DEPARTMENT: Baseball Operations: Research & Development – Baseball Systems REPORTS TO: Architect, Baseball Systems
Location:Chicago, IL
Description:
The Chicago Cubs Baseball Systems Department is seeking to fill a Baseball Systems Software Engineer position. This role will focus on the development and maintenance of the Chicago Cubs baseball information system data warehouse, including creating web interfaces and web tools for the user interface; assisting in mobile application development; building automated ETL processes which feed it; maintaining back-end databases; and troubleshooting data source issues as needed. This role will collaborate with software engineers and data analysts in their use of the Cubs’ data warehouse and coordinate plans for database growth, while also reviewing and recommending new technologies for use by Baseball Operations department. Read the rest of this entry »
With no clear end in sight to the owner’s lockout, free agent Kwang Hyun Kim 김광현 has decided to return to Korea for the 2022 season. On Monday, Jeeho Yoo of Yonhap Newsreported that Kim has signed a four-year deal with the SSG Landers (previously the SK Wyverns). The deal is worth 15.1 billion won ($12.3 million dollars) and breaks the record for largest KBO contract that was previously held by Dae-Ho Lee 이대호 and Sung-bum Na 나성범. In a statement released by the Landers, Kim said, “I was able to challenge myself in the majors because of support from fans here. I decided I wanted to give back to them once I returned to the KBO. The Landers recognized my value with the biggest contract ever in the KBO — I didn’t have to think long and hard about the reunion.”
Kim returns to his old team in Incheon, a squad that has missed the playoffs both years since he made the jump to the major leagues after the 2019 season: They placed ninth in the 10 team league in 2020 but came up half a game short of qualifying for the Wild Card game in 2021. Kim solidifies a starting rotation that also includes former major league pitchers Iván Nova and Wilmer Font. Font led the Landers pitching staff with a 3.46 ERA and a 3.25 FIP, but the four pitchers in the rotation behind him all had ERAs and FIPs over five. With Kim back in the fold, the Landers are likely one of the preseason favorites heading into the regular season.
I asked former FanGraphs contributor Sung Min Kim for some additional context on Kwang Hyun Kim’s return to the KBO.
“Landers are now in a very good position, especially with their pitching staff. Not only do they get one of the better KBO pitchers back in their rotation, but they also bet highly on Wilmer Font, who pitched very well with them in ’21, and Iván Nova, and they also have two solid Korean-born starters in Jong Hoon Park and Seung Won Moon set to return mid-season from injuries. Those five pitchers would make up the best rotation in all of KBO, and make them instant pennant favorites for 2022. They will certainly be a very fun team to watch.”
Kim’s time in America was anything but easy. A club legend while playing for the Wyverns from 2007-19, he made the transition to the US prior to the 2020 season. Unfortunately, his introduction to the major leagues was interrupted by a global pandemic. The next season was a little more normal, but his two-year deal with the Cardinals expired at the end of 2021 and the 33-year-old again found himself in strange circumstances, with the owner’s lockout disrupting his foray into MLB free agency.
While pitching for St. Louis, Kim’s role was as settled as the circumstances around him these past two years. He began the 2020 season as the Cardinals closer, notching his first professional save in his first major league appearance. A COVID outbreak on the team forced him into the starting rotation soon after, and he made seven starts during the remainder of the abbreviated regular season with an additional start in the Cardinals Wild Card series against the Padres. He allowed just nine total runs to score against him in those eight regular season appearances, good for a 1.62 ERA.
Last year, two separate stints on the injured list limited Kim to 21 starts and six relief appearances. The second of those trips to the IL came in mid-August after the Cardinals had acquired J.A. Happ and Jon Lester to bolster their rotation for the stretch run. Kim returned after two weeks on the sidelines but had lost his spot in the rotation by then. He made two more starts through the end of the season but was mostly relegated to mop up duty in the bullpen over the last month of the season.
All told, he made 28 starts during his time with the Cardinals and seven additional relief appearances. He compiled 1.8 WAR with an excellent 2.97 ERA that outpaced a more middling 4.34 FIP. He never racked up big strikeout totals, instead relying on good command and a solid ability to limit hard contact. Just 25.6% of the plate appearances against him ended with a hard hit batted ball, right in line with the league average over the last two seasons. He allowed a 6.3% barrel rate during his time in the majors and just a .348 expected wOBA on contact.
On the pitcher’s decision to return to Korea, Sung Min Kim had this to say:
“I think he was always inclined to stay in the US and try to prolong his career in the US by signing with another team. He’s had a desire to challenge himself in the majors for a long while, even before he signed with the Cardinals. With his age and the decreased velocity he showed during his two seasons in St. Louis, I wasn’t sure what the market looked like for him, especially given that he was relegated to a bullpen role later in 2021. I think, with the lockout taking awhile, him missing his family being back in Korea, and definitely having a clearer role guaranteed back in KBO, it was very hard to say no to a lucrative deal to come back.”
Kim’s departure from the US creates an even bigger hole in the depleted free agent starting pitching market. Twelve of the 18 starters listed on our top 50 free agents list signed new deals prior to the lockout. That leaves very few options for teams looking to bolster their rotations once the offseason resumes. Kim was ranked 35th on that list of top free agents, ahead of Zack Greinke, Michael Pineda, and Yusei Kikuchi. Though he probably wasn’t likely to land a significant payday from an MLB club, he could have been a solid back-of-the-rotation option for a contending team that needs a bit more depth in their rotation. Those teams that might have been interested in Kim’s services are now limited to looking at starters like Pineda, Kikuchi, Tyler Anderson, and Garrett Richards.
This may also be the first instance of the ongoing owner’s lockout influencing a player to leave the US to find other opportunities abroad. Obviously, Kim returning to his home country to play for the same team he starred for previously is a unique circumstance, but the fact that there was no clear end to his free agent limbo in America had to have entered into his decision-making process when opting to return to Korea. Kim chose to leave behind the uncertainty of MLB for a record-setting KBO deal.
If negotiations between MLB and the Players Association continue to drag on, jeopardizing more and more of the regular season, it wouldn’t be surprising to see players consider signing with international leagues to give them some guarantee of earnings and playing time. Bryce Harper already joked about playing in Japan and Taiwan on his Instagram account:
It’s not hard to imagine a situation where MLB players start to seriously consider their options abroad if progress towards a new CBA deal hasn’t been made. Opening day in Korea is set for April 2, while the Nippon Professional Baseball season begins on March 25. That gives players an increasingly narrow window to make a decision. Established stars like Harper probably won’t be making the jump to Asia this year, but for players still mired in free agency or on the fringe of a major league roster and ineligible to play in minor leagues, a guaranteed paycheck and playing time in a foreign league could become increasingly enticing.
There’s a lot of power in Alec Bohm’s swing. He’s capable of getting completely twisted up, arms fully bent, on a pitch he has no business swinging at, and yet he can still get the barrel on the ball with enough power to blast it off the centerfield wall. Here, see for yourself:
It takes quick hands and great bat-to-ball skills to square up 93 mph that far in on your hands. It should be no surprise that the man behind that swing produced an 89th-percentile average exit velocity and 90th-percentile hard-hit rate in 2021. Yet good results rarely followed suit for Bohm, as the highly anticipated follow-up to his 138 wRC+ in his rookie campaign landed with a dud. The 6’5” third baseman proved unable to tap into his power, with only seven homers and a lowly .095 ISO — 15th percentile in the majors, well off the league average of .165 (though even during his stellar rookie season, he only got up to .145). His elite hard-hit rate wasn’t enough to keep his offense from cratering; he finished with a 75 wRC+ and was even demoted late in the season.
Bohm clearly has power potential, but after just 11 homers in his first 597 plate appearances, why hasn’t it surfaced? At first glance, it looks like a simple diagnosis: he hits the ball on the ground too often, and his ability to hit the ball hard is being diminished by a poor launch angle. That is certainly a good place to start given his 52.7% groundball rate last season, which ranked in the eighth percentile league-wide. Thriving with a groundball rate that high is not unheard of, but in order to do so, you really have to damage the fly balls you hit. It’s the Juan Soto model for success; he has an identical 52.7% grounder rate, but 24.4% of his fly balls leave the yard because he simply crushes them (average exit velocity: 96.2 mph). Bohm’s fly balls, meanwhile, are only leaving the park 11.3% of the time. Read the rest of this entry »
Matt Wallner has taken a circuitous route in his quest to play close to home. Geographically speaking, it might be better-described as an oblong route. The 24-year-old Minnesota Twins outfield prospect grew up thirty minutes northeast of Target Field, then circumstances sent him to Hattiesburg, 17 hours south. Since being drafted 39th overall in 2019 out of the University of Southern Mississippi, Wallner has played in Elizabethton, Tennessee and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the latter of which sits four-and-a-half hours southeast of where he started.
Exposure-wise, the shape of Wallner’s boomerang journey changed when his intended destination out of high school dropped baseball. The left-handed-hitting slugger — No. 10 on our newly-released Twins Top Prospects list — had planned to continue his studies in Grand Forks, North Dakota, four-and-a-half hours northwest of the Twin Cities.
“[The University of] North Dakota cut baseball in April of my senior year,” explained Wallner, who battled back from a hamate injury this year to log a 131 wRC+ and wallop 15 home runs in 294 plate appearances at High-A Cedar Rapids. “I had some connections to Southern Miss through the North Dakota coach, so I went for a visit and fell in love with it. Playing college baseball when it is warmer than 30 degrees was enticing.”
Belying the fact that he considers his freshman fall at the Conference USA school “the biggest jump I’ve ever had to experience,” Wallner went on swing a hot bat in his first taste of high-profile collegiate competition, compiling numbers that included 19 dingers and a 1.118 OPS. He went on to set Southern Mississippi’s career home run record, going deep 58 times in three seasons. Read the rest of this entry »
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Minnesota Twins. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the second year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the numbered prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here.
Editor’s Note: Ronny Henriquez was added to this list following his acquisition from the Texas Rangers as part of the Mitch Garver/Isiah Kiner-Falefa trade.
Francis Peguero was added to this list following his acquisition from the Cincinnati Reds as part of the Sonny Gray trade; Chase Petty, previously ranked 14th here, was the return.
Danny Coulombe features a lot of breaking balls, and he does so with scant fanfare. In 28 relief appearances and one outing as an opener, the 32-year-old Minnesota Twins southpaw threw 41.8% sliders and 24.8% curveballs last year. He was also quietly effective. Taking the mound for a team that performed well below expectations, Coulombe logged a 3.67 ERA and a 3.75 FIP while fanning 33 batters and issuing just seven free passes in 34-and-a-third innings.
Emblematic of the lefty’s lack of fanfare is that I talked to him last August, and while I did include a few of his quotes in a September column — these on an online project management class that had him regularly visiting FanGraphs — I am just now sharing the crux of our conversation. What we delved into was the evolution of his breaker-heavy repertoire.
“I was predominantly four-seam/curveball when I got drafted,” said Coulombe, whom the Los Angeles Dodgers took in the 25th round out of Texas Tech University in 2012. “Coming up through the system I was mostly a curveball guy, and in 2014, a pitching coach I had, Scott Radinsky, told me that I needed something that looks like a fastball and moves. He said, ‘Right now, if a hitter sees a pop he knows it’s a breaking ball, and if he sees it straight he knows it’s a fastball.’ So we worked on developing a slider that year. I’ve always been able to spin a baseball, and now I’m probably about 70% breaking balls, curveballs and sliders.”
For Coulombe, maintaining a consistent differential between the two is a matter of mindset and grip. The latter required an adjustment, which was necessitated by unwanted blending. Read the rest of this entry »
For Dane Dunning, consistency will be key in 2022. A first round pick back in 2016, his professional career has been pretty turbulent for someone of his draft pedigree. He’s been the headlining return in two major trades — the Adam Eaton deal in 2016 and the Lance Lynn swap in ’20 — and also lost a season and a half to a torn UCL. To further complicate matters, the beginning of the pandemic disrupted his rehab just when he was preparing to compete for a spot on a big league roster. The delayed start to the 2020 season probably benefited him, however, as he finally made his major league debut for the White Sox in August of that year.
Dunning had just gotten his feet wet at the game’s highest level when he was shipped off to Texas during the offseason. The Rangers were extremely careful with him in his first season with the organization. You can understand why. He had missed more than two seasons worth of games between his Tommy John surgery and the lack of a minor league season in 2020. His first start in the big leagues was the first time he had pitched in an official game since June 2018. In 2021, he averaged just under five innings per start and threw more than 80 pitches in a game just four times. Still, with just over 150 total major league innings under his belt, Dunning has shown some real promise, even if there are a few kinks to work out.
Last year, Dunning managed to post a 3.94 FIP that was supported by a 3.87 xFIP. Unfortunately, his 4.51 ERA far outpaced his peripherals. He didn’t give up very many home runs — just 13 all season — but he did allow a lot of contact. Opposing batters produced a 78.1% contact rate against him, well above league average, though more than half of those balls in play were put on the ground. His strikeout-to-walk ratio was almost exactly league average, which meant he wasn’t really mitigating that contact with a gaudy strikeout rate and or a minuscule walk rate. Despite those mixed results, there are some positive signs under the hood that could bode well for Dunning’s development this year. Read the rest of this entry »
This week on the show, David Laurila welcomes long-time Pittsburgh scribe and former Baseball Prospectus colleague John Perrotto to the program.
Perrotto has been covering baseball long enough to remember the last labor stoppage, and he shares his perspective on the current lockout and how it compares to 1994. After that, we get anecdotes about a number of Pirates legends, including what it was like to get to know Jim Leyland, and that one time Brian Giles took batting practice in his birthday suit. We also hear about Perrotto’s clubhouse relationship with Barry Bonds, how impressive of an interview he could be when he wanted to be, and what it took to earn the slugger’s respect.
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Connor Joe has had a turbulent couple of years. In the spring of 2019, he made his big league debut as the Opening Day left fielder for the Giants. Just a week prior, San Francisco had acquired him in a trade with the Reds, who had selected him in the Rule 5 draft just three months before that. His time with the Giants would also prove short-lived: after 11 days and a 1-for-15 start to the season, he was designated for assignment. As a Rule 5 pick, he was returned to his original team, the Dodgers, and spent the rest of the 2019 season in Triple-A, where he posted a 132 wRC+ and a 16.1% walk rate but never got the call to return to the big leagues.
The following year, Joe was expected to compete for a roster spot with the Dodgers, but just as spring training was getting underway, team doctors found a tumor that was later diagnosed as testicular cancer. He underwent chemotherapy treatments and was declared cancer-free later in the summer, but the risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic kept him away from baseball for the whole season. He elected free agency in November 2020 and signed a minor league deal with the Rockies later that month.
The 2021 season finally gave Joe an opportunity to shine at the big league level, but it was not without its ups and downs. He started the season in the minors thanks to his lost 2020 and ended the season on the injured list due to a hamstring injury he suffered in early September. Between those endpoints, he struggled enough to get sent down, got hot enough to become the everyday leadoff hitter, and even celebrated his anniversary of being cancer-free by smashing his first career home run. All told, he had 211 plate appearances with a .285/.379/.469 triple slash, eight homers and a 116 wRC+. Read the rest of this entry »
Mick Abel has a classic starter profile and a high ceiling. No. 20 on our recently-released 2022 Top 100 Prospects list, and No. 1 on our Philadelphia Phillies Top Prospects list, the 20-year-old right-hander features a four-seam fastball and a diving slider, plus offerings that he augments with a changeup and a curveball. Drafted 15th overall in 2019 out of a Beaverton, Oregon high school, the 6-foot-5, 205-pound hurler is, in the words of our prospect team, “a prototypical power pitching prospect with huge arm strength, a plus breaking ball, and the frame [to potentially grow into] a No. 1 or 2 starter.”
Abel discussed his repertoire, and his early-career development, over the phone last week.
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David Laurila: How much have you learned about your pitches since signing with the Phillies?
Mick Abel: “I think I had a really good sense coming in, with how I was brought up with Kevin Gunderson back home. He was sharing the analytical side a lot better than a lot of kids would get from their pitching coaches. But I’ve definitely learned a lot. I’ve learned about things like seam-shifted wake, which is something I’ve asked about a lot.
“As far as my data goes, I haven’t tried to do too many crazy things with it. I know that I’ve got the stuff. It’s more so, ‘How am I going to maintain that, and not deviate too far off of what my normal numbers are?’”
