Archive for Teams

The other day, in a spring-training game against the Braves, Miguel Gonzalez was basically pitching for his rotation slot. That might’ve been surprising enough, given how much Gonzalez has meant to the Orioles in the past, but he did have a rough 2015 and a rougher month of March. Anyhow, Gonzalez went five innings, allowing a run with no walks and four strikeouts. The results were solid, even if they could’ve been worse. Yet Gonzalez still got released. Something just wasn’t good enough, and the Orioles decided to go with other options.

Maybe “stunning” would be too strong, but the reality of Gonzalez getting released is unexpected. The Orioles are anything but deep in the rotation, and apparently Gonzalez’s former teammates are less than ecstatic. It’s a hard thing to wrap your head around, given Gonzalez’s presence, but it seems to me there are three ways to think about this. One of them, I prefer over the others.

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Perhaps you already thought it inevitable, but now it’s official: Out of the gate, Travis Shaw will be starting for the Red Sox at third base, over Pablo Sandoval. Through the end of his contract, Sandoval is owed more than seventy-five million dollars. Shaw, meanwhile, is owed an amount of money you could actually imagine in your own bank account. This is surprising, because of the commitment the Red Sox made to Sandoval the previous offseason. But this is not surprising, because Sandoval was a disaster. Hanley Ramirez might’ve been a more conspicuous disaster, but Sandoval managed to beat him, ever so slightly, in negative WAR.

There are just a few things that have to be said in response to the news. The first, which is critical, is this is non-binding. I mean, Shaw will start on opening day, but beyond that, no one’s really said anything. It stands to reason Sandoval is going to play; he’s not going to be a full-year pinch-hitter. It is legitimately unusual for a team to rule against its own financial commitments, at least this soon. And then — well, this decision was probably easy. This is the right time to give Shaw his chance. He might just be a better baseball player than Sandoval is, and after back-to-back seasons of misery, the Red Sox are in the business of maximizing wins.

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Previous editions: Arizona / 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) / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle.

Earlier today, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the St. Louis Cardinals. In this companion piece, I look at that same St. Louis farm system through the lens of my recently refined KATOH projection system. The Cardinals have the 15th-best farm system in baseball according to KATOH, and rank second best in terms of pitching.

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Tyler White has already accomplished a hell of a lot for a baseball player, no less a baseball player who wasn’t drafted until the 33rd round. He earned six minor-league promotions in just three years. He hit .311/.422/.489 across those six stops — a surefire way to quickly climb the organizational ladder. He was invited to the Houston Astros’ big-league camp, where he hit .348/.446/.543, and at the end of it all, he was handed the Opening Day job as the team’s first baseman, and why wouldn’t he?

It was somewhat of a surprise, given White having never played in the majors, and the Astros’ status as a contender, and Jon Singleton having been the favorite throughout the winter, but White outplayed Singleton, and frankly, White’s outplayed Singleton every step of the way.

So a 25-year-old rookie is now the starting first baseman on a team many consider to be the best in the American League, and expectations, naturally, are high. It doesn’t take much more than a quick perusal of #AstrosTwitter to see the hype surrounding White. Many feel he’s the long-term answer at first base for a team who gave 47 starts to Luis Valbuena and Marwin Gonzalez there in the midst of a playoff run last season. Some are calling for Rookie of the Year. Someone I spoke with recently loosely compared him to Paul Goldschmidt, if not only as late-round first basemen who were slept on during their ascent through the minor leagues, despite doing nothing but crushing every level at which they played.

And it’s true — White has been slept on. Even this year, a year after putting up a .467 on-base percentage and 178 wRC+ at Triple-A, he didn’t make a single top-100 prospect list. Not at MLB, not at ESPN, not at Baseball America, not at BaseballProspectus. Our own Dan Farnsworth was higher on White than any other prospect evaluator this offseason, and even Farnsworth’s bullishness pegged White as the sixth-best prospect in the system.

Mostly, it has to do with the position. White came up as a third baseman, but has since been moved to first and may even be better suited as a designated hitter. He offers little in the way of speed, and without any value coming from the field or the bases, the bat’s got to be elite for him to have value as a prospect. His career minor-league wRC+ is 157, which sure hints at an elite bat — for reference, Goldschmidt’s was 163 — but what makes White such a compelling case, beyond the production defying his late-round draft status, is his offensive profile.

See, White’s overall production in the minors has mirrored that of a slugging first baseman, but the way he goes about that production has not. More specifically: for a first baseman, he doesn’t have much in the way of power. Instead, he derives his offensive value from a remarkable ability to control the strike zone; in the minors, he’s walked 174 times and struck out 164 times. Yes, that’s more walks than strikeouts across more than 1,200 plate appearances.

White is intriguing due in part not only to his career trajectory, but also his profile. Both seem nearly unprecedented, and so in cases like these, when we begin treading into unfamiliar territory, it only makes sense to gain context by means of historical perspective.

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The Cardinals certainly have tons of mid-level depth. If history continues to repeat itself, that means at least two above-average position players and a high-upside pitcher or two will pop up from the low minors this year, replenishing the lack of “impact” players at the high levels. They continue to target hitters with upside in the hit-tool department, trusting them to develop power or complement it with defensive or base-running value. On the pitching side, it’s like a broken record for a lot of the newer pitchers in the low levels: (Pitcher Name) came in throwing in the high-80s, and now comfortably sits in the low- to mid-90s with more physical projection left to realize.

No one will be excited by the prospects coming up through this system, but you’d be mistaken if you underestimate the player development model they have created in recent years. I had trouble putting a lot of the prospects I like in this system into the 50+ group for various reasons, but the Cardinals have one of the highest numbers of players just outside that line that could step forward this year with the right adjustments.

There are a number of players whom I rank lower than most in this organization, but in all honesty, there’s so much clustering in the middle of the list that it’s just semantics arguing over most of them. Feel free, anyway. Darren Seferina is my top pick for the Cardinals’ patented out-of-nowhere starting position player, with excellent hitting ability and base-running potential to go with potential above-average defense at second base. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear the boo birds gathering forces in the darkest corners of the internet as you read this.

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For an awfully consistent hitter, Jason Heyward is considered an awfully frustrating hitter. Over the last four years, he hasn’t had a wRC+ under 110 or over 121, but there’s so clearly the potential for so much more than that too few people have come away satisfied. And it’s easy to identify the problem: Observers wish that Heyward would hit for more power. He clearly can — the man stands 6’5. He clobbered 27 homers when he was 22. He’s hit 24 homers the last two years combined. It doesn’t matter that Heyward has still been productive; he looks like he should be a beast of a hitter, so it’s odd to see him hit singles and doubles.

Let’s focus on Heyward and power for a minute, then. Forget about everything else. Throw caution to the wind, even. What follows is going to lean upon some spring-training data. One spring of spring-training data. The headline raises the red flag right off the bat — I’m probably making too much of too little. But just looking at how Heyward has hit the ball, there are early signs that he’s concentrating on pop. As can always be said when writing about a small sample: What we have here is something to monitor.

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Here’s a list of the last 11 players selected first overall in the draft, in order of most recent to least:

• Dansby Swanson
• Brady Aiken
• Mark Appel
• Carlos Correa
• Gerrit Cole
• Bryce Harper
• Stephen Strasburg
• Tim Beckham
• David Price
• Luke Hochevar
• Justin Upton

A couple of the guys are too young to fairly judge, but for the most part this is a list of star players. And Luke Hochevar. He’s on there, too. When a team picks first overall, their chances of getting, not just a major leaguer, but a star, are the highest among any spot in the draft. Which makes sense. But even in the most advantageous position with which to draft a star, teams make mistakes, and take the wrong guy. The Royals took Hochevar over Evan Longoria, Clayton Kershaw, and Max Scherzer. The Rays took Beckham over Posey. The Astros took Appel over Kris Bryant. So it doesn’t always work out.

And then there’s the draft that I left out. The year before the Diamondbacks picked Justin Upton, the San Diego Padres had the first pick. There was a right-hander out of Old Dominion University in Virginia who was well regarded, but the Padres didn’t take Justin Verlander. Instead they took a local high-school shortstop named Matt Bush. Bush wasn’t the consensus best player available, but he was highly thought of, still a legit first-round pick if not a first-overall selection.

So the Padres picked him. He stood on the stage, smiled the smile of an 18-year-old who has no idea what’s in store for him, and modeled a Padres jersey. Things went downhill from there. Since that day, the greatest in his young life but the first of what was supposed to be many great days, Bush has spent more time in jail than on a major-league roster. He’s been arrested multiple times for offenses as serious as assault and battery, drunk driving, and hit-and-run while drunk driving. His life has been, to put it gently, a damn mess. He’s a man with personal demons and he’s let those demons define his life, destroy his career, and injure those unlucky enough to be situated nearby.

But Bush could always throw, and even at 30, his arm is apparently still present. He signed with the Rangers two months after being released from prison and he’s opened some eyes during spring training with his plus-plus velocity from the mound.

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Colin Walsh might be the best story of the spring. Yesterday, it was announced that the 26-year-old infielder/outfielder will be on Milwaukee’s opening-day roster. His path to the big leagues has been both uneven and unique.

A Rule 5 pick this winter from the Oakland organization, Walsh began his career with the Cardinals, who selected him in the 13th round of the 2010 draft. He hit well in short-season ball, but began the following year in extended spring training after failing to earn a spot on a full-season club. When he did reach low-A, he failed to impress.

Walsh returned to low-A in 2012, where he initially served as the designated hitter. As he put it, “They didn’t have a position for me; I was just kind of on the team.” Eventually splitting time between second base and left field, the switch-hitter went on to slash .314/.419/.530 in 425 plate appearances.

In 2013, he backslid. He put up so-so numbers in High-A, then hit just .220 after being promoted to Double-A. The following spring, he was released and picked up by Oakland. After putting up solid-but-nothing-special numbers between three levels, Walsh went into last season wondering if it would be his last in professional baseball.

That didn’t turn out to be the case. Playing for Double-A Midland, he hit an eye-opening .302/.447/.470 with 39 doubles and 13 home runs. Displaying elite plate discipline, he drew 124 bases on balls. In December, the Brewers selected the Stanford grad — Walsh has a masters degree in civil engineering — in the Rule 5 draft.

Walsh talked about his circuitous road to The Show, and the specificity of his hitting approach, late last week.

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Walsh on being cut by the Cardinals two years ago: “I came to spring training assuming I’d be going back to Double-A and starting every day at second base. That didn’t happen. On the last day, I got called in and was told I was no longer in baseball. They said it was a numbers game — there were too many guys for too few spots — and I was the last guy out.

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A few weeks ago, I ventured into the topic of whether the 2016 Cleveland Indians’ starting rotation had a chance at breaking the league-adjusted team strikeout rate record held by the 1990 Mets. Those Mets (comprising a front four of Dwight Gooden, David Cone, Frank Viola, and Sid Fernandez) struck out 47% more batters than a 1990 league-average rotation. That was ridiculously good in 1990, and today, it’d be even more incredible were a team able to do it, given the increase in strikeouts league-wide and the expectation that there probably is a ceiling to the strikeout trend. (Because there has to be, right?)

The reason we focused on Cleveland was simple: they almost reached the level of those Mets for a few months in the beginning of the 2015 season. In April and May, they were striking out around 27% of the batters they faced, a mark which nearly approximated the sort of video-game numbers required to match the league-adjusted total of the 1990 Mets. Though they finished first in baseball by striking out 24.2% of batters (which was also the highest strikeout rate for a starting rotation in baseball history), they finished only 41st-best in terms of yearly league-adjusted K rate. Ho-hum. The conclusion of that previous article was, unsurprisingly, that Cleveland would have to outperform their expectations by a sizeable amount to have a chance at the 1990 Mets.

But one of you astute, noble readers was not entirely satisfied with that rational answer. Instead, phoenix2042 challenged us by putting forth a question: what would a starting rotation that could beat that record look like in the modern game? Which 2016 personnel would a team require in order to best a strikeout rate that’s 47% better than the league average? Well, phoenix2042 — and the rest of you wondering readers — this piece aims to answer that question. We will build rotations worthy of a video game, and they will best the 1990 Mets.

First, as before, let’s look at what rotation-wide strikeout rates would be required to break the record in this coming season. I’ve taken the average yearly increase in rotation strikeout rate for each league: over the past 30 years, strikeout rates for starting rotations have increased by about 0.2% per year, on average, and at a slightly higher rate in the past 10 years. Averaging this trend, I calculated the so-called “holy grail” strikeout rate of just over the 1990 Mets (i.e. >47% above league average):

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Dan Straily needed to see a doctor. He wasn’t running a fever or suffering from strep throat; he had a bum shoulder. The symptoms of his malady were decreased velocity and general ineffectiveness. He initiated some independent research, and upon the recommendation of Houston Astros pitching coach Brent Strom and bullpen coach Craig Bjornson, Straily, 27, picked his practitioner.

After sitting in the waiting room that is Triple-A for much of the 2015 season, Straily paid a visit to Driveline Baseball in Seattle, where he met with Kyle Boddy. Boddy — the subject of a recent post here by Eno Sarris — isn’t an M.D., but you can think of him like a pitching doctor. Straily showed up, rattled off his ailments, and named his desired health benchmarks.

Straily told Boddy he needed to get his fastball back to sitting at 92 mph, with the ability to touch 94. That’s where he was when he first came up as an exciting, 23-year-old pitching prospect with Oakland back in 2012. Lately, his fastball had been sitting 89, and he struggled to touch 92 at all, and his effectiveness plummeted. The reason was the shoulder; he needed to get that healthy. And his breaking ball, he told Boddy, needed sharpening up.

Straily’s average fastball velocity by year

Boddy listened to his patient, and ran the preliminary examinations. That meant a trip to the biomechanics lab to analyze Straily’s delivery, and some tests to measure the movement and spin rate on his pitches. The doc came back with good news.

“I brought everything back and I said, ‘You know, your breaking ball is actually fine. I think that problem will go away if you throw 94 and sit 92,’” Boddy said. “And [Straily] said, ‘Alright, perfect.’ So we were on the same page from the get-go.”

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