To be frank, there aren’t a whole lot of reasons to watch the Marlins this season. As of this writing, they’re just 9-21 and already eight games out of first place. Unfortunately, the FanGraphs’ playoff projections had the Marlins’ odds at a measly 0.0% prior to the season. As you might have expected based on their record, these odds have not changed after a month of play.
The Marlins, as a team, have produced just 1.2 WAR this season. Of that, left-handed starter Caleb Smith has accounted for 1.0. Yes, you read that correctly. A single player on the Marlins’ 25-man roster has produced 83% of the team’s entire WAR. I don’t know if that is good or if that is bad. Well, I know that Smith is good, and the Marlins are bad. So, I guess that answers that.
Smith has had a stellar beginning to his season. In six starts, spanning 36 innings pitched, Smith has posted a 2.00 ERA, 2.81 FIP, and a 26.9 K-BB%. His aforementioned 1.0 WAR ranks 13th among qualified starters, and his 33.6 K% is tied with Blake Snell for fourth. The only pitchers with a higher strikeout rate than Smith this season are Gerrit Cole (37.6%), James Paxton (36.2%), and Jacob deGrom (34.8%). I’ll let those names stand for themselves. Read the rest of this entry »
“In the future,” Andy Warhol said, “everybody will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” Warhol wasn’t really a baseball fan (Pete Rosebaseball-card prints aside), but it seems likely that major league baseball consulted with him, or at least took some inspiration. How else can you explain the phenomenon of the pop-up relief pitching ace? Nick Anderson has the lowest FIP (and xFIP) and the highest strikeout rate in baseball this year, and if you aren’t related to him, I bet you had to go look up what team he pitches for.
Anderson’s route to the spotlight (such as it is) has been incredibly circuitous. Early legal troubles, including an assault he contends was him coming to the defense of a friend, led to his starting in the independent leagues instead of affiliated ball. Anderson spent a year remodeling homes and playing amateur ball. When he returned, he pitched excellently for the Cedar Rapids Kernels and the Frontier Greys in 2015 (sub-1 ERAs and 9-plus K/9s in both stops). The hometown Twins scooped him up, and you have to think other teams weren’t far behind given the numbers, but still — he was out of baseball, fully out, just five years ago.
How crazy is it that we never saw Nick Anderson coming? Well, if you go by his minor league stats, it’s pretty crazy. In three-plus years of pitching (admittedly often at levels he was old for), he compiled a 2.25 ERA (2.35 FIP, 2.37 xFIP) with sterling peripherals — a 32.5% strikeout rate and a measly 6.2% walk rate. Still though, he enjoyed very little prospect shine — he was a reliever at best, and one without much pedigree. Aside from brief mentions as “Others of Note,” he pretty much flew under the radar.
When the Twins had a 40-man roster crunch after the 2018 season, they sent Anderson to the Marlins. I can forgive you if you don’t remember the transaction — Nick Anderson for Brian Schales was hardly the biggest transaction of November. Heck, it wasn’t even the Twins move with the most fanfare — that would be grabbing C.J. Cron off of waivers, a move that likely had something to do with trading Anderson. With little fanfare, Anderson made the Marlins bullpen out of Spring Training (eight innings pitched, 10 strikeouts, no walks), and just like that, baseball’s best current reliever (by the numbers) had arrived in the majors. Read the rest of this entry »
Some baseball players are good at everything (looking at you, Mike Trout) and some aren’t good at much (looking at you, Chris Davis, though you did used to be good), but most fall somewhere in the middle. Generally, the average major league player has one or two attributes that make them special and one or two attributes that the opposing hitter or pitcher can attack. That’s just how most populations work; the bell curve exists for a reason. Not everyone can be in the 99th percentile, though it would be fun to see an entire league of Mike Trouts. (But then everyone would be in the 50th percentile, so there’s no real winner here anyway.)
Nonetheless, this idea of one or two special attributes gets me to my main point. On Monday, the Marlins released right-handed pitcher Dan Straily in a move that was something of a surprise. Miami isn’t looking to contend this year, and at a minimum, Straily could have been a decent innings eater for them. Like many other teams, the Marlins are opting to roll with younger players; the average age of their starting rotation is just 27 years old, though at 30, Straily wouldn’t have had the most grey hairs on the staff. That title belongs to Wei-Yin Chen, who the Marlins still owe $42 million over the next two seasons.
Straily is now looking for a new home, and unfortunately, it’s at an inopportune time with Opening Day today. Still, Straily has had a decent seven-year career, reaching a career-high in WAR (2.1) in 181.2 innings as recently as 2017. Last year he made 23 starts, posting a 4.12 ERA and a 5.11 FIP over 122.1 innings. His 19.1 K% and a 10.0 BB% weren’t awful, though both marks were below league-average for a starting pitcher. Putting all of this together, he was worth just 0.1 WAR.
Does this mean that Straily has no positive attributes? Absolutely not. In fact, there is a lot to like about his profile. Well, two thing in particular: he’s really good at generating spin on his fastball (70th percentile), and he throws a potentially deadly changeup. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Mariners-A’s opening series, the emotional last game featuring Ichiro Suzuki, and the uncertain degree to which the recent rash of contract extensions reflects players’ anxiety about free agency, then preview the 2019 New York Yankees (38:17) with The Athletic’s Yankees beat writer, Lindsey Adler, and the 2019 Miami Marlins (1:14:31) with The Athletic’s Marlins beat writer, Andre Fernandez.
When publishing our lists — in particular, the top 100 — we’re frequently asked who, among the players excluded from this year’s version, might have the best chance of appearing on next year’s version. Whose stock are we buying? This post represents our best attempt to answer all of those questions at once.
This is the second year that we’re doing this, and we have some new rules. First, none of the players you see below will have ever been a 50 FV or better in any of our write-ups or rankings. So while we think Austin Hays might have a bounce back year and be a 50 FV again, we’re not allowed to include him here; you already know about him. We also forbid ourselves from using players who were on last year’s inaugural list. (We were right about 18 of the 63 players last year, a 29% hit rate, though we have no idea if that’s good or not, as it was our first time engaging in the exercise.) At the end of the piece, we have a list of potential high-leverage relievers who might debut this year. They’re unlikely to ever be a 50 FV or better because of their role, but they often have a sizable impact on competitive clubs, and readers seemed to like that we had that category last year.
We’ve separated this year’s players into groups or “types” to make it a little more digestible, and to give you some idea of the demographics we think pop-up guys come from, which could help you identify some of your own with THE BOARD. For players who we’ve already covered this offseason, we included a link to the team lists, where you can find a full scouting report. We touch briefly on the rest of the names in this post. Here are our picks to click:
Teenage Pitchers
Torres was young for his draft class, is a plus athlete, throws really hard, and had surprisingly sharp slider command all last summer. White looked excellent in the fall when the Rangers finally allowed their high school draftees to throw. He sat 92-94, and his changeup and breaking ball were both above-average. Pardinho and Woods Richardson are the two advanced guys in this group. Thomas is the most raw but, for a someone who hasn’t been pitching for very long, he’s already come a long way very quickly.
The “This is What They Look Like” Group
If you like big, well-made athletes, this list is for you. Rodriguez was physically mature compared to his DSL peers and also seems like a mature person. The Mariners have indicated they’re going to send him right to Low-A this year. He could be a middle-of-the-order, corner outfield power bat. Luciano was the Giants’ big 2018 July 2 signee. He already has huge raw power and looks better at short than he did as an amateur. Canario has elite bat speed. Adams was signed away from college football but is more instinctive than most two-sport athletes. Most of the stuff he needs to work on is related to getting to his power.
Advanced Young Bats with Defensive Value
This is the group that produces the likes of Vidal Brujan and Luis Urias. Edwards is a high-effort gamer with 70 speed and feel for line drive contact. Marcano isn’t as stocky and strong as X, but he too has innate feel for contact, and could be a plus middle infield defender. Perez has great all-fields contact ability and might be on an Andres Gimenez-style fast track, where he reaches Double-A at age 19 or 20. Ruiz is the worst defender on this list, but he has all-fields raw power and feel for contact. He draws Alfonso Soriano comps. Palacios is the only college prospect listed here. He had three times as many walks as strikeouts at Towson last year. Rosario controls the zone well, is fast, and is a plus defender in center field.
Corner Power Bats
Nevin will probably end up as a contact-over-power first baseman, but he might also end up with a 70 bat. He looked great against Fall League pitching despite having played very little as a pro due to injury. Lavigne had a lot of pre-draft helium and kept hitting after he signed. He has all-fields power. Apostel saw reps at first during instructs but has a good shot to stay at third. He has excellent timing and explosive hands.
College-aged Pitchers
It’s hard to imagine any of these guys rocketing into the top 50 overall. Rather, we would anticipate that they end up in the 60-100 range on next year’s list. Gilbert was a workhorse at Stetson and his velo may spike with reshaped usage. Singer should move quickly because of how advanced his command is. Lynch’s pre-draft velocity bump held throughout the summer, and he has command of several solid secondaries. Abreu spent several years in rookie ball and then had a breakout 2018, forcing Houston to 40-man him to protect him from the Rule 5. He’ll tie Dustin May for the second-highest breaking ball spin rate on THE BOARD when the Houston list goes up. We’re intrigued by what Dodgers player dev will do with an athlete like Gray. Phillips throws a ton of strikes and has a good four-pitch mix.
Bounce Back Candidates
The Dodgers have a strong track record of taking severely injured college arms who return with better stuff after a long period of inactivity. That could be Grove, their 2018 second rounder, who missed most of his sophomore and junior seasons at West Virginia. McCarthy was also hurt during his junior season and it may have obscured his true abilities. Burger is coming back from multiple Achilles ruptures, but was a strong college performer with power before his tire blew.
Catchers
We’re very excited about the current crop of minor league catchers. Naylor is athletic enough that he’s likely to improve as a defender and he has rare power for the position.
Potentially Dominant Relievers
These names lean “multi-inning” rather than “closer.” Gonsolin was a two-way player in college who has been the beneficiary of sound pitch design. He started last year but was up to 100 mph out of the bullpen the year before. He now throws a four seamer rather than a sinker and he developed a nasty splitter in 2017. He also has two good breaking balls. He has starter stuff but may break in as a reliever this year.
Everyone is waiting for the Phillies to sign one of Bryce Harper and Manny Machado. It seems almost inevitable that the Phillies will sign one of Bryce Harper and Manny Machado. There’s some chance it even happens today! Who knows? But while the world has waited for the Phillies to signal that they’re going for it, they’ve already added a new everyday outfielder in Andrew McCutchen. They’ve already added a new everyday shortstop in Jean Segura. They’ve already added a new late-inning reliever in David Robertson. And now they’ve added a new regular catcher.
And so ends the drawn-out, months-long Realmuto sweepstakes, that saw him connected to a couple handfuls of teams. Just last week, I thought Realmuto was going to be traded to the Reds. The Phillies came almost out of nowhere. But, like the Reds, they’ve spent the offseason acting aggressively, and I can’t imagine they’re finished. The NL Central is going to be a hell of a division. And, the NL East is going to be a hell of a division. The Marlins are going to get beat up on the regular as a consequence, but then, they knew what they were getting into.
It feels like, any minute now, J.T. Realmuto will officially be on the move. He might even get officially traded while I’m busy writing this article. According to the latest reports, Realmuto is likely to be dealt to the Phillies, in exchange for a package including Sixto Sanchez and Jorge Alfaro (plus more). I don’t know what might be left for the teams to overcome. Again, press releases seem almost inevitable. With Sanchez as the centerpiece, the Marlins ought to be satisfied.
If and when this reaches a resolution, it’ll mark the end of a drawn-out sweepstakes. Realmuto always seemed like baseball’s most probable trade candidate. As much as the Marlins have wanted to keep him around, a contract extension requires interest from both parties, and Realmuto has wanted out. So a trade was going to happen. A trade involving some manner of top prospect was going to happen. What we didn’t know was where Realmuto would ultimately end up. He’s now linked to the Phillies. He’s been linked to the Reds. He’s been linked to the Braves, and the Padres, and the Dodgers, and the Rays, and even more teams on top of that. A whole lot of baseball has wanted J.T. Realmuto.
So let’s talk about that for a few minutes. For many of you, this will be simple review. But, why has Realmuto been in such demand? It’s because he might well be the best catcher in the game.
After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for more than half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Miami Marlins.
The lineup projections didn’t come out as poorly as I expected, though that may just mean I’m a particularly pessimistic individual. J.T. Realmuto is for real, of course, but that pretty little 3.6 WAR in the graphic may well be replaced with a WAR figure starting with a zero by the time the season actually starts. The effort to trade Realmuto has been a fascinating process, now going on for the better part of a year, with the team making noise that it would take a phenomenal offer for them to part with the catcher. Now, it could be interpreted as posturing, given that the team reportedly asked for the stars for the members of their Giancarlo Stanton/Christian Yelich/Marcell Ozuna outfield and settled for a moon pie. But I’m coming around to the idea that if Realmuto actually could be acquired for an ordinary package, he’d already be gone at this point. With the large-market teams continuing to display a real tendency to avoid spending, there may be a less willingness to part with a large pile of top prospects, those being needed to continue this cheap frugal strategy.
ZiPS isn’t yet impressed with Austin Dean, but outside of his modest projection, the only gaping wound — I’m still more optimistic than ZiPS on Brinson, though my cheerful good nature is dissipating — is at first base, where ZiPS projects the Marlins to have a worse first base situation than the Orioles do. Generally speaking, you’d like your first baseman to be above the Chris Davis Line. O’Brien did have a decent cameo appearance with the big league club, but he has a rather pedestrian minor league record and little defensive value. There’s one caveat though: O’Brien really did show far more patience than he ever had before in his brief stint in Miami, which is at least a good sign. He’s always had power and if his approach at the plate continues to be more scientific than his previous method of smashing lab equipment with a meteor hammer while blindfolded, perhaps he can make the computer look foolish.
There’s very little regression projected from Brian Anderson, which is also a positive note. Well, it’s positive if he does it; Anderson is one of the bigger disagreements ZiPS has with Steamer. If he can, it’ll improve the package the Marlins get in a trade when they’re required to pay Anderson something commensurate with his contributions!
One of the strangest rumors so far this offseason was the late buzz that the Marlins were interested in Nick Markakis. Markakis likely would have been a short-term upgrade over Dean, but it’s hard to see what the point would have been. Even if we accept for the sake of argument that fans will come out to see an additional win or two from a bad team, this is the Marlins we’re talking about. After so much ill will richly earned by the organization, they may be at the point where it takes something of a miracle to grow the fanbase; this isn’t a matter of winning 65 game instead of 64. Markakis has been safely returned to Atlanta, a destination that makes far more sense for him; the Marlins have safely returned to their paltry outfield projection.
Pitchers
The biggest positive here is Pablo Lopez, one of four players picked up from the Mariners in the David Phelps trade back in 2017. ZiPS doesn’t project a Luis Severino-esque breakout season for Lopez, but it does have him as a contributing, if fairly ordinary, starting pitcher. Even more, ZiPS has Lopez as the team’s best starting pitcher, and does so with an unusual level of certainty for a minor league pitcher of the non-elite variety.
Lopez is far from guaranteed a rotation spot in spring training, which strikes me as a mistake. If the team is actually serious about a full-on rebuild, rather than simply lurching from fire sale to fire sale to bide time between new ballparks, it’s important to see as much of pitchers like Lopez, Sandy Alcantara, Zac Gallen, and Caleb Smith as possible.
There’s unlikely to be much of a market for Wei-Yin Chen or Dan Straily no matter how long you “showcase” them. There are only so many roster spots and it will be harder to give pitchers like Lopez an extended audition with some of the pressure from below (Nick Neidert, Edward Cabrera, Jorge Guzman, etc.). If the Marlins want to be eternally “thrifty,” then they need to run the roster in such a way where they can find the inexpensive players who will actually make that strategy possible.
Bench and Prospects
It’s galling, but ZiPS isn’t terribly hopeful about the chances of the team getting any core players from the Stanton/Yelich/Ozuna dealing. My colleagues Kiley McDaniel and Eric Longenhagen are more optimistic, and Marlins fans have to be pulling for them to make the computer look foolish. What it comes down to is that ZiPS wants to see, at some point, the raw power actually become game power for Isan Diaz, and in the case of Monte Harrison, for him to not strike out 200 times in Double-A. Brinson’s struggles in the majors have been well-documented, and you don’t want me to tell you what projection percentile Magneuris Sierra has to meet in order to match the dizzying heights of Tom Goodwin.
Overall, the minor league system is still in the below-average range, but it’s certainly improved from the desolate days of recent yore, when a mannequin dressed up as Nolan Ryan might have made the team’s top 20 list.
If I apply human feelings to ZiPS, I think it would like to see Miguel Rojas get a chance at being a stopgap shortstop for someone. It would have to happen fairly quickly, as he’ll turn 30 next month, but with 2.4 WAR in 834 PA over the last two seasons, a projection in the same time zone as two wins for 2019, and the ability to play multiple positions well, he could be a solid fill-in for someone in an emergency. I mean, a major league team* actually voluntarily played Alcides Escobar in 2018.
*Legally, the 2018 Royals were part of major league baseball.
One pedantic note for 2019: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth chart playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.
Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors — many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2019. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production — a .240 ZiPS projection may end up being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future.
Players are listed with their most recent teams, unless I have made a mistake. This is very possible, as a lot of minor-league signings go generally unreported in the offseason.
ZiPS’ projections are based on the American League having a 4.29 ERA and the National League having a 4.15 ERA.
Players who are expected to be out due to injury are still projected. More information is always better than less information, and a computer isn’t the tool that should project the injury status of, for example, a pitcher who has had Tommy John surgery.
Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR — which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.
Pitchers in the Astros organization were K-happy this past season. Thanks to a bevy of power arms and analytics-based attack plans, each of Houston’s full-season minor league affiliates led its respective league in strikeouts. So did their short-season and, most notably, their big-league club.
Given that he’d spent the last six seasons as a high-ranking member of Houston’s front office, I asked Mike Elias if that’s something that could maybe be replicated in Baltimore.
“We’re very much hoping to replicate even a semblance of that success here,” answered the Orioles Executive Vice President and General Manager. “The fact that we have (Assistant GM, Analytics) Sig Mejdal here, and Chris Holt, who was our assistant pitching coordinator in Houston, makes me feel really good about our chances of doing so. There is a little bit of a secret sauce behind that. I’m not going to explain it fully, but we had a great program there. We took a lot of time developing it, and we want to get it in place here as well.”
Hoping to glean at least a little insight into the secret sauce’s ingredients, I suggested that both draft and player development strategies are involved in the process. Read the rest of this entry »
Brian Anderson knows who he is as a hitter; he’s less sure of what kind of hitter he’ll be in the years to come. At 25 years of age with just 765 big-league plate appearances under his belt, the fourth-place finisher in last year’s NL Rookie of the Year balloting has a lot of growth in front of him.
Drafted by the Marlins out of the University of Arkansas in 2014, Anderson has displayed reliability, versatility, and a smooth right-handed stroke since arriving in Miami in September 2017. Manning both third base and right field, he finished the 2018 campaign with a .273/.357/.400 slash line and a team-high 34 doubles. Moreover, he was a mainstay in Don Mattingly’s lineup. Anderson was a spectator in just five games.
One thing he didn’t do often was leave the yard. Partly the result of playing in pitcher-friendly Marlins Park, Anderson homered a paltry 11 times. Which circles us back to the “what kind of hitter he’ll be in the years to come?” question. Anderson doesn’t lack raw power. It’s a matter of tapping into it more consistently as he continues to mature as a hitter.
Anderson discussed his gap-to-gap approach, as well as his long-ball potential, when the Marlins visited Fenway Park late last August.
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Brian Anderson on hitting: “It’s about getting my pitches to hit. More specifically, getting good pitches within my approach and putting a good swing on them. It starts with my work in the cage, and then BP is for working on barreling the ball to all parts of the field. It’s for making sure that I’m hitting the ball the right way.
“Once I’m in the box, it kind of depends on the pitcher. Certain pitchers don’t throw to certain spots, and some pitchers are most vulnerable in certain spots. I like the ball more out over the plate. I like it more down in the zone and middle to middle away. That’s kind of the zone I try to lock in on, and I’ll try to drive that ball to right center. If I get hanging off-speed, or a heater in, then I’m (pulling the ball). Generally speaking, I’m more focused on the middle of the field. Read the rest of this entry »
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