Up until now, this has been a very American League-centric series, with the Marlins — a team I’m not 100% positive hasn’t actually been relegated to the Pacific Coast League — representing the only NL club. While the AL is now a bifurcated league, one that features a smaller middle class than most 11th-century societies, the NL is now relatively competitive, the better league for Team Entropy. Clubs like the Padres stayed mathematically competitive much longer than comparable AL teams, but the eventual requiem mass was inevitable.

The Setup

Among the clubs who could use a real, consistent run of success, the Padres are fairly high on my list. It’s an organization that, despite reaching its 50th year of Major League Baseball this season, has only won 95 games on one occasion and only produced consecutive 85-win seasons at one point in their history (2006-07), so if anyone’s due for a truly sunny period, it’s San Diego. Conversely, the Padres are rarely even all that bad and haven’t had a 100-loss season since 1993 (though they have come close). If, for Bill James, the late-80s Houston Astros were like bad jazz, I’d submit that the Padres are like .38 Special (the band, not the gun): their most popular songs are instantly recognizable, and you won’t turn off the radio in the middle of “Hold On Loosely”, but you’re never going to make a giant .38 Special playlist for your road trip. The team just exists, harmless and middling.

That’s the long-term trajectory of the Padres, and you get the sense that they really want to put together a winner, almost desperately. We saw this inclination after the 2014 season, shortly after general manager A.J. Preller’s joined the organization from Texas. His desire to compete immediately remains laudable, but the foundation of the team wasn’t strong enough to allow it, and there were some really troubling errors in judgment exhibited en route to hastily assembling a contender, such as the acquisition of Matt Kemp. (I won’t fault them for James Shields, whom they signed to a reasonable deal at the time and was ultimately exchanged for the system’s top prospect.) Manager Bud Black took the fall in 2015 — I’m not a fan, but he was definitely a scapegoat in that particular instance — and the team quite quickly went back into rebuilding mode.

The rebuilding had gone quite well heading into the 2017-18 offseason, but a little more organizational impatience was displayed, though not as damaging as that from three years earlier. While I’d prefer not to dwell on Eric Hosmer, you can’t talk about the preseason without mentioning him. There’s a very good argument to be made that a club shouldn’t refuse to sign a star player simply because they haven’t entered a window of contention yet. The problem, however, is that Hosmer isn’t so much a star as an extremely up-and-down player who has never recorded two consecutive league-average seasons in the majors. You don’t give someone $500 to lock in your Olive Garden reservations for next year’s wedding anniversary.

Trading Enyel De Los Santos for Freddy Galvis displayed similar failings of patience, even if that deal is hardly the sort to destroy an organization. You can’t say De Los Santos was anywhere near elite prospect status then or now, but a year of a slightly below-average shortstop production just didn’t do anything for the club. People yelled at me that the Padres had “enough” pitching prospects, but having too many pitching prospects isn’t an actual problem, and trades ought to bring in assets a club needs. It’s a small unforced error, but those unforced errors pile up.

The Projection

The ZiPS projection system was completely unimpressed with San Diego’s starting pitching and, overall, saw the team as rather lackluster entering the 2018 season, projecting a 73-89 record and a 1.5% shot at the playoffs. ZiPS saw little divisional upside for the Padres, with many of the organization’s most interesting players absent from the 25-man roster for part or all of the season.

The Results

At 61-92, the Padres are already guaranteed to fall short of the projections for the 2018 season, though they again won’t lose 100 games. Hosmer struggled after a hot start, spending the summer struggling to keep his OPS above .700 and is either below-average or sub-replacement depending on how you feel about Baseball Info Solutions’s DRS vs. Ultimate Zone Rating. Wil Myers was similarly blazing on his return from an oblique injury, his OPS peaking at an impressive .976 the week before the All-Star break, but he has hit .213/.275/.329 since then. Dinelson Lamet didn’t even make it into the 2018 season, a torn UCL ending his campaign prematurely, making him one of the year’s biggest disappointments for me. The starting pitching was generally lousy, with the rotation’s 131 ERA- ranking last in MLB.

The potential for the veterans to prevent the Padres from sorting through their lesser prospects and interesting Triple-A talent was mitigated significantly due to injuries. The team, for example, never had Myers, Franchy Cordero, Hunter Renfroe, and Christian Villanueva all healthy at the same time. Still, they had trouble occasionally finding at-bats for Franmil Reyes. It would have been nice to give a look at fringier minor-league depth, too — like Brett Nicholas or Ty France — but that’s unlikely to seriously come back and bite the franchise later.

Despite this collection of missteps, the team did have quite a bit go right. Renfroe, Reyes, and Villanueva all showed progress as power hitters, even if none of them are likely to be build-around types. Getting a look at Myers at third base with Villanueva gone with a broken finger was an extremely clever way to fit both Renfroe and Reyes in the lineup without benching the veteran. Myers may even be a plausible third baseman, which makes him more valuable; it was a smart thing for a rebuilding organization to try. The rotation was a hot mess, but Joey Lucchesi adjusted to the majors very quickly. Austin Hedges took a significant step forward at the plate, enough that it makes the team’s catcher battle — in this case, with recently acquired Francisco Mejia — a fascinating thing to watch over the next year. One of my favorites, Manuel Margot, bounced back nicely from a nightmare-esque first two months of the season (.189/.234/.288 through May 21st).

I can’t leave without talking a bit about the bullpen. The group has combined for 7.8 WAR, behind only the Yankees, with a 3.53 ERA/3.33 FIP in 2018. And they assembled that top bullpen essentially from scratch, with no splashy free-agent acquisitions.

Contrast San Diego with the experience of the Colorado Rockies, who spent nearly all their free-agent dough on brand-name relievers and still endured bullpen struggles throughout most of the season. While contracts like Hosmer’s seem to reflect problematic decision-making, it is a good sign if the organization sees that they can build a solid relief corps without spending money like your irresponsible cousin. The 2000s Angels and A’s made this kind of bullpen assembly an art form.

What Comes Next

Hopefully for the Padres, the future involves staying the course. If there’s a positive to Hosmer’s poor season and Galvis’s irrelevant one, it’s that they could have a moderating effect on any kind of over-exuberant transactions this winter. While you may think from my tone in certain places that I’m down on the Padres, I’m actually wildly optimistic about the team’s future. A middle infield of Fernando Tatis Jr. and Luis Urias could be the best combo of the next generation, and we’ve only seen the very edge of the team’s overwhelming stable of pitching prospects, with Lucchesi and Jacob Nix representing merely a dip of the toe in the talent reservoir. Combine those two and MacKenzie Gore and Chris Paddack and Logan Allen and Adrian Morejon and Cal Quantrill and Michel Baez and Anderson Espinoza and Luis Patino and Ryan Weathers and so on and so on and you have a list of young pitching prospects that’s so long that I think I forgot the point I was trying to make.

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Oh yeah, future awesome or something like that. The team cashed in two of their cheaply acquired bullpen pieces to bring in Mejia, the best catching prospect in baseball. Josh Naylor, who may present an interesting problem for the team in a few years as it would be shocking to see him anywhere but first base, showed great improvements in plate discipline and power in 2018, and I think there’s a good chance he’ll hit in the majors.

San Diego’s future is as promising as any other team’s in the majors, especially if the team’s willing, when they are finally a force, to give out more Hosmer-type contracts to players who are better than Hosmer. If someone came back from the past and excitedly proclaimed to me “Dan, the Padres have four All-Stars in 2021!” I’d actually be slightly disappointed that the team only had four and very disappointed at such a mundane use of a time machine.

The organization’s challenge is piloting these transition years, not with short-term thinking or a desire to hot-shot an 80-win season through shortcuts, but with a laser-like focus on enhancing that future core as much as possible.

And when this team succeeds, they better do it in some variation of mustard and brown. The franchise deserves better than to have what could possibly be the sunniest epoch in the team’s history be played out in Generic Team 1 uniforms from the create-a-team mode in a baseball video game.

Way-Too-Early 2018 Projection: Fernando Tatis Jr.

Sure, it might be interesting to see Margot’s development, or project Hosmer’s chances at a bounceback, or see what a Myers season at third looks like. But I’m sure what people really want here is some glorious fan service in the form of Fernando Tatis Jr. Let the dreaming commence…

I thought the process of turning grass into steak was the world’s best magic trick, but turning James Shields into this, well that’s impressive. ZiPS doesn’t think that Tatis will spike high averages in the majors, but it does see a significant power upside, and really, if you’re complaining about this projection for a prospect in Double-A, well, you’re the greediest person that ever existed and you should be thrown in jail or something and have to wear one of those old-timey cannonball things chained to your ankle.

Back in April, I wrote about the lawsuit former Indians uberprospect and current Padres backstop Francisco Mejia had filed against Big League Advance. As I wrote earlier this week, that case is now over. Michael Schwimer, the CEO of Big League Advance, who was good enough to talk to me after my initial post on the case, spent some time this week answering my questions about how the case ended. Once again, Schwimer was forthcoming about his company, the Mejia suit, and the future for himself and his business.

I first asked Schwimer what happened at the end of the case. Schwimer told me that Mejia dismissed his case voluntarily, without providing a specific reason. That said, Schwimer suspects “peer pressure [on Mejia] from players” might have had something to do with it. “[We got] overwhelming support from minor-league players,” Schwimer said regarding the suit, adding that BLA clients were largely supportive of the company through the litigation. Schwimer also corrected one assumption I’d made in my previous article — that no discovery had been performed. BLA, at least, had responded to document requests propounded by Mejia’s attorneys. Schwimer thought that response had something to do with Mejia’s decision to dismiss his case, as well. “We had proof to back up literally everything,” Schwimer told me.

Among Mejia’s allegations was that BLA purportedly hired a lawyer for him — and paid that attorney to advise him — solely with a view to including language in the contract that he’d had the benefit of counsel. But Schwimer told me that BLA had correspondence with Mejia’s private attorneys refuting the claim. “We had the emails with Francisco’s lawyer, where [the lawyer] redlined the contract for Francisco’s benefit,” Schwimer said. “He reduced the endorsement from 6% to 2.5%, and made other changes that helped Mejia.”

As I noted in my postmortem on the case following its dismissal, apologies in lawsuits are incredibly rare, and I was curious to know how this one came about. “We did ask him to apologize, no doubt,” Schwimer said. In this case, the apology was part of a settlement, but not of Mejia’s claim. Instead, Schwimer explained that Mejia voluntarily dismissed his claim and settled BLA’s counterclaim. The apology was part of that settlement.

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For every trial lawyer, the Holy Grail is that “Perry Mason moment.” That’s the dramatic point in the episode where the real killer, under skillful cross-examination by Mason, reveals everything to the shocked judge and jury, the chagrined prosecutor* agrees to drop the charges, and everyone rides happily into the sunset.

*On a completely irrelevant aside, the prosecutor in Perry Mason is just really awful. He doesn’t seem to know how to check his own cases, or interview witnesses, or use the Rules of Evidence, or object properly. I could never watch this show without wondering how he keeps his job.

It also almost never happens this way. Shocking, I know. (In my career, I’ve had three instances of what could be termed “Perry Mason moments.” Cultivating one requires a combination of preparation for the witness and a lot of luck.)

Earlier this year, I wrote about a lawsuit that Francisco Mejia had filed against Big League Advance, a company founded by former MLB pitcher Michael Schwimer which gives minor-league players capital advances against anticipated future major-league earnings. As I wrote then, Mejia made some pretty serious accusations against Schwimer’s company.

According to Mejia, BLA approached him when his mother was very ill and struggling with medical bills. The contracts were signed, says Mejia, without a translator, and BLA even paid for Mejia’s lawyer just so the contract could state Mejia had the advice of counsel. Mejia says that BLA employees showed up at his house unannounced to collect a payment of about $10,000 after Mejia made the big leagues and threatened to bar him from playing if he didn’t pay. And, according to the Complaint, given Mejia is projected to earn over $100 million in the major leagues, BLA stands to recover over $10,000,000 against a $360,000 investment, which Mejia says is unconscionable.

Then, last week, Mejia suddenly dropped his lawsuit.

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

Note from Eric: Hey you, this is the last one of these for the year, as the minor-league regular season comes to a close. Thanks for reading. I’ll be taking some time off next week, charging the batteries for the offseason duties that lie ahead for Kiley and me.

D.J. Peters, CF, Los Angeles Dodgers
Level: Double-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 7   FV: 45+
Line: 4-for-7, 2 HR, 2B (double header)

Notes
A comparison of DJ Peters‘ 2017 season in the Cal League and his 2018 season at Double-A gives us a good idea of what happens to on-paper production when a hitter is facing better pitching and defenses in a more stable offensive environment.

Reports of Peters’ physical abilities haven’t changed, nor is his batted-ball profile different in such a way that one would expect a downtick in production. The 2018 line is, I think, a more accurate distillation of Peters’ abilities. He belongs in a talent bucket with swing-and-miss outfielders like Franchy Cordero, Randal Grichuk, Michael A. Taylor, Bradley Zimmer, etc. These are slugging center fielders whose contact skills aren’t particularly great. Players like this are historically volatile from one season to the next but dominant if/when things click. They’re often ~1.5 WAR players who have some years in the three-win range. Sometimes they also turn into George Springer.

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

Performances from 8/26

Evan White, 1B, Seattle Mariners
Level: High-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 2   FV: 45
Line: 3-for-4, 2B, 3Bho

Notes
We now have a full season of data to help us figure out whether Evan White’s weird profile is going to play. A plus-running backwards guy (bats right, throws left, a generally unfavorable combination due to the defensive limitations and platoon issues caused by both) who plays plus defense at first base, White was slugging .391 at the start of August, which is rather uninspiring for a college hitter in the Cal League. In August, however, White has 30 hits in 90 plate appearances and is slugging .763. He has made subtle changes to his lower half, drawing his front knee back toward his rear hip more than he did at Kentucky, and taking a longer stride back toward the pitcher. White is more often finishing with a flexed front leg, which has helped him go down and lift balls in the bottom part of the strike zone by adjusting his lower half instead of his hands. It’s a more athletic swing that was implemented before White’s explosive August, though he may just be getting comfortable with it now. Read the rest of this entry »

As baseball analysis has grown, the advanced metrics have begun to find their way into television broadcasts more regularly. Announcers will occasionally mention win probability in terms of game context. Pitcher FIP will be brought up alongside ERA. The slew of batter statistics — wOBA, wRC+, ISO, et al — will be used to shed further light on hitters. Even fielding metrics like UZR and DRS have slowly started creeping their way into viewers’ homes, at least from national television broadcasts.

The one quantifiable area of the game that seems to get a little less sabermetric coverage from broadcasters is baserunning. Stolen bases are of course referenced, and Statcast sprint speeds are a relatable number that does occasionally get mentioned. However, the concept of baserunning runs (BsR) has not made its way to television in the way that its fielding counterparts have.

While the introduction of Statcast sprint speeds to the public is a step forward in understanding how good a baserunner is, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Rather, it tells something more akin to the potential baserunning value that a player can bring. Activating that potential involves no small amount of baserunning instincts for basically anyone who lacks Billy Hamilton’s speed. Looking at one player in particular from 2018 clearly shows us why in explaining runner ability, broadcasts need to go beyond sprint speed.

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

Bryse Wilson, RHP, Atlanta Braves
Level: Triple-A   Age: 20   Org Rank: 12   FV: 45+
Line: 8 IP, 1 H, 0 BB, 0 R, 13 K

Notes
Bryse Wilson touched 97 several times last night and sat 93-95 late in the outing. He pounded the zone with his fastball (72 of 98 pitches were for strikes) and blew it past several hitters up above the strike zone. His slider (mostly 83-85, though he lollipops some slower ones into the zone for first-pitch strikes) flashes plus but is mostly average and is only capable of missing bats when it’s out of the zone. Wilson’s changeup is fringey and firm, without much bat-missing movement, but the velocity separation off of the fastball is enough to keep hitters from squaring it up, and it’s going to be an effective pitch. The entire package (Wilson’s physicality and stuff) looks very similar to Michael Fulmer and Wilson’s delivery is much more graceful and fluid than it was when he was in high school, when scouts thought it would impact his ability to command the fastball and possibly move him to the bullpen.

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

Starling Joseph, OF, Texas Rangers (Profile)
Level: Short-Season   Age: 19   Org Rank: NR   FV: 35+
Line: 3-for-4, HR

Notes
Joseph is a physical 6-foot-3 outfielder with plus raw power. He’s raw from a bat-to-ball standpoint due to length and a lack of bat control, but the power/frame combination here is interesting for a 19-year-old. Joseph has a 67:10 strikeout-to-walk ratio in domestic pro ball and is as high-risk of a prospect as you’ll find, but he has the power to carry the profile if he ever becomes sentient in the batter’s box.

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The Indians traded blocked top prospect Francisco Mejia to the Padres for relievers Brad Hand and Adam Cimber today. It’s worth noting that the Dodgers, Indians, and Padres have all swung important deals within the past 24 hours and all have one thing in common: each has created depth by turning low-risk investments into real trade assets, via multiple avenues.

The Dodgers filled out the Machado deal with four prospects who weren’t touted until the last year or so. The Padres got Brad Hand on a waiver claim, while Cimber was completely off the radar until this year. The Indians, for their part, could afford to trade Mejia with Yan Gomes and Roberto Perez representing superior options behind the plate. These aren’t the only instances of these clubs turning nothing into something, but a couple instances ended up driving these big deals.

The Orioles have announced they will create better infrastructure to do this sort of thing more often going forward. There’s also been buzz in scouting circles today that at least one of the clubs that attempted to land Machado believes their package ultimately fell short because of substandard scouting and/or development.

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On the Tuesday prior to the All-Star break, at a game which this author observed from the Progressive Field press box, Trevor Bauer left his start after eight innings with the Indians holding a 4-0 lead. Then a call to the bullpen, complete with a miscommunication error, followed. Dan Otero faced Joey Votto. The Indians lost. It was not necessarily a great surprise: so often something has gone amiss for Cleveland this year after such calls to the bullpen.

As readers of this Web site are likely aware, the Indians’ bullpen has struggled mightily this season, sitting in the bottom quartile by many notable bullpen skill metrics.

The group ranks 28th in WAR (-0.9), 23rd in WPA (-1.07), 29th in ERA (5.28), and 29th in FIP (4.85). There has not been any positive regression, either. Over the past 30 days, the Cleveland relief corps has posted a 4.87 ERA, a 5.10 FIP, and a -0.15 WPA.

Bullpens are fickle beasts. The Indians’ 27th-ranked left-on-base percentage (68.7%) suggests some poor first-half fortune was bound for second-half positive regression. Oliver Perez and Neil Ramirez have been useful finds, with Ramirez perhaps building on his physical talents by learning more how to harness his high-spin fastball and breaking ball in concert. But the Indians had a clear manpower shortage in their bullpen, particularly with Andrew Miller still sidelined and out for much of the first half.

As the All-Star break approached, it felt like the Indians had to do something. Baseball knew the Indians had to do something, so if the Indians were to do something, it was not going to be done cheaply. And on Thursday, the Indians did something.

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