Archive for Teams

The Blue Jays’ farm got stronger last week, as last summer’s first-round pick, right-hander Jeff Hoffman, made his pro debut for High-A Dunedin. Hoffman was in the mix to go #1 overall last year until he underwent Tommy John surgery just before the draft and slid to ninth overall. The 6-foot-4 righty has the size and athleticism to support his frontline starter stuff, which was already back in his first regular season after surgery.

Fastball – 65/75

Hoffman came out establishing his fastball and showed his premium arm speed, sitting 95-98 and touching 99 mph early on. The pitch had life up in the zone and, when located down, the heater had good run and sink. It’s a heavy pitch that has the ability to swallow up opposing hitters’ barrels. In the second inning, Hoffman was leaving the pitch up and out over the plate, causing it straighten out. He was hit hard and loud that inning, but that was the only bump in the road.

Hoffman allowed four runs on four hits that inning, but put up zeros in the other four innings, scattering another four hits. He also showed the ability to hold his premium velocity while working out of the stretch, sitting 93-97 mph. The fastball command was better than I anticipated, as well. Even though he was getting squeezed a bit, Hoffman was regularly working the fastball to both corners and moving it up and down in the zone. Fastball command is usually one of the last traits to return after an injury like his, so it’s an encouraging sign to see glimpses of it this early.

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On Wednesday, Noah Syndergaard had a day he is likely to hold onto for quite some time. The 22-year-old Mets rookie pitched into the eighth inning, struck out six players, didn’t walk a single batter, allow an extra base hit, or allow a single run to cross the plate while he was on the mound. It was an impressive outing, and Syndergaard’s first four starts have gone well, also. To wit: the right-hander has averaged just over six innings per outing with 22 strikeouts against five walks, and is currently sporting a 2.55 ERA and equally impressive 2.60 FIP. Big things are expected of Syndergaard as the Mets try to make the most out of potential contention this year while simultaneously limiting the number of innings he pitches to save his arm both for October and also the years to come. Determining how to keep pitchers healthy can be challenging, especially when Syndergaard has outings like he did against the Phillies.

Syndgergaard’s last start against the Phillies was impressive because of fastballs like this:

Curves like this:

The start will be most memorable, however, because of this:
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With Thursday’s 11-5 drubbing of the Padres, the Pirates have won seven straight games. It’s a well-timed winning streak, on the heels of what were previously mounting concerns. And the Pirates are very much in the thick of it, if you can say there’s even a thick of anything when it still reads “May” on the calendar.

The Pirates are 25-22. Not bad. Also potentially a bit misleading. Based on their runs scored and allowed, their record should be better than that. Based on their expected runs scored and allowed, their record should be better than that. I know that’s a weird thing to think about, since runs are runs and wins are wins, but trust me that wins and losses aren’t the only indicators of team performance and ability. We can also say this: at FanGraphs, the rest of the way, we have the Pirates projected as a top-five team.

Which is all to say, hey! The Pirates are pretty good. Not only have they been pretty good, it looks like they ought to remain pretty good, especially now that Andrew McCutchen has rediscovered his swing. Now, these days, times are different. Suddenly, it’s not strange to think of the Pirates as being a good team. But there was some concern here because between 2014 and 2015, the Pirates lost Russell Martin to free agency. They didn’t want to; he just got too expensive. Martin was one of the team’s best players. To say nothing of other guys they also lost, including Edinson Volquez, Ike Davis and Travis Snider. Martin was certain to be difficult to replace, and the Pirates understood that from the start.

So how did the organization conduct itself over the winter, with a key piece leaving for $82 million in the other league? The Pirates are anything but a big-budget franchise, so they focused, as always, on efficiency. And while it’s been only two months — so no chapters are closed — it looks like the Pirates had themselves an excellent offseason. An offseason that cost them less than what the Blue Jays invested in a catcher.

Let’s run some of this down. I’ll highlight some individual acquisitions.

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Numerous people have told me that the Grand Canyon is something I have to see in person. It’s supposedly one of those things in life that doesn’t disappoint and you can’t quite appreciated it until you’re standing there ready to be swallowed up by it’s rocky majesty. Having never traveled west of Dallas, I’m just assuming these people are telling the truth. Maybe the Grand Canyon is better on an HDTV.

I remember having that feeling as a kid traveling to Comerica Park to watch Mark McGwire come to town two years after he broke the single-season home-run record. My family bought tickets to a game during that series specifically to see a Mark McGwire dinger in person. He hit one in the three-game set and slashed .333/.385/.677 in 13 PA against my favorite team. The Tigers won two out of three. It was pretty much exactly what you wanted as a young baseball fan.

Under much different circumstances, I had a similar feeling when Prince Fielder made his Tigers debut at Comerica Park twelve years later. I have a very vivid memory of Fielder taking a huge cut in his first plate appearance that day. It was one of those swings you could hear from the upper deck and you knew if he had made contact that ball would have traveled a very long way. Power is impressive on television, but you can’t always appreciate just how quickly a ball leaves the playing field when you’re watching on your sofa.

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You remember the offseason that was. It was the offseason in which the Phillies said outright they’d be better off without Ryan Howard. And it was the offseason that concluded with Ryan Howard still on the Phillies. Things could’ve been more awkward than they were, and a conversation did take place between the parties that tried to smooth things over. But, not very long ago, the Phillies had mentally moved on. The problem was that Howard hadn’t gone anywhere.

Then the season started, and Howard was bad. Maybe that wasn’t the biggest surprise. But the season continued, and now Howard’s been good. Isolating just the month of May, Howard’s posted a 156 wRC+, with familiar-looking power. Cole Hamels remarked that Howard looks like the old version of Ryan Howard, by which I mean the younger version of Ryan Howard, and Ruben Amaro has said before that the best thing Howard can do is hit. When Howard hits, then in theory, there are more options. So it’s worth wondering now: with Howard actually looking productive, what can we make of his trade value?

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Brandon Belt has shown this before: a 10- or 15-game stretch in which he looks to be the real slugging threat everyone talked about during his prospect days. He did it in August of 2013, and then he did it again to open the season in 2014; the latter seemed like it might be the one that would stick, but Belt broke his thumb on a hit by pitch in early May, suffered a concussion in July, and his season was effectively derailed.

In truth, we haven’t seen this sort of thing too often from San Francisco’s giraffe-like first baseman:

Sometimes a hitter just runs into one, and sometimes balls go very far at Coors Field. Regardless, his homer from last week was quite a punctuation mark — a mic drop, if you will — and it should at the very least force us to ask that familiar question concerning Belt: what can we really expect from him?

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Projecting Yasmany Tomas coming out of Cuba was a difficult proposition. As with other players who’ve made that move, the availability of video, scouting reports, and statistics was limited. Accounting for any adjustments he might make while moving from Cuba to the United States also posed its share of problems. Moreover, attempting to turn Tomas into a major-league third baseman was always likely to produce a tough learning curve for the 24-year-old. When the Diamondbacks called up their $68.5 million investment with the $14 million signing bonus a little over a week into the season, the move seemed puzzling as he didn’t even have a starting spot waiting for him. He rode the bench for a week or so before Jake Lamb went down with a foot injury, opening up an everyday role. Tomas has hit very well so far with a .345/.379/.436 line, but has eschewed his raw power in games in favor of taking the ball the other way.

As a prospect, Tomas was known for his incredible raw power. Kiley McDaniel wrote up Tomas back in September, and noted Tomas’ power as his best tool.

The carrying tool here is raw power, which draws anywhere from 60 to 70 grades on the 20-80 scale from scouts, but the question mark is how much he will hit. Tomas has a short bat path for a power hitter and quick hands that move through the zone quickly. The tools are here for at least an average hitter, but Tomas’ plate discipline has been questioned and he can sometimes sell out for pull power in games (here’svideo of a particularly long homer in the WBC). Some scouts think it’s more of a 40-45 bat (.240 to .250 average) that may keep Tomas from getting to all of his raw power in games, while others see a soon-to-be-24-year-old with the tools to hit and think the hot streak of Cuban hitters in the big leagues will continue with him.

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“Lots of people say I’ve changed, and that I’ve done that or done this, but I’ve done this my whole life,” Bryce Harper said when I approached him about his breakout season so far. To some extent, he’s right. He’s just doing what he’s done, more often. Even the things he’s changed have been a return to his roots, to an extent.

“I’ve walked my whole life,” he pointed out. His walk rate in the minors was 13.3%, and before this year, he had a 10.4% walk rate in the majors. So he’s right, and as a young player — at 22, he’d still be two years younger than the average Double-A player, and he has yet to face a pitcher younger than him in the big leagues — he was destined to get better. Batters swing and reach less at the steepest rate before they turn 24, and Harper has improved in both cases by about five percentage points so far this year. Even if his current walk rate is double his career rate.

“Staying in the lineup, being healthy, being in the lineup every day no matter what”: that’s what Bryce Harper thought led to this start. “Not taking breaks. When I’m hurt, I’ll take a two month break and I’m not quite the same when I come back, it’s like going back to Spring Training. In September and October, I rake again.”

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Wednesday afternoon in Tampa Bay, Felix Hernandez wrapped up a complete-game shutout. It was just his second in the past three seasons, but you shouldn’t let that fool you. He’s one of the best pitchers in baseball — pitching at his peak — and he’s one of those guys where a single underwhelming outing is enough to make people wonder if something might be wrong. People don’t wonder very much these days, though. The two greatest challenges are hitting Felix and not taking Felix for granted.

For the most part, Felix is well understood. Among all of his strengths, the changeup stands out for its movement, for its velocity and for its location. It’s one of the best changeups in the world, and Felix is comfortable throwing it in any count to any hitter. It can be difficult to distinguish from his fastball, which is faster by only a handful of ticks. Everyone, therefore, is familiar with Felix’s main weapon. Fewer people think about another weapon. Felix’s slowest weapon. But he’s going to it with increasing frequency.

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It took a little while to get here, with an unexpected obstacle or two, but we’ve got a six-player trade between the Braves and the Dodgers. The youngest player involved is 26, the average age of the players is about 31, and this year they’ve all combined to be worth -1.2 WAR. Sounds to me like something worth examining in detail.

Going from Atlanta to Los Angeles:

• Alberto Callaspo
• Eric Stults
• Ian Thomas
• Juan Jaime

Going from Los Angeles to Atlanta:

• Juan Uribe
• Chris Withrow

It’s anything but a blockbuster. You could say a lot of these parts were expendable. Uribe lost playing time. Withrow’s still sidelined after surgery. Callaspo was likely to be designated for assignment. Jaime already had been designated for assignment, and cleared waivers. The Braves booted Stults from the starting rotation. Thomas has 16 big-league innings. Most likely, this isn’t a trade that’s going to make any meaningful difference, but if you look at it long enough, you can see components of certain interest. It’s kind of like a statistical Magic Eye puzzle, where the image revealed is very slightly more interesting than the immediate visual appearance of the puzzle itself. OK, good, I think I’m selling this well.

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