Archive for Teams

We take Mike Trout for granted. It’s not a thing that’s unique to Mike Trout. We take all consistently great baseball players for granted. We take all consistently great anythings for granted. That’s why we’re always trying to figure out the next big thing — it doesn’t take long to get used to the current big thing. Mike Trout, right now, beats the hell out of Gregory Polanco, but Polanco might be of greater current interest, because he’s fresh and he could become a star. Trout’s already been a star for years. This is just part of having a human brain — we acclimate. We’re incredible at it. It has its upsides.

Once you start taking a player for granted, though, it’s that much more difficult to really appreciate what the player’s able to do. The best players aren’t guys regularly doing amazing things — the best players are guys regularly doing good things, some percentage more often than the inferior players. Usually those are standard good things. We get to the point where, in order to feel an appreciation, we need something extraordinary. So let’s seize a chance. Feel like you’ve been taking Mike Trout for granted? You’re not alone. Let’s watch him do something extraordinary, to remember that he is extraordinary.

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What’s an “average” fastball velocity? This year, it’s 91.9 mph. Last year, it was 92.0 mph. In 2012, it was 91.8 mph. We could go back further, but since that’s all pretty consistent and this isn’t really going to be about how hard pitchers throw anyway, three years is fine. We can say that 92 mph is pretty much the average fastball speed in Major League Baseball.

So with that knowledge in mind, here’s what I wanted to know: what hitters have to deal with the most heat that’s at average and above velocities? And how do they handle it? Fortunately, we have Baseball Savant, so we can look at this pretty easily. With a minimum of 500 fastballs seen — for reference, Matt Carpenter and Brian Dozier have each seen over 1,200 total pitches, so 500 pitches would be fewer than half of what an everyday player would have received — there’s only three hitters who have seen at least 35 percent of pitches coming in at 92 or higher:

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Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

In this installment of the Prospect Watch, I check in on the progress of three players whom I discussed last year.

Summary
Glasnow continues to put up big numbers, though his rawness remains significant.

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Dave Wallace played several minor league seasons in the Indians organization as a catcher before beginning his coaching career as a staff assistant in Cleveland from 2009-10. He has moved his way through the Indians organization quickly, managing the short-season Mahoning Valley Scrappers in 2011, the Class-A Lake County Captains in 2012 and the High-A Carolina Mudcats in 2013 before joining the Double-A Akron RubberDucks this year.

It’s no secret that, as a small-market ballclub, Cleveland has one of the most sabermetrically-inclined front offices in baseball alongside organizations like Oakland, Tampa Bay and Houston. After reading Alex Kaufman’s great piece on the Indians DiamondView system, I wanted to know how much of that trickled down to the minor leagues and what Wallace’s stance was with regards to analytics. Wallace mentioned he is a regular reader of FanGraphs and that one of his favorite things to do is comb through our glossary and learn about new stats. We talked about advanced numbers, their prevalence and role in the minor leagues and how he uses them as a manager:

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The surprising part wasn’t that Kendrys Morales signed immediately after he was no longer tied to compensation. The surprising part was that Kendrys Morales signed with the Minnesota Twins, instead of any of the more obvious possibilities. When Morales signed, the Twins were 29-31, and they fancy themselves a surprising potential contender, which tells you something about where the expectations were set a few months ago. The Twins got Morales for about $7.6 million and four months, and the organizational quotes you hear are full of optimism and positivity.

A rundown, courtesy of Rhett Bollinger:

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Over the winter, Max Scherzer turned down an offer from the Tigers that would have paid him $144 million over six years, and instead, decided to play out his final season in Detroit and then see kind of offers he will get as a free agent. Given pitcher attrition rates, Scherzer was certainly taking on a significant risk to pass up that kind of contract. Jeff Zimmerman’s research pegged Scherzer as having a 31% chance of landing on the disabled list at some point in 2014, and a significant injury likely would have forced Scherzer to forego pursuing any kind of long-term deal this winter. By turning down the offer, Scherzer appeared to have made a big bet on himself and his future health.

However, as Scherzer noted to Tom Verducci over the weekend, he actually hasn’t taken on nearly as much risk as we might have thought. Instead, he sold the risk to an insurance company for what was presumably a better rate than the one the Tigers offered. And I fully expect this to become a trend, with third-party insurance agencies stepping in to correct a market imbalance in Major League Baseball.

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A few weeks ago, it all looked so simple. The Tigers were steamrolling foes, and the rest of the division members languished. Detroit held a seven-game lead in the American League Central, and in fact had the best record in baseball. Fast forward three weeks and they have been the worst team in the AL since, with only the Colorado Rockies performing worse in the National League. It’s been an unexpected turn of events for sure, and it has flattened the AL Central standings. The Tigers still stand as the overwhelming favorite to win the division, but there is definitely more doubt now than there was in mid-May.

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The Rays may be in a new position when it comes to this year’s trade deadline. Since their playoff odds have dropped more than any other team’s since the beginning of the season and are now close to 5%, it’s at least hard to see them as buyers. Then again, they haven’t made a ton of in-season acquisitions in their more competitive past, and their team is built for 2015 as much as it was built for this year — it’s likely that their transition from buyers to sellers may come without many big moves.

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Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

NOTE: In no way are the three players presented in this article meant to represent the three singular top performers of last month in the minor leagues. They are merely players who had clearly dominant Mays about whom I have especially relevant and novel information to add.

Summary
An excellent all-around catching prospect.

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The San Francisco Giants entered play Thursday with the best record in baseball at 38-21, a game ahead of their cross-bay rivals in Oakland and a full 3.5 games better than any other National League team. Given their recent history of World Series success, maybe this doesn’t stand out to you. If you know the team and have been following along, however, this seems more than a little surprising, because the Giants certainly don’t seem like the best team in baseball.

That’s not to disparage them – they’re a good team, to be sure, and their Pythagorean win-loss record of 36-23 doesn’t indicate that they’ve been benefitted too much from run distribution.

But that’s just based on run differential, and there’s certainly a lot of variance and good fortune that can go into how teams produce runs. For the Giants, well, being the clutchiest bunch of clutches who ever clutched is certainly helping.
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