. Now, he’s part of a San Diego team built to win a championship, which would already be the second of Musgrove’s underrated career. Read the rest of this entry »

Joe Musgrove came into the season viewed by many as a breakout candidate, and it’s easy to see why. The 28-year-old Pirate-turned-Padre possesses plus stuff, and the change of scenery — from Pittsburgh to his hometown of San Diego, no less — portends more success…. particularly in the won-loss column. Musgrove went a paltry 1-5 with the N.L. Central cellar-dwellers in 2020, while his new club is poised to win, per our projections, 94 games in the current campaign.

By and large, the breakout has already happened, and not solely because the 6-foot-5, 235-pound right-hander hurled the year’s first no-hitter on Friday night. His 2020 peripherals were those of a pitcher who’d turned the corner. With the caveat that it was a pandemic-shortened season, Mugrove set career-bests in ERA, FIP, and strikeout rate, and more importantly, he did so with improved pitch profiles. Per StatCast, the spin and movement of his offerings were better than they’d ever been.

I asked the righty about that in a spring-training Zoom session.

“I’m not really a big analytical guy; I’m not big on the Rapsodo numbers,” responded Musgrove. “I look at that information more as a benchmark. When I have real strong outings, or I have real poor outings, I look at the numbers to see where they’re at when I’m good, or when I’m poor. But by no means am I going home and saying, ‘I need to get 200 more RPM on my curveball,’ or ‘I need to change the spin axis on this pitch.’ I kind of just let our analytical guys coach me up a little bit on that, and offer suggestions where they can.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the latest spring exploits of Shohei Ohtani, the Royals extending Salvador Perez, rooting against injuries in spring training, and a mysterious former major leaguer known only as “Lewis,” then preview the 2021 Mets (37:09) with Deesha Thosar of the New York Daily News and the 2021 Marlins (1:14:26) with Jordan McPherson of the Miami Herald.

Audio intro: Mark Knopfler, "Nobody Does That"
Audio interstitial 1: Radiohead, "Lewis (Mistreated)"
Audio interstitial 2: Queen, "Put Out the Fire"
Audio outro: Feist, "Get it Wrong, Get it Right"

Link to video of Ohtani’s two-way game
Link to Ben Clemens on the Perez extension
Link to Jared Diamond on the Royals’ humane behavior
Link to Rustin Dodd on the Royals’ anti-porn campaign
Link to “Lewis” Wikipedia page
Link to “Lewis” B-Ref page
Link to “Lewis” on the Stathead ERA leaderboard
Link to story about deGrom’s spring speeds
Link to Matt Kelly on deGrom’s velo in 2020
Link to Travis Sawchik on deGrom’s velo in 2020
Link to Deesha on Jared Porter
Link to article on the Mets’ defense
Link to Jordan on Kim Ng
Link to Stephanie Apstein on Kim Ng
Link to Jordan on the Marlins’ pandemic year
Link to story about Marlins security guard
Link to Realmuto cracking the fish tank

 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 Twitter Account
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

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

Subscribe: RSS

JJ Bleday was drafted fourth-overall in 2019 after breaking out at Vanderbilt. Swinging from the left side, the now-23-year-old outfielder bashed an NCAA-best 26 home runs, putting up a 1.005 OPS along the way. And the Miami Marlins brought more than just a slugger on board. As Eric Longenhagen wrote in his prospect profile, Bleday is “a complete offensive package” who possesses “a superlative feel for the strike zone.”

Bleday didn’t get game action last year due to the pandemic, but his advanced tools and mature approach are impressive enough that the Marlins are giving him a long look this spring. Ranked 35th on our 2021 Top 100 Prospects list, Bleday is close to big-league ready despite having just 151 professional plate appearances, none above A-ball.

Bleday talked hitting prior to getting into the cage yesterday afternoon.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with one of my favorite icebreaker questions: Do you view hitting as more of an art, or as more of a science?

JJ Bleday: “I view it as more of an art. It’s definitely an art, because it’s your own craft. Everyone has their own style, and kind of mark on their swing, or variation of approaching the game.”

Laurila: A lot of the guys I’ve asked that question to have said “art,” but then talked about the science of hitting. Analytics are obviously a big part of the game now.

Bleday: “Oh, yeah, absolutely. With every sport. I mean, it’s big-time in golf nowadays.”

Laurila: Are hitting analytics a big part of who you are? Read the rest of this entry »

Brady Singer played in the SEC for three seasons before being drafted by the Kansas City Royals, so he faced a ton of talented hitters prior to starting his professional career. Pitching for the University of Florida from 2016-2018, Singer matched up against the likes of JJ Bleday, Nick Senzel, Bryan Reynolds, and Evan White. Easy marks were few and far between.

Which of his collegiate opponents does Singer recall respecting the most? More specifically, which hitter had him laser-focused on making quality pitches, lest an errant offering result in serious damage?

“One that really stands out wasn’t in the SEC, but rather in Omaha,” Singer told me. “I believe it was the first game I pitched there, in 2017 when we went on to win the [College] World Series. It was Brendan McKay, from Louisville. When he got in the box, I knew I had to dial in. Just the bat path he had, and how he stood in the box — how he presented himself — was tough.”

McKay’s hitting future is obviously in limbo. Ostensibly still a two-way player, he pitched 49 big-league innings for the Tampa Bay Rays in 2019, and logged just 11 plate appearances. Last season, a positive COVID test and subsequent shoulder surgery squelched his opportunities to do either. McKay’s Ohtani aspirations remain — he’s taking cuts in camp as he rehabs — but what happens going forward isn’t entirely clear.

Singer was correct when he told me that McKay could “really swing it back in college.” As the record shows, the fourth-overall pick in the 2017 draft slashed a snazzy .328/.430/.536 as a Cardinal. Singer — the 18th-overall pick a year later — is another story. Read the rest of this entry »

Pete Alonso didn’t duplicate his stellar rookie season in 2020. There wasn’t one obvious problem to point to, though. He trimmed his strikeouts slightly. He hit the ball as hard, both in frequency and in terms of maximum exit velocity, as he did the year before. He made more contact in the strike zone, and he swung less at pitches outside the strike zone. That all sounds pretty good.

Despite all those glowing facts, there’s no way around it: Alonso was a lot worse in 2020. His BABIP dropped from .280 to .242. His slugging percentage fell by nearly 100 points. He fell off of his 2019 home run pace, but not by as much as you’d think. He lost far more doubles, though, and didn’t make up for it elsewhere. He wasn’t bad, but a 118 wRC+ out of your bat-first first baseman is par for the course rather than spectacular.

What if I told you I could explain what went haywire? You’d probably tell me I’m lying, and you wouldn’t be wrong. I can tell you what I think happened, though, and that will have to be good enough. You know how I said his contact was just as loud? It’s time to delve obnoxiously deep into that data. Read the rest of this entry »

This week may be Prospects Week here at FanGraphs, but for MLB, this has been Minor Signings Week. The long offseason dance is just about over, and everyone’s now at risk of going to homecoming alone. So rather than a long spiel that sees me reference a historical battle or obscure 18th-century literature, let’s get straight to the moves.

Read the rest of this entry »