Over the last two years, only one National League third baseman has had better defensive numbers than Nolan Arenado. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
They encountered one another on a major-league field for the first time this past weekend — the first two picks of the 2009 draft, the Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg and the Mariners’ Dustin Ackley. The two names are forever linked in Mariner lore, as it was their ill-timed winning streak at the end of the 2008 season that landed both players in their eventual homes. Strasburg made the Mariners look silly on Saturday night, but Ackley got in a solid counterpunch, drilling a late homer that cost the Nationals’ righty his shutout, ending his night a bit earlier than expected. Truth be told, the Mariners’ return on their first-round selection has looked better of late, as Ackley’s second-half surge has helped keep his club firmly entrenched in the wild-card race. Which is the real Dustin Ackley? The one that struggled for the better part of the last three seasons, or the guy who has shown up for the last month and a half? Read the rest of this entry »
When our other prospect writers submit scouting reports, I will provide a short background and industry consensus tool grades. There are two reasons for this: 1) giving context to account for the writer seeing a bad outing (never threw his changeup, coming back from injury, etc.) and 2) not making him go on about the player’s background or speculate about what may have happened in other outings.
The writer still grades the tools based on what they saw, I’m just letting the reader know what he would’ve seen in many other games from this season, particularly with young players that may be fatigued late in the season. The grades are presented as present/future on the 20-80 scouting scale and very shortly I’ll publish a series going into more depth explaining these grades. -Kiley
“With his defense, he doesn’t need to do much at the plate” is a common refrain heard in regards to the best defensive players in the game. Elite players at premium positions get a lot of rope, so valuable is their glove work. Especially at key, up-the-middle positions, the offensive bar is set so low that any contribution from the game’s best defenders can be considered a bonus.
In 2013, Andrelton Simmons was among the most productive players in baseball, thanks to his beyond-superlative defense. To the surprise of many, Simmons also slugged 17 home runs, offsetting his struggles to get on base to produce a nearly-league average season. His 91 wRC+ surpassed the average shortstop last season, which is a recipe for a successful season. If you hit better than most of the peers while definitely fielding better than most of your peers, you’re doing something right.
As 2014 began, Simmons and the Braves were clearly not content with his production levels and vowed to change him, to bring his swing under control and make him a more complete hitter. In June, Braves hitting coach Greg Walker explained to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that it was a matter of identity for Simmons, one he needed to adjust. “You’ve got to make a decision on what type hitter you want to be. Do you want to be low-average guy, a power guy, and deal with a lot of failure?”
Since Alex Gordon moved into first place in position player WAR (although he’s now second again), quite a bit of back-and-forth discussion has occurred on if he is this season’s best position player. Most of the talk revolves around how much stock should people put into defensive statistics. Our own Dave Cameron has already taken a stab at the subject earlier in the week. Alex Gordon is getting close to two wins of value from his defense, a considerable jump from his previous seasons. After looking at the inputs used for UZR, it is not Alex Gordon’s performance going to new levels, but the lack of talented defenders in left field making him seem better.
I’m not gonna lie to you — there are a lot of things Christian Yelich hasn’t done once. Uncountable things. Infinite things. He hasn’t eclipsed 20 home runs in a season. He hasn’t hit a triple on the road. He hasn’t signed an eight-figure contract. He hasn’t grown to six and a half feet tall. He hasn’t attended Oberlin College, and he hasn’t been drafted by the Phillies. He hasn’t survived an accidental fall from the Golden Gate bridge, nor has he survived an intentional fall from the same. Depending on how you look at it, Christian Yelich hasn’t lived much of a life. But he is doing pretty well at his job at an unusually young age, and let’s talk about something specific he has yet to include in his numbers. You can think of this as an indicator of success, to go along with the other, more traditional indicators of success, like, batting average.
We’ll make use of batted-ball information! We’ve got that on FanGraphs stretching back to 2002. Since 2002, 790 batters have put at least 500 balls in play. Yelich is now among them, as of not long ago. Within the sample, no one’s hit more infield flies than Vernon Wells, at 376. He has a 41-pop lead on Albert Pujols. No one’s hit a greater rate of infield flies than Eric Byrnes, who’s just in front of Tony Batista. At the other extreme are known pop-up avoiders. You know about Joey Votto. Joe Mauer doesn’t hit pop-ups, either. For all his faults, Ryan Howard belongs in this same group, as does Derek Jeter. As for Yelich? He’s at 0. He doesn’t have an infield fly to his name. He is currently the only such batter in the given player pool.
Edwin Escobar, who came from the Giants in the Jake Peavy deal, debuted with the Red Socks on Tuesday. One inning of work is not enough to know much other than perhaps velocity, but that point alone started a discussion. He sat just under 92 mph, and once you correct for his appearance coming out of the bullpen, you might say he had average velocity. I even said this, on twitter. And Mike Newman responded:
@enosarris I had Escobar 91-93… That's plus velo from the left side.
— Mike Newman (@MikeNewmanRS) August 28, 2014
I’ve heard this before. I’ve thought it maybe untrue, for whatever reason. So I decided to check out a few splits among starters this year.
Prospects are babies. They’re eagerly anticipated, they’re evaluated by their ceilings, their arrivals are memorable and frequently painful, and these days they’re traded for goods less than ever. They continue to be interesting for a handful of months, but then they start to develop into more fully-formed people, and the magic of limitless possibility disintegrates. Sometimes they turn into remarkable things, more often they turn into unremarkable things, and regardless, it doesn’t take long before they’re taken for granted. Toward the beginning, everything is celebrated. Later on, mistakes aren’t so novel, they aren’t so easy to explain away.
Javier Baez still counts as a prospect, even though his big-league career is weeks underway. He’s among the most exciting prospects we’ve seen in baseball in some years, and though it’s a certainty that he’ll be less compelling a year or two from now, at the moment everything he’s involved in can be turned into a highlight. If he were a real baby, all his activity would be posted on Facebook. Some people might already be getting Baez fatigue, but I’m not one of them, and even if I were, I’d probably make an exception for a showdown between Baez and a similarly extreme sort of pitcher. A pitcher like, I don’t know, Aroldis Chapman. Who Baez faced for the first time on Wednesday night in the top of the ninth of a close game.
Earlier this season, people paid a lot of attention to an at-bat between Kenley Jansen and Miguel Cabrera. It was compelling, because both Jansen and Cabrera are extremely talented. Chapman vs. Baez is compelling because both players are extremely powerful. There’s no one who throws harder than Aroldis Chapman. There might be no one who swings harder than Javier Baez.Who wouldn’t want to watch them go head-to-head over and over? They haven’t yet gone head-to-head over and over, but they have gone head-to-head once. Let’s put that at-bat under the microscope.
Evaluating The Prospects: Texas Rangers, Colorado Rockies, Arizona Diamondbacks & Minnesota Twins
Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6
The Rockies have a solid system with some depth and some high-end talent spread across different levels. There’s been some chatter there may be a regime change in Denver and while altitude creates some unique problems for executives, the farm is in a good position to produce some talent in the coming years. Here’s the primer for this series and here’s a disclaimer about how none of us really know anything, perfect to read before I attempt to tell you everything about the Rockies farm system. Here’s the Rangers list, the first in the series.
Most of what you need to know is at those links, but I should add that the risk ratings are relative to their position, so average (3) risk for a pitcher is riskier than average risk (3) for a hitter, due injury/attrition being more common. I’d also take a 60 Future Value hitter over a 60 FV pitcher for the same reasons. Also, risk encompasses a dozen different things and I mention the important components of it for each player in the report. The upside line for hitters is the realistic best-case scenario (in general, a notch better than the projected tools) and the Future Value encompasses this upside along with the risk rating for one overall rating number.
Below I’ve included a quick ranking of the growth assets Colorado has in the majors that aren’t eligible for the list and Dave Cameron shares some general thoughts on the organization. Scroll further down to see Carson Cistulli’s fringe prospect favorite. The next team up in the series, working from the bottom of the standings on up, is the Arizona Diamondbacks.
We’ve reached the point in the regular season where, moving forward, a lot of our posts will be focused on the playoff race and teams within the playoff race. This is simply a natural shift of attention that occurs as the season progresses. Everything throughout the regular season builds up to the playoff race and now we’re here, so everything that happens which directly affects the playoff race becomes all the more noteworthy.
That doesn’t mean much for the New York Mets. They’re playing without their best and most exciting player, are currently eight games below .500, just two games out of last place and all but mathematically eliminated from playoff contention, with a a 0.1% chance to make the wild card.
But that doesn’t mean all hope is lost. Looking beyond this season, the Mets have a lot to be excited about, thanks to some combination of Matt Harvey, Zack Wheeler, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Jon Niese, Rafael Montero and Dillon Gee making up one of most promising young pitching staffs in baseball. Looking towards the rest of this season, there is less to be excited about, as neither Harvey or Syndergaard will pitch in the majors this year. But deGrom is still enjoying an unexpected breakout year and Wheeler is living up to the hype of being really, really good.
And there’s something else about Zack Wheeler that will make the rest of his starts this season a little more interesting.
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