Free agency began a week ago to an expected lack of fanfare. Unlike the NBA, where free-agent deals are often announced minutes after the midnight opening bell, it usually takes a little while for baseball’s hot stove to ignite. Until the GM Meetings, which began this past Monday, free agency is usually dominated by leaked contract demands, contract extensions, and declarations by certain players that they intend to keep playing.

Thus far, the 2017-2018 offseason is no exception. For the moment, we must content ourselves with news of minor-league deals for Kevin Quackenbush and Rubby de la Rosa with Cincinnati and Arizona, respectively.

Alongside the minor-league signings and contract demands, the early days of this offseason have been marked by another annual tradition. According to Orioles beat writer Rock Kubatko, Baltimore has shown “definite” interest in Andrew Cashner and Jason Vargas. The Orioles’ rotation remains a weakness for the club, and as is often the case, the team appears to be targeting mid-level innings-eaters. It also appears to be all they’re likely to afford: due to questionable commitments on the payroll, the Orioles will probably find it difficult to pursue many true rotation upgrades to prop open their closing — or perhaps already closed — window.

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Corey Knebel has come a long way since I first talked to him four years ago. At the time, the hard-throwing right-hander was wrapping up an Arizona Fall League season, five months after the Detroit Tigers had drafted him 39th overall out of the University of Texas.

Knebel is now 25 years old and coming off a season where he logged 39 saves and a 1.78 ERA for the Milwaukee Brewers. In January 2015, the NL Central club acquired him from the Texas Rangers, who’d earlier procured his services from the perpetually-bullpen-deficient Tigers.

According to Knebel. while some things have changed since our 2013 conversation, overs haven’t. By and large, he’s the same guy on the mound.

“I guess I’ve kind of grown into this new role,” the 6’4″ 220-lb. fastball-curveball specialist told me in September. “Other than that, I’ve just tried to perfect two pitches. I like to focus on what I know I can do. My delivery is the exact same — I’m still herky-jerky — although I don’t go from the windup anymore; I’m just straight stretch.”

There has been a velocity jump. Knebel’s heater averaged 97.8 MPH this season, up a few ticks from previous seasons. He didn’t have an explanation for why that is, but he does know one thing — it’s not because of a weighted-ball program. Read the rest of this entry »

Manny Machado turned 25 on July 6. If he checked his stat line after that day’s game, he probably wouldn’t have liked what he saw. A little over halfway through the season, Machado had come to bat 350 times and hit 16 homers, which is pretty good. He was also slashing .215/.283/.418, though, equivalent to just an 80 wRC+.

That didn’t seem right. After all, the young infielder entered the season with a 119 career wRC+ — and had actually produced an even better 130 mark between 2015 and -16. At Machado’s age, hitters tend to improve, not collapse.

Machado’s performance gave the impression that something might be wrong, that something might need to be fixed. Whether that impression was correct at the time, it’s moot now: over the past two months, all he’s done is hit.

Here are a few relevant hitting stats for Machado from earlier this season compared to 2015 and 2016, when he was one of the better hitters in baseball.

While Machado began the season striking out a bit more often than in recent seasons, his walk rate was fine. And while his power took a dip, it still compared favorably to the league average. There’s nothing here that would reduce Machado from one of the top-20 hitters in baseball to one of the 30 worst.

Here, though, are some other relevant stats from those same time periods.

The batting results from that period through July 6 line are poor — but almost entirely a product of a lower batting average on balls in play. Now, that lower BABIP could reveal some decline in Machado’s game. An injury or change in approach. And if the drop in BABIP were paired with other observable differences, it might warrant further consideration.

And there were some differences. For example, while most of Machado’s batted-ball profile — including pull percentage, infield flies, ground-ball rate — remained largely unchanged, he was swinging outside of the zone a little more and making a little less contact. His swinging-strike rate had increased from 8.3% in 2015 and 2016 to 11.5% in the early going this year. The combination of some extra strikeouts and reduced power certainly affected Machado’s production. Again, though, their effect was pretty minor compared to the massive drop in BABIP drop.

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The Orioles won again on Wednesday, continuing their surge back into the wild-card race. In the bottom of the fifth inning, Jonathan Schoop knocked a game-tying first-pitch homer against the admittedly homer-prone Ariel Miranda. Later on, in the bottom of the eighth, Schoop laced a tie-breaking first-pitch single against Marc Rzepczynski. Schoop was only one of the Orioles’ heroes, but they presumably wouldn’t have won without him.

As the Orioles have shaken off their slump, observers around the league have begun to notice. It was only weeks ago one wondered whether the team might elect to sell off Zach Britton, and more. There was even a little chatter about a trade of Manny Machado. The club now has three more wins than losses, and Machado’s drawn praise for his big second half. Dylan Bundy, too, is getting the spotlight treatment for his possible August breakout. Even Kevin Gausman has received plaudits for turning his season around. But you know who leads the 2017 Orioles in overall WAR? It’s Schoop, and it’s Schoop by the better part of a win. While Machado is still the best player on the roster, Schoop’s own progress shouldn’t be overlooked.

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Think about the teams in the American League wild-card race. Focus on the teams gunning for the second position. Focus further still, on their various starting rotations. They’re bad! They’re pretty much all bad. Or, if “bad” feels too cruel, we could go with “lacking.” All of them are lacking. I don’t know if the Orioles have the worst rotation in the group, but they’ve received maybe the most notice for being so thin. It’s not like it hasn’t been deserved.

Chris Tillman was supposed to be good, and his season’s been a nightmare. Ubaldo Jimenez wasn’t supposed to be nearly as good, but his season has also been terrible. Kevin Gausman has yet to make that leap people always figure he’s on the verge of making. The Orioles traded for Jeremy Hellickson when his strikeout rate was under 14%. There’s been so little, for so many months. The Orioles are in the race despite their rotation, not because of it. They’ve just been waiting for someone, anyone, to step up.

And now, Dylan Bundy is stepping up. Of the Orioles’ rotation value over the past several weeks, Bundy has accounted for almost all of it. I don’t think a pitcher can become an ace in the matter of one month. But if one could, that month would look a lot like Bundy’s August.

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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

8/23

Mike O’Reilly, RHP, St. Louis (Profile)
Level: Hi-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: NR  Top 100: NR
Line: 6 IP, 9 H, 0 BB, 2 R, 7 K

Notes
A 27th rounder out of Flagler College last year, O’Reilly was promoted to High-A Palm Beach in late July after a dominant four-game stretch of Midwest League starts that included a complete game, one-hit, 12-strikeout performance. O’Reilly doesn’t throw all that hard, sitting 88-91, but he’s deceptive, he can locate his breaking ball for strikes, and he flashes a plus changeup. There’s some risk that O’Reilly’s fastball won’t be effective against upper-level hitters, but he has quality secondary stuff, throws strikes, and overall has a profile in line with valuable upper-level pitching depth.

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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Victor Robles, CF, Washington (Profile)
Level: Double-A   Age: 20   Org Rank: 1  Top 100: 8
Line: 3-for-5, 2B, HR, SB

Notes
Robles is slashing .320/.375/.505 since his promotion to Double-A and has tallied a career-high 51 extra-base hits already this year. Many of those are doubles hooked down the left-field line that Robles turns into extra bases because of his plus-plus speed. Though he still has occasional lapses out there right now, that speed is likely to make Robles a very good defensive center fielder at maturity as he runs down balls in the gaps that many center fielders cannot. Scouts anticipate Robles will hit around .300 with some pop — though probably not quite as much as he’s shown this year — while playing good defense in center field. As a point of reference, Lorenzo Cain, a good defensive center fielder, has slashed .295/.360/.440 this season with strikeout and walk rates within 1% of Robles’ career marks. Cain has generated 3.3 WAR in 119 games this year. That appears to be a very reasonable outcome for Robles, who is one of baseball’s best prospects.

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Because no one in the AL wild-card hunt feels much like being assertive, yesterday the Orioles and the Mariners played a game with potential playoff implications. The Mariners held a three-run lead going into the top of the ninth, but then Edwin Diaz came apart. Over the span of seven batters, Diaz walked three guys and hit two more. He benefited from a tremendous catch and from a borderline third strike call, but still Diaz couldn’t close it out. With the bases loaded in a 7-6 game, Marc Rzepczynski was called on to deal with Chris Davis. Rzepczynski was going for his second career major-league save.

The first pitch was a fastball off the plate inside, but Davis swung and missed. The second pitch was a fastball over the plate inside, and Davis swung and missed again. At 0-and-2, Davis had no reason to expect a fastball down the pipe. Rzepczynski had no reason to throw a fastball down the pipe. Rzepczynski threw one anyway, and Davis watched it sail. He watched it, and he watched it, until there was nothing left to watch.

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While writing about Miguel Sano last week, I connected two thoughts that had laid dormant next to each other for a while.

Those thoughts, as follows:

1. It’s easier to lift and drive balls that appear in certain parts of the zone; and
2. How pitchers approach batters in terms of location is part of an endless loop of adjustments that makes judging a batter’s true talent difficult.

That confluence of ideas led to an innocuous enough question: could we adjust exit velocity for pitch location?

The answer is yes, of course we can. The next question, however, was much more interesting: what the heck does this measure?

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In one of the least noticed trades before the July 31st deadline, the Rays and Orioles made a seemingly minor swap, with Tampa sending shortstop Tim Beckham to Baltimore for minor leaguer Tobias Myers. After acquiring Lucas Duda to take over at DH, the Rays had filled their infield and didn’t have regular at-bats for Beckham anymore, so they shipped him off to Baltimore for an 18-year-old in short-season ball.

Only since that seemingly inconsequential swap, Beckham has been the single best player in baseball, and we have to ask if the Orioles somehow stole a quality shortstop from their division rival.

Know how Giancarlo Stanton has been hitting homers every game? Beckham has been better.

Notice how Joey Votto is closing in on the record for consecutive games on base multiple times? Beckham has been better.

Enjoying how Mike Trout is establishing a new level of greatness, even by his own standards? Beckham has been better.

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