Position: Analyst, Research and Development

Department: R&D
Reports To: Director, Research & Development

Role
The Chicago Cubs are seeking analysts to join the Research and Development group in Baseball Operations. Analysts will contribute to core research furthering the general knowledge-base of the Chicago Cubs while specializing in one of five core areas:

• Amateur Scouting
• Biomechanics/Performance Science
• International Scouting
• MLB Advance Scouting
• Pitching Development

The analyst will work closely with the entirety of the R&D department to develop statistical models that evaluate players and development opportunities, process and interpret data, and disseminate analytic insights to their associated departments. We will consider applications with various levels of experience. Read the rest of this entry »

Job Title: Intern, Professional Scouting

Report to: Manager, Professional Scouting
Location: Jupiter, Florida
Job Classification: Hourly/Non-Exempt

Position Summary: Support the Professional Scouting Department, Baseball Operations, and Professional Scouts by working closely with the Professional Scouting Manager in creating & maintaining department systems & processes throughout the season. Responsibilities include but are not limited to those outlined below. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2020 election, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Bobby Abreu could do just about everything. A five-tool player with dazzling speed, a sweet left-handed stroke, and enough power to win a Home Run Derby, he was also one of the game’s most patient, disciplined hitters, able to wear down a pitcher and unafraid to hit with two strikes. While routinely reaching the traditional seasonal plateaus that tend to get noticed — a .300 batting average (six times), 20 homers (nine times), 30 steals (six times), 100 runs scored and batted in (eight times apiece) — he was nonetheless a stathead favorite for his ability to take a walk (100 or more eight years in a row) and his high on-base percentages (.400 or better eight times). And he was durable, playing 151 games or more in 13 straight seasons. “To me, Bobby’s Tony Gwynn with power,” said Phillies hitting coach Hal McRae in 1999.

“Bobby was way ahead of his time [with] regards to working pitchers,” said his former manager Larry Bowa when presenting him for induction into the Phillies Wall of Fame in 2019. “In an era when guys were swinging for the fences, Bobby never strayed from his game. Because of his speed, a walk would turn into a double. He was cool under pressure, and always in control of his at-bats. He was the best combination of power, speed, and patience at the plate.” Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Houston Astros.

Batters

The outfield, the DH, and the catcher from the 2017 championship team are long gone, yet the Astros have carried on with nary a regret. Joining them on the ex-Astro list is the team’s former phenom, Carlos Correa. One could hardly call him a bust by any stretch of the imagination, but his injury history appears to have been enough to scare Houston off making a decade-long bet on him. The franchise has moved on from stars before, and it will again. But will it pay a serious short-term hit in the win department?

Honestly? No. Now, there’s no denying that a downgrade at shortstop is inevitable. But given Correa’s injury history, you can’t really pencil him in for 150 games. It was likely that the Plan B’s would get at least some playing time, and if 2022 was anything like 2017–19, that time could be substantial. ZiPS projects that we’re talking about a three-win hit for Houston. When you have a shortstop prospect slugging .600 in Triple-A, as Jeremy Peña just missed doing in 2021, it’s hard not to use that player! The more Peña and the less Aledmys Díaz that Houston gets, the better the post-Correa era will feel at the start.

Elsewhere, the Astros don’t really have much in the way of surprises. They have some dizzying highs in the trio of Alex Bregman, Kyle Tucker, and Yordan Alvarez, and they avoid being awful anywhere. Even the catcher projections aren’t really that lousy. With catcher defense extremely tricky to quantify, I’m certainly open to the idea that Martín Maldonado’s defense is better than our crude numbers have captured.

As usual, I have zero faith in Yuli Gurriel’s projection. He’ll eventually suffer age-related decline, but I don’t know if it’ll be at 38 or 48 or 58. I’m not sure that when the sun enters its red giant phase, the last vestige of life on Earth isn’t going to be Yuli still hitting .290.
Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2018 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Content warning: This piece contains details about alleged domestic violence and sexual harassment. The content may be difficult to read and emotionally upsetting.

In the eyes of many, Omar Vizquel was the successor to Ozzie Smith when it came to dazzling defense. Thanks to the increased prevalence of highlight footage on the internet and on cable shows such as ESPN’s SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight, the diminutive Venezuelan shortstop’s barehanded grabs, diving stops, and daily acrobatics were seen by far more viewers than Smith’s ever were. Vizquel made up for having a less-than-prototypically-strong arm with incredibly soft hands and a knack for advantageous positioning. Such was the perception of his prowess at the position that he took home 11 Gold Gloves, more than any shortstop this side of Smith, who won 13.

Vizquel’s offense was at least superficially akin to Smith’s: He was a singles-slapping switch-hitter in lineups full of bigger bats and, at his best, a capable table-setter who got on base often enough to score 80, 90, or even 100 runs in some seasons. His ability to move the runner over with a sacrifice bunt or a productive out delighted purists, and he could steal a base, too. While he lacked power, he dealt in volume, piling up more hits (2,877) than all but four players who spent the majority of their careers at shortstop and are now in the Hall of Fame: Derek Jeter (3,465), Honus Wagner (3,420), Cal Ripken Jr. (3,184), and Robin Yount (3,142). Vizquel is second only to Jeter using the strict as-shortstop splits, which we don’t have for Wagner (though we do know the Flying Dutchman spent 31% of his defensive innings at other positions). During his 11-year run in Cleveland (1994–2004), Vizquel helped his team to six playoff appearances and two pennants. Read the rest of this entry »

Logan Davidson struggled to find himself in 2021. Two years after being drafted 29th overall by the Oakland A’s out of Clemson University, the 23-year-old shortstop slashed a paltry .212/.307/.313 with 155 strikeouts in 515 plate appearances with the Double-A Midland RockHounds. Continuity proved elusive. In almost chameleon-like fashion, Davidson went back to the drawing board time and again over the course of the season.

His quest to discover a productive stroke continued in the Arizona Fall League, where he put up numbers far more pleasing to the eye. Playing for the Mesa Solar Sox, Davidson logged a .274/.400/.411 slash line in 90 plate appearances. Promising as that was, punch-outs remained a problem. The switch-hitting infielder went down on strikes 33 times.

In a refreshingly candid interview during the penultimate week of the Arizona Fall League season, Davidson — No. 24 on our newly-released Oakland A’s Top Prospects list — discussed his 2021 struggles.

———

David Laurila: To start, how do you identify as a hitter?

Logan Davidson: “I’d say I’m gap-to-gap, a line-drive guy who is going to run into some power. I’m working on the strikeouts. Obviously, I’m a pretty big swing-and-miss guy right now. I’m trying to get a solid approach, seeing balls up and hitting pitches that I’m supposed to hit, and taking pitches you’re supposed to take. That’s pretty much it: a gap-to-gap guy who is working on cutting down the strikeouts.”

Laurila: Why have there been so many strikeouts? Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Oakland Athletics. 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. Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Cincinnati Reds.

Batters

The offense’s resurgence from 13th in the National League in runs scored in 2020 to fourth in ’21 was one of the big reasons the Reds stubbornly hung on to the edge of the Wild Card race for most of the second half of the season. Jonathan India not only survived in the majors but thrived, winning the Rookie of the Year award with a borderline star season and providing the team a significant boost. Tyler Stephenson wasn’t too far from a Rookie of the Year vote of his own, at least on my ballot. Joey Votto pushed back Father Time yet again, at least for the one season, and Nick Castellanos hit like the Reds expected him to when they signed him. Kyle Farmer was hardly a great shortstop, but the position would have been an even worse problem if Cincy’s wild plan to make the former backup catcher their shortstop had not worked out acceptably. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Few players have ever been more central to the Phillies than Jimmy Rollins. In fact, with the exception of Mike Schmidt, no player spent more time in a Phillies’ uniform than Rollins, and even counting the Hall of Fame third baseman, none collected more hits or stole more bases. The pint-sized shortstop — 5-foot-7, 175 pounds according to Baseball Reference — spent 15 of his 17 major league seasons with Philadelphia, where he was at the center of the team’s return to contention following a slide into irrelevance at the outset of the Wild Card era.

Rollins was the starting shortstop on the Phillies’ five straight NL East champions from 2007-11, including their ’08 World Series winning squad — just the second in franchise history — and ’09 pennant winners. A slick fielder who offered speed and pop from both sides of the plate atop the lineup, he garnered the nickname “J-Roll” from legendary Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas. J-Roll projected a confidence that bordered on cockiness, and carried himself with a swagger. “We’re the team to beat,” he said at the outset of the 2007 season, all but thumbing his nose at the reigning NL East champion Mets, who had outdistanced the Phillies by 12 games. Read the rest of this entry »

There might not have been a bigger surprise performer in 2021 than Cedric Mullins. With just over 400 plate appearances spread across parts of three years prior, he had put up a cumulative 72 wRC+ and accumulated -0.4 WAR; this season, he pushed his wRC+ up to 136 and posted 5.3 WAR, the 14th highest mark among all position players. He also became just the 11th player to reach 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases in a single season over the last decade.

The catalyst for his breakout season was quite simple: Mullins quit switch-hitting and began batting exclusively from the left side. That discussion had begun all the way back in 2018, his debut season, when then-Orioles manager Buck Showalter suggested it to him. After struggling to establish himself in the majors for three seasons, he finally decided to rely on his natural swing during the offseason. “It was getting difficult to try and create two different swings,” he told MASN’s Steve Melewski in March. “I know my left-side is my natural side, so trying to develop my right-handed swing at the highest level was challenging.”

Switch-hitting has always been a scarce skill, but the number of players who can swing both ways has dwindled in recent years. In 2021, just 17 qualified batters (13.1%) were switch-hitters, right in line with the league-wide average over the last decade. Compare that to the decade between 1986 and ’95 (excluding the strike-shortened 1994 season), when more than one in five qualified batters (21.1%) hit from both sides, with a peak of 24.8% in ’89. With modern baseball strategy so heavily emphasizing the platoon advantage, it’s surprising to see so few switch-hitters these days. Giving up that advantage in every at-bat is a radical decision, and there’s barely any precedent for it.

The number of players who have dropped switch-hitting after making their major league debuts is tiny. J.T. Snow did it in 1999, halfway through his career. So did Orlando Merced in 1996. Shane Victorino flip-flopped between switch-hitting and batting right-handed after injuries forced him to give up left-handed batting at various points during his career. More recently, Tucker Barnhart gave up switch-hitting in 2019. But those previous examples were all players who had already established themselves in the majors. Mullins could have seriously damaged his chances of having a productive major league career if his decision went wrong.
Read the rest of this entry »