Archive for Teams

Before you understand Jeff Locke, you should know that you probably won’t understand Jeff Locke. This will be a post without a real conclusion, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still be interesting!

A couple things we know to be true about Locke: Over the last two seasons, he’s made 51 starts, and has logged 292 innings. In that time, he’s posted a very respectable ERA of 3.69, which puts him in the same company as guys like Jeff Samardzija and Dallas Keuchel. Over that same time period, however, he’s also posted a less-respectable FIP of 4.18, which puts him in the same company as guys like Travis Wood and Edinson Volquez. Put another way: Locke has outperformed his peripherals like few others in baseball.

Now, some things we know to be true about the Pirates: They have, arguably, baseball’s most distinct organizational pitching philosophies, which include both pitching inside and pitching low at extreme rates. As a team, they’ve outperformed their peripherals like few others in baseball, and that’s likely at least partially a result of their organizational pitching philosophies. The last thing we know is that they recently chose Locke over Vance Worley for the final spot in the rotation, which came as a bit of a surprise considering Worley’s dominant comeback last season.

Worley still made the rotation, on account of Charlie Morton’s injury, but that’s beside the point. The Pirates chose Locke over Worley, and, to an extent, that’s telling. For these facts alone, we have reason to be interested in Locke. It’s not often one finds oneself saying that, so the time is now. Let’s investigate Jeff Locke.
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Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, D’Backs, Twins, Astros, Cubs, Reds, Phillies, Rays, Mets, Padres, Marlins, Nationals, Red Sox, White Sox, Orioles, Yankees, Braves, Athletics, Angels, Dodgers, Blue Jays, Tigers, Cardinals, Brewers, Indians, Mariners, Pirates, Royals & Giants

Top 200 Prospects Content Index

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

Draft Rankings: 2015, 2016 & 2017

International Coverage: 2015 July 2nd Parts One, Two & Three, 2016 July 2nd

The Giants aren’t the most prolific system in baseball, annually ranking in the bottom third of the league in terms of org system rankings. Due to the big league club’s payroll and success, they’re generally picking near the bottom of the round and recently haven’t had much in their international and domestic bonus pools, in addition to generally not trading for prospects. San Francisco tends to play the draft straightforward, taking the best player at each spot, recently avoiding huge bonuses in the international markets and not being a huge player with Cuban free agents.

The Giants have their idea of the kind of player they like, don’t usually fall into industry-wide consensuses and it’s hard to complain about their results. This system has produced Pablo Sandoval, Buster Posey, Brandon Belt, Joe Panik, Brandon Crawford, Zack Wheeler, Tim Lincecum, Madison Bumgarner and Matt Cain, among others. You can choose to not like the process, but the same guys have been in charge for this whole run and they built a multiple time World Champion team mostly from within, which is the whole point of having a farm system, so kudos to them.

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Right at the deadline, A.J. Preller managed to squeeze in one more major transaction before the dawn of the regular season. We can say that, now, the Padres’ 2014-2015 offseason is complete; we can say that, now, the Padres’ 2014-2015 offseason also includes Craig Kimbrel. He will, presumably, be available to the team for Opening Day. It’s a little different from the usual roster additions made around this time.

The whole of the deal:

Padres get

• Craig Kimbrel
• Melvin Upton

Braves get

• Carlos Quentin
• Cameron Maybin
• Matt Wisler
• Jordan Paroubeck
• Draft pick No. 41

For the Braves, it’s a totally understandable and justifiable move — not only do they get to shed the rest of the Upton contract, but Kimbrel meant relatively little to them as an elite-level closer on a basement-level team. The cost savings here are significant, and they can shortly be put toward assets that might be of greater help in the window in which the Braves plan to be good again. Also, Wisler! Wisler could be of help in said window.

For the Padres, it fits with a lot of the rest of the offseason. Kimbrel isn’t exactly a one-year player, since he could be under contract through 2018, but the team’s paying a high price again, borrowing from future talent and future flexibility to make the 2015 roster stronger. That goal has been met — without question, the Padres have taken another step forward. Now we all just get to find out whether this collection of talent can come together and push for something beyond a 162nd game.

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Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, D’Backs, Twins, Astros, Cubs, Reds, Phillies, Rays, Mets, Padres, Marlins, Nationals, Red Sox, White Sox, Orioles, Yankees, Braves, Athletics, Angels, Dodgers, Blue Jays, Tigers, Cardinals, Brewers, Indians, Mariners, Pirates, Royals & Giants

Top 200 Prospects Content Index

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

Draft Rankings: 2015, 2016 & 2017

International Coverage: 2015 July 2nd Parts One, Two & Three, 2016 July 2nd

The Royals have done very well with their recent high picks, snagging prospects 2, 7, 8, 11 and 16 in the top three rounds of last summer’s draft, prospects 1 and 6 in the first round in 2013, and prospects 4, 23 and 27 with their first three picks in 2012. To have 10 of 12 picks in the top three rounds over a three-year period appear on the list is and have 7 of those be 45 FV of higher prospects is an accomplishment. Even though all those prospects won’t return significant big league value, retaining some trade value is important and draft picks often flop quickly, so GM Dayton Moore has to appreciate having trade chips accruing this quickly.

Raul Mondesi was a real find for the international group, as he wasn’t the consensus prospect his bonus suggest when he signed. Miguel Almonte and Jorge Bonifaco are great international finds for lower bonuses and there’s depth to the international prospects in the system. While some of this amateur procurement is due to a larger amateur budget in some years, there have been more stringent league-wide controls in recent years and the Royals have continued to produce at an above average rate.

This is a big year for many bats in the system, with Orlando Calixte, Cheslor Cuthbert, Hunter Dozier, Jorge Bonifacio, Christian Colon, Raul Mondesi and Bubba Starling all having big ceiling and need to improve at turning their tools into production to keep their prospect status/trade value. The performance of these hitters in 2015 will likely decide if the system will be seen as better or worse at this time next year; they’re in the middle third of teams at this point.

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Yesterday, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Pittsburgh Pirates. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not Pittsburgh’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Pirates system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.

Below are the top-five prospects in the Pittsburgh system by projected WAR. To assemble this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.

Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.

t5. Elias Diaz, C (Profile)

As McDaniel notes, Diaz was signed as an 18-year-old out of Venezuela for just $20 thousand. Age and bonus amount are pretty strong indicators of a Latin American player’s prospect status — and Diaz’s indicators suggest that his status as a prospect wasn’t “very highly sought after.” Statistically, though — with the exception of a couple low-BABIP seasons — he’s demonstrated a promising and constantly improving offensive profile, never striking out in more than 20% of his plate appearances and always exhibiting something better than negligible power. Moreover, his defensive skills at catcher appear to be his actual strength. Considered altogether, that’s a promising collection of qualities — one that renders him probably somewhere above replacement level.

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The Braves have acquired Trevor Cahill and cash for their Josh Elander, a 24-year-old former catcher that was playing outfield in High-A Lynchburg for the second time last year. So mostly this transaction is about the Braves getting a cheap starter on the cheap. The quality of that incoming pitcher, and the fit on a rebuilding team — these are the things that are most debatable about the deal.

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Every team starts the season with five starters, but the chances a team makes it through the season unscathed is minimal. From research performed by Jeff Zimmerman, starting pitchers who made 20 starts and pitched 120 innings the previous season have roughly a 40% chance of hitting the disabled list during the season. Eno Sarris added to Zimmerman’s work before the start of last season and found that teams have been averaging around 10 starters per season since 2011. That average did not change last season as teams averaged 9.6 starters per team. Even if the bar is raised to a minimum of five starts, teams averaged 7.4 starters per team in 2014, consistent with five-year average of 7.5 starters per team per season.

Attempting to measure pitching depth can be difficult. Jeff Sullivan took a look at overall depth last month, showing how many players were projected for at least one win according projections. Focusing on rotation depth the same way is a good way to look strictly at depth, but with the season upon us, we can see the potential impact of that depth by examining the dropoff from starters to their replacements. FanGraphs completed the Positional Power Rankings with the pitching split into two posts, one for the bottom half, and one for the top half. Without rehashing the entirety of both posts, here is the graph from those posts which should provide a base of expectations for a team’s rotation.
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We’ve moved our from the west — both NL and the AL — and covered both the NL and AL Wests the last two days. Today, we’ll do both eastern divisions, starting with the National League.

The Projected Standings

The easiest division in baseball to handicap. The favorites just have to avoid implosion to punch their ticket to the postseason, with only two teams even pretending to put up a fight, and neither one looking quite ready for the postseason yet. The fight for second place could be a Wild Card battle, but more likely, there is only one playoff team here, and it’s probably going to be the one we’d all expect.

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This week’s nuttiest pitches might even have a point. But let’s just start with the GIFs. Because it’s fun to watch crazy pitches do crazy things.

Let’s do the uncle charlies, the yakkers, the yellow hammers — curveballs are on the menu today. As usual, we’re looking at the last three years because that’s what MLB.tv allows us, and we’re sorting PITCHF/x to find the pitches with the most extreme horizontal and vertical movement, as well as velocities.

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The owners of several rooftop businesses overlooking Wrigley Field are down to their last strike in a lawsuit challenging the Chicago Cubs’ on-going renovation of the 100-year-old stadium. As previously detailed here and here, the rooftop owners filed suit in January asking a federal court to block the Cubs from constructing two new proposed scoreboards, structures that the rooftops claim were intended to block their views into the stadium.

Last month, Judge Virginia Kendall denied the rooftop owners’ request for a temporary restraining order (TRO) preventing the Cubs from erecting the scoreboards. As I explained at the time, although the judge was unwilling to issue a TRO – an emergency order that would have blocked the Cubs from building the scoreboards for only a few weeks – she left open the possibility of granting the rooftops a preliminary injunction in the case (a more permanent order that would have forbid construction of the video boards throughout the entire course of the litigation).

The rooftop owners’ hopes were dashed once again on Thursday, however, when Judge Kendall refused to preliminarily enjoin the Cubs from constructing the scoreboards. Kendall’s opinion (available here) was a resounding victory for the team, with the judge concluding that the Cubs were likely to prevail on both the rooftops’ antitrust and breach of contract claims. As a result, the Wrigley renovations will be permitted to continue unabated.

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