Bill Madden of the New York Daily News wrote a column the other day explaining — among other things — why he checked off Placido Polanco’s name on his Hall of Fame ballot. Predictably, the reaction on social media has been anything but kind. There are two reasons for that: 1. While he was a fine player during his day, Polanco falls short of traditional Hall standards. 2. Social media is social media.
Let’s pause for a moment to define a pair of idioms:
“Maddening crowd” means that the crowd is driving one mad.
“Madding crowd” means that the crowd itself is mad.
Back to Madden’s opinion(s).
While his perspective was maddening to many of you, I found it interesting. (Calm down; I don’t view Polanco as being Hall-worthy either. No need to @ me.)
Madden noting that Polanco boasts the highest fielding percentage in history at both second base and third base was especially eye-opening. Does the stat itself need to be taken with a sizable grain of salt? Of course it does. Even so, Polanco having that dual honor is impressive. So are some of the Dominican infielder’s other accomplishments. He was a very good player. Read the rest of this entry »
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2014 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research, and was expanded for inclusion in The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.
Unlike 2014 Hall of Fame honorees Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine or 2015 honoree Randy Johnson, Mike Mussina didn’t reach 300 wins in his career. Nor did he ever win a Cy Young award, in part because a teammate practically stole one out of his hands on the basis of superior run support. For as well as he pitched in October, his teams never won a World Series, because even the best relievers sometimes falter, to say nothing of what happens to the rest of them.
Though lacking in those marquee accomplishments, Mussina nonetheless strung together an exceptional 18 year career spent entirely in the crucible of the American League East, with its high-offense ballparks and high-pressure atmosphere. A cerebral pitcher with an expansive arsenal that featured a 93-mph fastball and a signature knuckle-curve — and at times as many as five other pitches — he not only missed bats with regularity but also had pinpoint control.
In a prime that coincided with those of the aforementioned pitchers — as well as 2015 inductees Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz and ballotmates Roger Clemens, Roy Halladay, and Curt Schilling — “Moose” never led the AL in either strikeouts or ERA, but he ranked in the league’s top five six times in the former category and seven times in the latter. He earned All-Star honors five times and received Cy Young votes in eight separate seasons across a 10-year span, at one point finishing in the top five four times in five years. He even did a better job of preventing runs in the postseason than he did in the regular season, though it wasn’t enough to put his teams over the top.
Very soon — maybe right at this moment! — everyone’s going to be ready to turn the page. Maybe many of you are already there. The 2018 baseball season is over for every team, and for the overwhelming majority of teams, it’s been over for quite a while. What’s the sense of reflecting, when we’re supposed to move ever forward? I get it, I agree, and I’ll get there soon, myself. But, look: I’ve been spending the past month thinking exclusively about good baseball teams. Competitive baseball teams, playoff baseball teams. I wanted to take the chance to write one thing about the worst baseball team that we saw. I had a note here on a piece of paper to address the 2018 Baltimore Orioles.
The Orioles’ final record was the kind of bad that everyone remembers. In the same way it’ll take you eons to forget that the 2003 Tigers finished 43-119, it’ll take you just as long to forget that the 2018 Orioles finished 47-115. The numbers are immortalized in that iconic playoff photo of Andrew Benintendi. The Orioles won 47 games; the Orioles finished 14 more games than that out of first place. Their best month, by record, was July, in which they went 9-16. They didn’t reach ten wins in a single calendar month, and they wound up 11 wins behind the next-worst baseball team in either league. The Orioles had the 15th-worst winning percentage since 1900, and the fourth-worst winning percentage since the end of World War 2.
You know it, I know it, and there’s no sense beating around the bush. The Orioles were a total catastrophe. Buck Showalter and Dan Duquette are both out of a job. But here’s the other thing about these Orioles: They weren’t supposed to be bad. They weren’t supposed to be great, but they didn’t blow things up. Things blew up on their own.
Scott Radinsky came into coaching with an old-school approach. That was to be expected. His playing career spanned the 1986-2001 seasons, and he honed his craft under the likes of Moe Drabowsky, who came of age in the Eisenhower era. Analytics were in their infancy. Radinsky was hired by the Indians in 2005 — initially to tutor pitchers in the minors — on the strength of his nuts-and-bolts knowledge and his communication skills.
The 50-year-old went on to serve as Cleveland’s bullpen coach in 2010-2011, and then as their pitching coach in 2012. From there he moved on to the Dodgers organization, and he spent the last two years as the bullpen coach in Anaheim. Along the way, he’s learned to embrace analytics.
“The information wasn’t as eye-opening to me when I was first getting exposed to it,” admitted Radinsky, who now monitors TrackMan data throughout the season. “I wasn’t resistant; it just didn’t make complete sense to me. But over the years, because of how much better it’s being explained — and a lot of it seems more quantifiable — it makes perfect sense. I’ve completely bought in, which makes it easier for me to sell something to a player.”
Radinsky gave examples of that salesmanship — we’ll share specifics in the coming week — including convincing Blake Parker to up his breaking ball usage, and getting Justin Anderson to better utilize his fastball. In each case, the data provided by Anaheim’s analytics department was delivered to Radinsky in “an awesome” manner. Just as importantly, it didn’t arrive heavy-handed. Read the rest of this entry »
On Monday, the Marlins officially signed Cuban OFs Victor Victor Mesa and Victor Mesa Jr. for approximately $5 million and $1 million, respectively, according to MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez. Below is a post published earlier this month featuring scouting information on each of them — plus pitcher Sandy Gaston — sourced from clubs who attended their lone stateside workout.
Marlins Park hosted three Cuban prospects — CF Victor Victor Mesa (our No. 1 international free agent on THE BOARD), RHP Sandy Gaston (No. 20), and OF Victor Mesa, Jr. (not ranked) — for a workout on Friday. The media was not allowed at this scouts-only event, but we’ve collected thoughts from some evaluators who attended the showcase, which featured a standard array of activities for a baseball workout, including a 60-yard dash, outfield drills, and some reps against live, Marlins instructional league pitching. We’ve compiled some thoughts from people who attended the workout below, as well as some of our own thoughts on what kind of bonuses talents like this typically command on the pool-capped, international-free-agent market.
Cuban prospects have sometimes undergone drastic physical transformations between the point at which they’ve last been observed in Cuba and their workouts for teams. Sometimes these changes are positive (as with Luis Robert, who looked like an Ancient Greek sculpture when he worked out for teams in the Dominican Republic in 2017) and sometimes they are not (Yasiel Puig’s living conditions made it impossible for him to remain in baseball shape for his eventual workout in Mexico), but this was not the case on Friday. Victor Victor Mesa, 22, looks to have retained the sort of physicality he possessed the last several years in Cuba. He ran his 60-yard dash in about 6.5 seconds (give or take a few hundredths of a second, depending on the stopwatch), which is in the 65-70 range on the 20-80 scale, and he’s a 60 runner in games as he was in the past, while his arm remains above average.
Mesa hit some balls out to his pull side during batting practice, showing 50-grade raw power, but he has a linear, contact-oriented swing that we think will lead to below-average power output in games. There’s no question he can hit, defend, and add value on the bases, but there’s real doubt about the game application of his power. In aggregate, it looks like an average to slightly below-average offensive profile on an above-average defender at a premium position. Scouts think Mesa is a low-risk, moderate impact prospect who should be ready for the big leagues relatively soon. He garners frequent comparisons to Cubs CF Albert Almora. There’s a chance Mesa has a three-win season or two at peak, but expectations are more of a solid 1.5- to 2.0-win type player. He’s a 45+ FV on our July 2nd version of THE BOARD, which would be somewhere in the 130 to 175 range overall in the minors.
Mesa’s talent would typically be valued between $5 million and $10 million (depending on market conditions when he became a free agent) in the prior, non-pooled international environment, and that would come with a matching tax for exceeding pool limitations, so call it about $15 million in a total outlay. That kind of money isn’t available on the July 2 market anymore. The lack of comparable talents still available at this point, however, could help Mesa earn a larger bonus than Shohei Ohtani ($2.3 mil) did last year, even though Mesa isn’t nearly as talented, because everyone with money left wants to land him. We consider the Marlins the favorites to do so.
Cuban righty Sandy Gaston, just 16, ranked 20th on our July 2nd board as the lowest 40 FV, and he was the clear second-most interesting prospect at the event. Kiley saw him in February when he topped out at 97 mph and flashed an average curve and change, but Gaston also sent four balls to the backstop in a one-inning showcase against other 16-year-olds. Last Friday, Gaston worked 94-97 with similar secondary stuff, but with better feel, particularly in his first inning. There’s still a reliever look to him due to his delivery and mature physicality, but at age 16, so much will change that you can’t project that with certainty at this point, and Gaston has one of the most talented pure arms in the world at his age.
There generally is not a market for $2-plus million bonuses for 16-year-old pitchers, as teams tend to spend more on hitters. The track record of flame-throwing teenagers is not good. We consider Gaston to be a seven-figure talent but think many teams probably have him valued a bit lower than that because of the risk associated with his demographic. New Phillies RHP Starlyn Castillo is pretty similar to Gaston (we ranked Castillo 18th in the most recent July 2nd class) and he got $1.5 million, which is close to where we think Gaston’s bonus will be if teams engage in a bidding war for him after Mesa signs. Gaston was rumored to have a deal for that much or more with the Marlins around July 2nd, but it never materialized.
Victor Mesa, Jr. ran his 60-yard dash in the 6.9 second, which is average. He also showed a 55 arm and a linear swing geared more for contact. He’s 17, so there’s still room to project improvement based on maturing physicality, but he’s currently a tweener with hit and throw being his only above-average tools — and some scouts lower than that on the hit tool. On talent, we think he fits in the low, six-figure range.
Reading the Market
So what teams are best positioned to sign these guys? A glance at the market reveals that the Orioles have the biggest hard-capped pool amount remaining at about $6.7 million. That’s the most anyone can offer a single player, making any price that a team pays for Victor Victor a bargain compared to what he’d get in an open market. The Orioles ($6.7 mil) and Marlins — who just traded fringe pitching prospect Ryan Lillie to Cincinnati and reliever Kyle Barraclough to Washington in exchange for pool money — can offer the most at this point.
For reference, Jon Jay is a past-his-prime version of Mesa, and he garnered $4.4 million in 2018 ($3 mil plus what he earned in attained incentives) for his age-33 season. Victor Victor will likely get close to that amount, but represents six years of similar production instead of one and, at age 22, also possesses the possibility of turning into a better player than we’re projecting, He’d also be very marketable in Miami.
The Marlins, as noted, have made some moves to increase their pool size, and buzz among scouts and executives is that they’re looking to add all three players (the Mesa’s are likely to sign with the same team), which would cost at least $5 million, possibly over $6 million. The Orioles are obviously already in position to offer something like that, but that organization is currently in a state of flux due to the recent departures of the manager and GM, and you’d understand if the three Cubans would prefer a comparable offer from the Marlins. Thus, it seems reasonable that they’ll wait and see how much the Marlins can add to their pool.
As for what will be left over for the clubs that don’t land these Cubans, there’s some chatter among scouts that some clubs have deals with Mexican prospects who aren’t eligible to sign at the moment, as MLB has shut down the country to clubs for an unspecified period. If it doesn’t open before next July 2nd, then those clubs would have to find somewhere else to spend their pool money. We think they’d try to spread it around across several six-figure talents and that prospects in Asia may be targets.
There’s more intrigue surrounding this process due to the recent Sports Illustrated report regarding the U.S. Department of Justice investigation of MLB affairs in foreign countries. All three of these Cuban players are represented by Scott Shapiro and Barry Praver of Magnus Sports Agency. Praver and Shapiro once employed Bart Hernandez who in 2017 was convicted of illegally smuggling Cuban ballplayers to the U.S. via other countries.
Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.
In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Seth Lugo, Collin McHugh, and Ryan Meisinger — on how they learned and developed their sliders.
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Seth Lugo, Mets
“I’ve pretty much developed my pitches through repetition, especially my breaking pitches. My sinker, as well. I didn’t have them coming out of high school. I didn’t learn my sinker until Low-A. All of my pitches really came after that season.
Josh James has been a Fringe Five favorite this season. He’s also been a shooting star. The 25-year-old hurler began the year in Double-A, and he’s finishing it with aplomb in Houston. Since debuting with the Astros on September 1, James has punched out 27 batters, and allowed just 14 hits and six runs, in 21 innings of work.
His ascent has come as a surprise. A 34th-round pick out of Western Oklahoma State University in 2014, James went unmentioned in our preseason Astros Top Prospects list (ergo his eligibility to take up residence in the aforementioned Carson Cistulli column).
Every bit as surprising was the righty’s response when I asked him how he goes about attacking hitters.
“To be honest, I’m still trying to figure that out,” James told me on the heels of his rock-solid MLB debut. “A couple of years ago I was a low-90s guy and mixed up pitches. I’d throw curveballs in 0-0 counts, work backwards. All that stuff. Now the velo is up a little higher, so I can throw more fastballs and attack the zone a little more.”
The velocity jump is real. James’ four-seam heater has averaged a tick over 97 MPH since his call up, and he’s been told that he touched 101 earlier this summer. Getting a good night’s sleep has helped breathe more life into his arsenal. Read the rest of this entry »
This season can’t end soon enough for the Orioles, whose 111 losses match the 2004 Diamondbacks and 2013 Astros for the most defeats by any team since the Tigers lost 119 in 2003. While Tuesday night’s postponed game against the Red Sox — one that carries no implications for the playoffs, given that the Boston has clinched the league’s best record — will be made up as part of a day/night doubleheader at Fenway Park on Wednesday, the least that we can hope for is that Chris Davis‘ season is done.
You may recall that Davis, the all-or-nothing slugging first baseman who has belted as many as 53 homers in a season (2013) and struck out as many as 219 times (2016), got off to such a dreadful start that on June 15, I wrote that he might be having the worst season ever, at least as far as FanGraphs’ measurements go. Through the Orioles’ first 67 games (of which he had played 57), he had “hit” .150/.227/.227 for a 24 wRC+ and “produced” -1.9 WAR, putting him on pace for somewhere between -4.6 and -4.7 over a 162-game season, depending on the rounding — lower than any player in the annals.
The same day that my piece was published, the Orioles announced that they had benched Davis — who at that point hadn’t actually played since June 11 — indefinitely in an effort to pull him out of his slide. He ended up sitting for eight games, and homered in the second plate appearance of his return, off the Braves’ Sean Newcomb on June 22. The gambit worked, in that he generally wasn’t as bad after the benching as before; in fact, he rarely scraped bottom to the same degree:
After part one of this series, many of you began debating whether, under Major League Rule 21(a), tanking — that is, deliberately conceding a season for the purposes of experiencing success in later seasons — was barred by the same Rule which bars deliberately losing a game. I’d like to address that matter here.
To refresh our memories, Rule 21(a) says this:
(a) MISCONDUCT IN PLAYING BASEBALL. Any player or person connected with a Club who shall promise or agree to lose, or to attempt to lose, or to fail to give his best efforts towards the winning of any baseball game with which he is or may be in any way concerned, or who shall intentionally lose or attempt to lose, or intentionally fail to give his best efforts towards the winning of any such baseball game, or who shall solicit or attempt to induce any player or person connected with a Club to lose or attempt to lose, or to fail to give his best efforts towards the winning of any baseball game with which such other player or person is or may be in any way concerned, or who, being solicited by any person, shall fail to inform the Commissioner (in the case of a player or person associated with a Major League Club) or the President of the Minor League Association (in the case of a player or person associated with an independent Minor League Club) immediately of such solicitation, and of all facts and circumstances connected therewith, shall be declared permanently ineligible.
To understand this in context, imagine (if you will) a scenario in which the 2018 Baltimore Orioles made a deal with the Devil at the All-Star break. As part of that deal, the Orioles agreed to voluntarily lose 90% of their games in the second half of the season. In exchange, Mephistopheles would agree to give the Orioles 95 wins and a playoff berth in 2021.
On the one hand, that would appear to violate the Rules, right? Indeed, we established last time that a team (including its front office, not just the players) can’t try to lose on purpose. On the other hand, this deal with the Devil isn’t all that different, practically speaking, from the efforts by a club to sell off assets at the trade deadline, is it? By trading Manny Machado, the Orioles made themselves deliberately worse — and less likely to win games in the second half — in hopes of winning in the future. But then, that can’t be right, because front offices don’t get barred from strip-mining their rosters in search of prospect gold.
Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.
In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Ryan Borucki, and Jacob deGrom, and Yefry Ramirez — on how they learned and developed their changeups.
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Ryan Borucki, Blue Jays
“When I was 12, I hurt my arm. I had ‘Little League elbow’ from throwing too many curveballs at a young age. Because my elbow didn’t feel so good, my dad canned my curveball. He was like, ‘Alright. You’re just going to throw a fastball and a changeup.’
