Drew Storen’s breaking ball is probably a slider, but for the purposes of this piece, let’s imagine he has a curveball. Sometimes called a hammer, or a yellow hammer, the curveball’s downward trajectory and velocity gap off the fastball serves to elicit balls that pound the ground.
Storen also has a literal hammer, designed to pound… gloves.
As the person in charge of the FanGraphs Community blog, I read over every submission that isn’t curiously-worded spam about industrial milling machinery or picking up girls. This week, a post about Matt Carpenter was submitted and published, and here is a link. I’ve been meaning to review Carpenter’s 2016 for a while, and the Community post beat me to the punch. Go ahead and read that, and if you want, stop there. I’m just going to talk more about Carpenter in the following paragraphs. His most recent year, you see, was something extraordinary.
BRADENTON, Fla. – Jose Bautista has always played with an edge.
He has often defied expectations since his age-29 breakout with the Toronto Blue Jays.
So on Wednesday, after a World Baseball Classic tune-up game for the Dominican Republic against the Pirates — the organization with whom he began his career and a club towards which he still bears some resentment — I asked Bautista outside of the visiting clubhouse at LECOM Park if his edge has heightened this spring. His doubters have grown in number as he nears the twilight of his career, and I was curious to learn how the 36-year-old plans to continue to defy odds.
A spring earlier, Bautista was reportedly seeking a six-year, $150 million contract extension. This offseason, coming off a down year, an injury-plagued year, he settled for a one-year deal with an option in his first test of free agency. That he did not have more of a market had to bruise Bautista’s ego. The market spoke to the doubts of the industry about an aging star in an era when every team uses some sort of aging model to guide decision making.
While I visited the topic of Bautista and the defiance aging curves back in January, I wanted to speak to the man himself and and better understand why he believes he a good bet to age more gracefully.
ZiPS is forecasting a modest bounceback, a 132 wRC+ and 2.7 WAR season in 117 games. PECOTA predicts a three-win campaign and .255/.374/.498 slash line in 2017, but suspects he’ll fall off to become a 1.4-win player in 2018.
Should we expect Bautista to beat those forecasts, though? Should we toss away our aging models in deference to the 21st-century athlete, as innovative Pirates trainer Todd Tomcyzk has suggested?
The quick background: Travis Sawchik talked with J.D. Martinez about his fly-ball-oriented approach, and at one point Martinez said opponents were making adjustments to him. The player himself didn’t want to go into specifics, but it didn’t take much digging to see that Martinez is vulnerable against pitches up. It’s not something unique to him — I followed that post with this post, talking about the recent home-run spike. League-wide home-run rates skyrocketed against pitches in the lower third of the zone. They also went up against pitches in the middle third of the zone. They didn’t budge at all against pitches in the upper third of the zone.
Which is interesting! It supports the idea that more players have changed their approaches and swings to attack pitches down. Now, unless you’re super-human, you can’t, as a hitter, protect against everything. Fly-ball hitters tend to be vulnerable closer to the belt. There seems to be an ongoing shift toward more fly-ball hitters. This all got me thinking about pitchers who like to elevate. And when we’re talking about elevating, we’re pretty much exclusively talking about fastballs, since you rarely want to elevate the other stuff. You know whose pitchers like to keep their fastballs up? Tampa Bay’s, more than any other team.
Last year, only one team improved their exit velocity in the second half as much as the Brewers did, when they went from 17th in the league to fifth. That might not surprise you, because you’ve read often about the young power duo on that team — Keon Broxton and Domingo Santana — and those two were at their healthiest and most dynamic in the second half. And yet the team was 20th in park- and league-adjusted weighted run creation during that same period. There’s always something else that requires attention, both players agreed in camp this week.
Zack Greinke made his second start in spring training yesterday, and it did not go well. Facing off against Team Mexico, he allowed six hits in 2 2/3 innings, including a number of balls that were crushed by a line-up of guys who won’t play in the big leagues this year. Of the 12 batted balls that Greinke allowed that were tracked by StatCast, four of them were hit at least 100 mph. This is not really what you want from a guy who got paid like an ace in large part because of his perceived contact management skills.
But while the exit velocity numbers showed that Greinke was getting squared up regularly, the pitch velocity numbers were the most concerning elements of the day. Statcast didn’t record a single pitch even at the 90 mph threshold, with Greinke essentially sitting at 89 with his fastball all day. Given that he averaged 92 on his fastball last year, that’s a fairly steep decline, and Greinke even admitted after the game that his stuff isn’t where he wants it.
“It’s still early,” Greinke said. “It is what it is. It’s still early and it’s not like some crazy, crazy thing. But it’s not ideal, either.”
For Lucas Giolito, KISS doesn’t mean Keep It Simple Stupid. Given his intellectual curiosity — picking Max Scherzer’s brain didn’t hurt — the acronym more aptly equates to Keep It Simple Smart.
Giolito is now in the White Sox organization, having been acquired by Chicago from Washington in December’s Adam Eaton mini-blockbuster. Blessed with a big arm and a made-for-movies persona, the 6-foot-6 righty projects as a front-line starter, but only if he can keep his delivery in sync. That was an issue in last year’s six-game cameo with the Nationals, when he allowed 39 baserunners in 21.1 innings.
The 22-year-old former first-round pick believes that striking the right balance is the secret to future success. Being studious and cerebral comes naturally to Giolito, but at the same time, he understands that simplicity is a pitcher’s friend.
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Giolito on how analytics impact his thought process: “It’s tough, because they make it a little more complicated, and when I’m pitching I like to make it super simple. But things like spin rate and extension play a role in, ‘How good is your stuff?’ What I especially looked at last year was… usually, I’m a big extension guy. On my fastball, I’ll get seven-foot-whatever.
“I was looking at some numbers, and saw that I was down to six-foot-eight, six-nine, six-whatever. That’s not what I should be doing. Sure enough, video showed that I was flying open and yanking everything. So that stuff can be very helpful. Same thing with spin rate. Is the ball coming out of your hand at its best right now? It used to just be a feel thing, and now you can actually look at the numbers to back it up.
Brett Lawrie isn’t quite ready to sign with a club, according to a report by Jim Bowden from Wednesday afternoon. Lawrie is still working through a soft-tissue, lower-body issue. Teams like the Blue Jays, Mets, Rays and Royals reportedly have some level of interest in Lawrie after he was released by the White Sox.
What kind of role Lawrie can expect to land is unclear. And what we can expect from a player who was once one of the more exciting prospects in the game — who was once selected 15th overall in an ESPN franchise player draft in 2012 — a player whom Bowden himself once predicted would become a batting champion, is uncertain.
After he burst on to the scene with a .293/.373/.580 slash line in a 43-game span as a rookie, Lawrie averaged two wins per season from 2012 to -14. But in what was supposed to represent the beginning of his prime years in 2015 and 2016 — i.e. his age-25 and -26 seasons — Lawrie’s performance continued to decline. Most notably, what was once a strength, his bat-to-ball skills, began to erode.
Perhaps we can pinpoint the beginning of the issue. It’s difficult to have a tougher day than Lawrie endured on April 7, 2015, for the A’s against the Rangers. Over the course of four plate appearances, all of which ended in a strikeout, Lawrie saw 12 pitches: eight sliders, three curveballs, and just one fastball. For posterity, the following footage documents those 11 breaking pitches.
His first at-bat versus Colby Lewis:
His second at-bat versus Lewis:
In the seventh, against Keone Kela:
And in the ninth, to end the game, against Neftali Feliz:
That was not the look of a player who appeared comfortable. Lawrie takes for called strikes almost all the breaking pitches in the zone. He swings, on the other hand, at all the pitches that fall out of it. He also appears to be anxious or over-hyped before triggering his swing. He’s a high-energy player. Perhaps, too high-energy.
It was just one game. But it was a most unusual performance. And it was that second game of his 2015 season that perhaps created a template for other teams to follow, which explains why Lawrie’s ability to make contact – once one of his strongest skills – has eroded as teams have attacked him with more breaking stuff each of the last two years.
Teams have increased their curveball and slider usage against Lawrie. Only 6.8% of pitches Lawrie faced in 2014 were curveballs. Last season, that rate had nearly doubled, to a career-high 11.3%. In 2014, 16.8% of pitches Lawrie saw were sliders. That jumped to a career-high 22.4% in 2015, and 19.2% last season.
Correspondingly, Lawrie’s swinging-strike rate has jumped, from 8.8% in 2014 to 11.9% in 2015 and to a career-high 13.2% last season. His contact rate with pitches in the zone has declined each year from a career-best 90.5% in 2012 with the Blue Jays, to a pedestrian 80.9% mark last season.
The book appears to be out on Lawrie, as seen in this Brooks Baseball chart:
What’s troubling about Lawrie’s career trend is that often, when we think of a hitter losing contact ability, we think — or hope, for his sake — that there ought to be a corresponding improvement in power. This is especially true for a player in his 20s. But not only has Lawrie seen his ability to make contact erode, his isolated slugging has declined from its 2014 level.
I asked Sean Dolinar for help in researching hitters who have had two-year contract trends like Lawrie, combined with loss of power. Among the sample that includes all qualified hitters since 1950, Lawrie has the ninth-greatest increase in strikeout rate.
| Name | Seasons | Age | K% Diff | ISO Diff |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryan Langerhans | 2006-07 | 27 | 13.1% | -.021 |
| Andruw Jones | 2007-08 | 31 | 12.9% | -.178 |
| Justin Morneau | 2015-16 | 35 | 12.9% | -.010 |
| Mike Napoli | 2012-13 | 31 | 12.7% | -.089 |
| Deron Johnson | 1965-66 | 28 | 12.5% | -.064 |
| Al Weis | 1965-66 | 28 | 12.4% | -.023 |
| Steve Kemp | 1984-85 | 30 | 11.5% | -.061 |
| Mark McGwire | 2000-01 | 37 | 11.1% | -.114 |
| Brett Lawrie | 2015-16 | 26 | 11.0% | -.009 |
| Billy Conigliaro | 1971-72 | 24 | 10.4% | -.029 |
| Jason Kubel | 2012-13 | 31 | 10.3% | -.061 |
| Jack Clark | 1985-86 | 30 | 10.2% | -.031 |
Of the top-12 players here, Jones produced four total wins over the next four seasons, the final four of his career. Morneau remains unsigned this spring. Napoli’s struggles continued into 2015, though he enjoyed a 34-homer season last year on a one-year deal with Cleveland. McGwire’s final season was in 2001. Kubel last played in the majors in 2014.
Of course, all of them were all over 30.
Some good news for Lawrie: Clark rebounded to post five consecutive seasons of wRC+ 129 or better.
As for the 30-and-under crowd, Langerhans never again received more than 139 plate appearances in a season. Weis was a reserve middle infielder who finished with a 61 wRC+ for his career. Kemp received just 59 more plate appearances in the majors. Johnson is one modest success story: he went on to post four seasons of wRC+s 108 over his career.
Two other significant success stories that suffered similar contact collapses include Dave Henderson, who rebounded at age 29 and posted three 125 wRC+ seasons through age 32, and Mike Stanley, who improved in his age-30 season and produced seven straight seasons of 117 wRC+ or better. But they did not suffer isolated slugging losses.
Lawrie’s No. 1 PECOTA comp is Ryne Sandberg who, after a eight- and six-win seasons early in his career, went through an age 26-27 lull, before entering a five-year peak.
So there’s some hope mixed in with some concern.
In examining Baseball Reference’s top similarity scores for batters comparable to Lawrie through age 26, there are some troubling comps, like that of the most similar hitter, Gene Freese, who enjoyed only one more season (1961) with a starting job in the majors. Another, Russ Davis, produced a 92 wRC+ for his career and 0.0 WAR over over 612 career games.
Logan Forsythe and Justin Turner are two interesting names, appearing as the No. 5 and No. 6 most similar batters to Lawrie, though Turner needed to reinvent his swing to become a star. And perhaps Lawrie needs to make a significant swing adjustment to cut down on his pre-swing movement. The most encouraging name on the list of most similar batters through age 26 is Edwin Encarnacion, who posted a .790 OPS and 102 OPS+ with the Reds from 2005 to -09 and who has since recorded a .850 OPS, 124 OPS+, earning three All-Star invites in the process.
Beyond the bat, Lawrie offers defensive versatility: he’s been an above-average defender for his career (32 defensive runs saved) at third base and plays an acceptable second base. But it’s the bat that will make or break his career. History shows of those players who have endured a similar erosion of contact skills without a gain in power many never recover, though some do. There are even some stars in the group. While Lawrie’s collapse is a bit unusual, there are likely multiple career trajectories he could follow dependent upon health, adjustments and opportunity.
I’d like to believe this guy still exists:
But that walkoff homer from his rookie year is beginning to seem like a long time ago. While there’s evidence of similar players turning around their careers, Lawrie must show the league he has the ability to punch back.
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the New York Yankees farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from my own observations. The KATOH statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on thes 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this. -Eric Longenhagen
The KATOH projection system uses minor-league data and Baseball America prospect rankings to forecast future performance in the major leagues. For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, so take these projections with a grain of salt. Due to their purely objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated. Due to sample-size concerns, only players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced last season have received projections. -Chris Mitchell
Other Lists
NL West (ARI, COL, LAD, SD, SF)
AL Central (CHW, CLE, DET, KC, MIN)
NL Central (CHC, CIN, PIT, MIL, StL)
NL East (ATL, MIA, NYM, PHI, WAS)
AL East (BAL, BOS, NYY, TB, TOR)
| Rk | Name | Age | Highest Level | Position | ETA | FV |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gleyber Torres | 20 | A+ | SS | 2018 | 60 |
| 2 | Clint Frazier | 22 | AAA | OF | 2017 | 55 |
| 3 | Blake Rutherford | 19 | R | OF | 2019 | 55 |
| 4 | James Kaprielian | 23 | A+ | RHP | 2018 | 55 |
| 5 | Aaron Judge | 24 | MLB | RF | 2017 | 55 |
| 6 | Jorge Mateo | 21 | A+ | SS | 2018 | 50 |
| 7 | Dustin Fowler | 22 | AA | CF | 2018 | 50 |
| 8 | Justus Sheffield | 20 | AA | LHP | 2018 | 50 |
| 9 | Albert Abreu | 21 | A+ | RHP | 2019 | 45 |
| 10 | Chance Adams | 22 | AA | RHP | 2018 | 45 |
| 11 | Miguel Andujar | 22 | AA | 3B | 2018 | 45 |
| 12 | Dillon Tate | 22 | A | RHP | 2018 | 45 |
| 13 | Tyler Wade | 22 | AA | UTIL | 2017 | 45 |
| 14 | Jordan Montgomery | 24 | AAA | LHP | 2017 | 45 |
| 15 | Chad Green | 25 | MLB | RHP | 2017 | 45 |
| 16 | Estevan Florial | 19 | R | CF | 2020 | 45 |
| 17 | Jonathan Holder | 23 | MLB | RHP | 2017 | 45 |
| 18 | Domingo Acevedo | 23 | A+ | RHP | 2018 | 40 |
| 19 | Wilkerman Garcia | 18 | R | SS | 2021 | 40 |
| 20 | Dermis Garcia | 19 | R | 3B | 2021 | 40 |
| 21 | Nolan Martinez | 18 | R | RHP | 2022 | 40 |
| 22 | Ronald Herrera | 21 | AA | RHP | 2018 | 40 |
| 23 | Ian Clarkin | 22 | A+ | LHP | 2018 | 40 |
| 24 | Gio Gallegos | 25 | AAA | RHP | 2017 | 40 |
| 25 | Kyle Higashioka | 26 | AAA | C | 2017 | 40 |
| 26 | Tyler Austin | 25 | MLB | OF | 2017 | 40 |
| 27 | Rony Garcia | 19 | R | RHP | 2020 | 40 |
| 28 | Kyle Holder | 22 | A | SS | 2021 | 40 |
| 29 | Jeff Hendrix | 23 | A+ | CF | 2018 | 40 |
| 30 | Ben Heller | 25 | MLB | RHP | 2017 | 40 |
| 31 | Billy McKinney | 22 | AA | OF | 2018 | 40 |
| 32 | Johnny Barbato | 24 | MLB | RHP | 2017 | 40 |
| 33 | Leonardo Molina | 19 | A | OF | 2021 | 40 |
60 FV Prospects
| Age | 20 | Height | 6’1 | Weight | 175 | Bat/Throw | R/R |
|---|
| Hit | Raw Power | Game Power | Run | Fielding | Throw |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 40/60 | 55/60 | 35/55 | 50/40 | 40/50 | 60/60 |
Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Slashed .270/.354/.421 in 2016.
Scouting Report
When I first saw Gleyber Torres shortly after I moved to Arizona during the summer of 2014, I thought he was a nice little middle-infield prospect with a good feel to hit and a chance to stay at short. I also thought the offense might not profile to another position. Two years later, Torres has already grown into more raw power than I initially projected (by a full grade) while also remaining potentially viable at short. He has become one of baseball’s best prospects.
We still talk about the Tigers as a team headed off a cliff, and it’s no mystery why. The reasons are the same as they’ve ever been, and the longer-term outlook remains unpleasant. Yet the team might not get enough credit for what it was able to do in the middle of a down 2015. Yoenis Cespedes was turned into Rookie of the Year Michael Fulmer. And David Price was turned into breakout candidate Daniel Norris and wild but hard-throwing Jairo Labourt. Oh, and Matt Boyd was a part of that, too.
Boyd was intriguing to me at the time, just because of the success he’d had at the highest levels of the minors. He was written about as a low-upside type, yet he still seemed like a major-league starter. Granted, as a major-league starter in 2015, Boyd nearly allowed a run per inning. That’s terrible! Last year’s version settled down. Boyd kept his ERA in the mid-4s, and right now he’s in there for a rotation spot.
For my taste, Boyd continues to intrigue. I’ll explain why, because that’s what we do here, and I want to say right now that Boyd, as is, isn’t anything special. But he’s close. Fulmer and Norris get the bulk of the attention, but Boyd could be ready to emerge. He has one step left to take.
