Archive for Teams

We all know by now about velocity being up league-wide and strikeouts having been on the rise for more than a decade. If you didn’t: welcome to baseball in 2016! Everyone throws 95 and there’s darn near 20 strikeouts a game now.

The inverse of that, naturally, is that walks are harder to come by. Pitchers are working outside the zone more than ever and hitters aren’t adjusting, and they’re having a harder time catching up to the heat even when it’s inside the zone. Hitters are finding themselves behind in the count far more often than we’ve seen in the past, and in the last two years, we’ve seen the two lowest league-wide walk rates in almost 50 years.

Which brings us to this year’s Chicago Cubs, who aren’t playing by those rules. They’re off to a ridiculous start, with a 6-1 record and a league-best +29 run differential. Their pitchers have struck out 56 batters and walked just nine. Thus far, they’ve looked every bit the powerhouse folks envisioned in the offseason. And there’s another part of this Cubs team that’s staying true to preseason expectations, an important part of the team’s DNA that hasn’t been given much publicity. It’s not a sexy characteristic, which would explain the lack of fanfare surrounding this trait, but it’s an important one. The 2016 Cubs have a very real chance to be the most disciplined lineup we’ve ever seen.

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When I first talked to Delino DeShields, he was 20 years old and finishing up a season in which he hit .287/.389/.428, with 12 home runs, between Low-A and High-A. More notable is the fact that he stole 101 bases. Hardly anyone noticed. That same year, Billy Hamilton swiped an unprecedented 155.

The introduction to the 2012 interview included the following suggestion: “DeShields may ultimately prove to be the better player.”

The jury is still out. Three-plus years later, the Reds’ jackrabbit has the edge in the running game. However, the more well-rounded Ranger has been better with the bat. In last year’s rookie campaign with Texas, DeShields slashed .261/.344/.374 with a team-best 10 triples. His 25 thefts weren’t anything to write home about, but the son of former big-league speedster Delino DeShields, Sr. isn’t too concerned with stolen base numbers. His primary focus is the Runs Scored column.

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DeShields on his overall development: “I’ve come a long way [since 2012]. A lot of that is just maturity and being around the game more and more. Here, I’m around veteran guys who are taking me under their wings and showing me the ropes. These are guys who have been there, done that, and they have your back. They’re always pushing me.

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For a good long while Monday night, Reds fans had reason to be encouraged. The team was already off to a strong start, and then it took a lead on the road against the Cubs, with Brandon Finnegan working on a no-hitter. It promptly came undone. Not only did Finnegan not complete the no-hitter — the Reds didn’t complete a shutout, and actually the Reds didn’t even win the damn game, with the Cubs rallying against the vulnerable bullpen. Reality blows, and it probably wasn’t the last time the Cubs will put the Reds away in some kind of dispiriting fashion. In the span of a few innings, Reds fans were reminded that, yeah, the playoffs probably aren’t going to happen.

I mean, I don’t know. The Reds are still 5-2. Bully for them. They don’t seem like a good team, but teams like this have surprised before. I don’t want to step on any playoff dreams, so I’ll go with this: Perhaps my main positive takeaway has been the work of Finnegan as a starter. I don’t think he’ll be pitching this team into October, but he’s pitched like someone who could do that down the road. That young Reds rotation is starting to take some shape.

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Yesterday I published my annual reminder that it’s never too early to look at the standings. That is, even though we’re through just one week, the Orioles have done themselves a hell of a favor by starting out 6-0. Now, on the flip side, it can be too early to look at the leaderboards. Like, Tyler White is first in baseball in WAR. If you want to find some real signal, you just have to be patient. But sometimes I just can’t help myself. I mean, I practically live on this website, so of course I’m going to go exploring. And, related to that — it’s been just six games, but the Rays are already up to something.

It’s not something entirely new. I wrote about this when the Rays traded for Corey Dickerson, but during last season, the Rays switched to taking a more aggressive offensive approach. So if you were curious, no, that hasn’t been abandoned. The Rays hitters remain aggressive today, and based on the early indications, they’re going to be more aggressive than anyone else.

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Previous editions: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati  / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles (AL) / Los Angeles (NL) / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York (AL) / New York (NL)  / Oakland / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / St. Louis.

Last week, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the Tampa Bay Rays. In this companion piece, I look at that same Tampa farm system through the lens of my recently refined KATOH projection system. The Rays have the eighth-best farm system in baseball according to KATOH.

There’s way more to prospect evaluation than just the stats, so if you haven’t already, I highly recommend you read Dan’s piece in addition to this one. KATOH has no idea how hard a pitcher throws, how good a hitter’s bat speed is, or what a player’s makeup is like. So it’s liable to miss big on players whose tools don’t line up with their performances. However, when paired with more scouting-based analyses, KATOH’s objectivity can be useful in identifying talented players who might be overlooked by the industry consensus or highly-touted prospects who might be over-hyped.

Below, I’ve grouped prospects into three groups: those who are forecast for two or more wins through their first six major-league seasons, those who receive a projection between 1.0 and 2.0 WAR though their first six seasons, and then any residual players who received Future Value (FV) grades of 45 or higher from Dan. Note that I generated forecasts only for players who accrued at least 200 plate appearances or batters faced last season. Also note that the projections for players over a relatively small sample are less reliable, especially when those samples came in the low minors.

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1. Jake Bauers, 1B (Profile)

KATOH Projection: 8.2 WAR
Dan’s Grade: 45 FV

Bauers spent his age-19 season squaring off against High-A and Double-A pitchers, and more than held his own. Bauers didn’t show any glaring weaknesses offensively, and rode a 14% strikeout rate to a .273/.347/.422 batting line. Bauers doesn’t have the power of a traditional first baseman, but he excels in every other offensive area. Considering how young he’s been for his level, that’s quite an accomplishment.

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When Chris Colabello’s first ball in play this season, a line drive with a recorded exit velocity of 103 mph, went directly into the glove of opposing shortstop Brad Miller, it seemed a cruel yet fitting reminder that nothing is given at the start of a new season.

Not even for Colabello, who appears to have used a strong 2015 season to finally lock down a secure job in the major leagues. He produced offense at a level 42% above league average last year when controlling for park factors, and he did so for a playoff team, eventually forcing his way into more than the short side of a platoon with Justin Smoak. He’s not set to play every day for the Toronto Blue Jays this year, but he should have the larger share of a time-split at first.

He appears to have, at long last, made it. Assuming he can keep it up, that is, which few think is a certainty. For most of his baseball career, people have been looking for reasons why Colabello won’t succeed, even now that he’s doing so.

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Bryce Harper’s at-bats have become events. Maybe more so than any other player in baseball, a Harper at-bat is the kind of thing that you set an alert for on MLB.TV so you can switch over to the Nationals’ feed when he comes up. He averaged more than four pitches per plate appearance last year, so you’re probably getting your money’s worth, and the allure of seeing a baseball hit 450 to center is ever present. A Harper at-bat is a spectacle, not only because of the raw power, but because of the craft.

I was one of those people keeping tabs on each Harper at-bat yesterday, except this time it wasn’t because I was enticed by the power. This time, it was because I wanted to see if he’d strike out. He did. Which is a pretty normal thing for baseball players to do. Except this time, it was noteworthy, because Harper hadn’t yet struck out this year. Entering the game, he was just one of two qualified hitters to have not yet K’d, and the other was Melky Cabrera, who never K’s. Cabrera’s offensive game is built around putting the bat on the ball, without much care for authority. Harper is all about authority, and it’s already been on display, which makes his strikeout-averse start to the season feel like it means more than Cabrera’s.

Harper went 21 plate appearances into the season without being sat down on strikes, a streak which lasted four games and then some. Last year, he only went four games without a strikeout once, and never beyond that. Last year’s streak lasted 22 place appearances. There was a 22-plate-appearance run in 2013. He didn’t set any personal records — though if you want to get technical, you could extend back to last year and say he actually went 28 consecutive plate appearances without a whiff — but it also means the first we’ve seen of Harper this year is, in this one particular way, Harper at his best. For a 23-year-old coming off a historic MVP season, that’s fun, because we spent the offseason wondering what he’d do next. Maybe it’s “never strike out.”

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Baseball can be slow to change. We’ve had this idea for decades that certain pitch types have platoon splits, and that you should avoid them in certain situations because of it. Righties, don’t throw sliders to lefties! It’s Baseball 101.

Think of the changeup, too. “Does he have a changeup?” or some variation on the theme is the first question uttered of any prospect on the way up. It’s shorthand for “can he be a starter?” because we think of changeups as weapons against the opposite hand. A righty will need one to get lefties out and turn the lineup over, back to the other righties, who will be dispatched using breaking balls.

As with all conventional wisdom, this notion of handedness and pitch types should be rife for manipulation. Say you could use your changeup effectively against same-handed hitters, for example. You could have a fastball/changeup starter that was equally effective against both hands, despite the history of platoon splits on the pitch.

To the innovators go the spoils. And we’re starting to see some innovators.

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With Danny Santana headed to the disabled list, the Twins have recalled outfielder Max Kepler from Triple-A. Kepler figures to slot in as the team’s fourth outfielder, backing up Byron Buxton, Miguel Sano and Eddie Rosario. Kepler got some love from prospect evaluators last winter, with virtually every outlet ranking him in their various top-100 lists. Baseball America was the highest on the German-born outfielder, ranking him 30th overall. Newcomer 2080 Baseball was the low man on Kepler. They placed him at #100. Other outlets ranked him closer to #30 than to #100.

KATOH loves Kepler, projecting him for 11.9 WAR over the next six years — a figure which placed him seventh among all prospects heading into the 2016 season. KATOH ranked him ahead of several more well-regarded outfield prospects, including Kepler’s teammate Byron Buxton and the recently promoted Nomar Mazara. Although he’s not a consensus top prospect, it isn’t hard to see why KATOH — a stats-based projection system — is all over him. He slashed .332/.416/.531 in Double-A last year, and also kicked in 18 steals. It’s incredibly hard to poke holes in Kepler’s 2015 performance. He made lots of contact, walked more than he struck out (14% versus 13%, respectively), hit for power and stole bases. Simply put, he did it all.

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From time to time, every year, I like to look at bad called strikes and bad called balls. The availability of PITCHf/x information makes this fairly easy, and, when isn’t it fun to examine the extraordinary? The point generally isn’t to rip on a given home-plate umpire. It’s more about trying to figure out why what happened happened. What has to take place for a ball to get called a strike? On the flip side, what has to take place for a strike to get called a ball?

This is the post about last year’s worst called ball, as determined by distance from the center of the strike zone. The pitch was thrown by Jeff Samardzija, and it missed the very middle by 1.2 inches. Still, while it was down the pipe, it was ruled in the hitter’s favor. A distance of 1.2 inches is a very small distance, so you can see why that was extreme. Now skip to 2016! This season is only barely underway. They’ve played less than four percent of the games, but we might’ve already seen the worst called ball. A pitch was ruled a ball even though it was to about the same spot as Samardzija’s, and the pitch was thrown just last Saturday by Clayton Kershaw.

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