These are notes on prospects from Brendan Gawlowski. Read previous installments of the DPN here.

Across the country and around the world, it’s the Daily Prospect Notes.

Graham Ashcraft, RHP, Cincinnati Reds
Level & Affiliate: Double-A Chattanooga Age: 23 Org Rank: 22 FV: 40

A threat to walk everyone in the ballpark in college, Ashcraft seemed like a surefire reliever after the Reds drafted him in the sixth round of the 2019 draft. But a weird thing happened between then and now: He found a way to throw strikes, started going deeper in games, and did both while still missing bats. Read the rest of this entry »

Nick Plummer was looking like a bust. Drafted 23rd overall by the St. Louis Cardinals in 2015 out of a Detroit-area high school, the left-handed-hitting outfielder had a ho-hum debut summer, then he injured a wrist and missed what would have been his first full professional season. His next three years weren’t particularly fruitful either. Playing at the lower levels of the minors, Plummer put up a .194/.338/.309 slash line while fanning at a 32.3% clip. Add in last year’s lost-to-the-pandemic season, and the 24-year-old former first-round pick came into the current campaign with his stock having plummeted, and with his future very much in doubt.

That doubt is slowly dissipating. Given an opportunity to redeem himself at Double-A Springfield, Plummer has flourished to the tune of .307/.414/.507 line with 10 home runs in 268 plate appearances. Not coincidentally, his strikeout rate has improved to a still-too-high, yet much-more-palatable, 27.1%.

Earlier this season I asked the Brother Rice High School product — DJ LeMahieu is a fellow alumnus — about his previous struggles.

“Everybody’s journey is different,” responded Plummer. “That goes for baseball, just as it does for life. I think the biggest thing that’s helped me turn it around this year is having a mindset of learning from my past — my past failures — and applying the 1,200-1,300 at-bats I’d accumulated so far in the minor leagues. I’m fortunate to be with one of the best organizations in baseball. The Cardinals have continued to invest in me, and I’ve continued to invest in myself.” Read the rest of this entry »

There has been a lot of discussion of shortstops in 2021 and rightfully so. Fernando Tatis Jr. is must see TV and currently third among qualified position players in WAR. During the offseason Francisco Lindor was traded to the Mets, who quickly signed him to a 10-year, $341 million extension. That deal set the stage for rampant conjecture as to the ceiling for possible contracts for the remaining top shortstops under 30 who look like they will test the free agent market for the first time this winter: Javier Báez, Carlos Correa, Corey Seager and Trevor Story. As if that wasn’t enough drama, two of those players (Báez and Story) are currently playing on teams that will be sellers over the next week and a half, adding an element of trade speculation to a conversation that was already quite compelling. But as these louder storylines dominate the conversation this season, Trea Turner is quietly building on his improvements from the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign. The 28-year-old looks like he may be putting together a career year. Turner won’t be a free agent until 2023 and the fourth-place Nationals don’t look like contenders this season, but it’s still worth taking a closer look at how Turner is putting it all together in 2021.

Turner celebrated his birthday three weeks ago by hitting for the third cycle of his career. As I was working on this piece, he started another game with a triple and a home run before being pulled in the later innings when it was clear the Nationals did not need him to finish their 18-1 rout of the Marlins. He had to settle for a 2-for-4 night with four RBI. Read the rest of this entry »

Please note, this posting contains two positions.

Position: Baseball Operations Analyst

Location: Chicago, IL

Description:
The Chicago White Sox seek a passionate, knowledgeable, and dedicated individual with a desire to work in Baseball Operations. The position will focus primarily on the numerical methods that drive Baseball Analytics, however there will be additional exposure to all facets of baseball operations. This position will report to the Director of Baseball Analytics. Read the rest of this entry »

For the full introduction to the Replacement-Level Killers series, follow the link above. While still focusing upon teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — this year I have incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a look.

As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly when taken in the context of the rest of their roster. I don’t expect every team to go out and track down an upgrade before the July 30 deadline, and in this two-position batch in particular, I don’t get the sense that any of these teams have these positions atop their shopping lists. With catchers in particular, framing and the less-quantifiable aspects of knowing a pitching staff make it easier for teams to talk themselves out of changing things up unless an injury situation has compromised their depth.

Note that all individual stats in this article are through July 18, but the won-loss records and Playoff Odds include games of July 19. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series returned last month after being on hiatus due to the pandemic. Each week, we’ll hear from three pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features a southpaw, Damon Jones, and a pair of right-handers, Zach McCambley and Josh Staumont, on their curveballs and sliders.

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Damon Jones, Philadelphia Phillies prospect

“My slider is kind of seam-shifted. I get a lot of horizontal — something like 23 inches, which is pretty crazy — and I kind of picked it up off a Pitching Ninja video. It was Trevor Bauer’s grip, but I changed it up a little bit. It was more my thumb. I left the fingers how he had them, but he touches his thumb and I kind of hook it on the bottom part of the horseshoe. I think that helps the ball come out of my hand a little bit later. Watching the video, he wanted to get it out early and let it spin. I want it to be more of a late, back-foot pitch. The more I can make it look like a fastball the better, and it’s been pretty similar for me in terms of release point, release height, and all that.

“This was in 2019 — I made the jump from High-A to Triple-A that year — and it was shortly after spring training. After my first or second start in High-A, I was toying with stuff, saw the grip, and started throwing it. The guy on the Rapsodo was like, ‘Can you repeat that pitch? Can you do it again?’

“Then, when I got to Double-A, Tommy Hunter was rehabbing with us. He told me, ‘It’s like an Andrew Miller type of slider, it’s just wipeout.’ I was like, ‘Well, he’s got a lot of showtime and has seen a lot of guys with good sliders, and he’s comparing me to the guy Andrew Miller was when he was in his prime.’ I was like, ‘I’ll take that.’ Read the rest of this entry »

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think about Aaron Bummer? It’s an odd question I know. For many, the answer might not be a whole lot besides the fact that he has an amusing name. He is a reliever, after all; given his role, he’s not the most recognizable player. For the initiated, however, the first quality that comes to mind at the mere mention of Bummer is likely his supreme ability to generate groundballs. Bummer’s has been in the majors since 2017; in five seasons, he has posted groundball rates of 54.4%, 61.2%, 72.1%, 68.4% (I will note he only threw 9.1 innings in 2020), and 73.7%. Over that time frame, he ranks fourth in groundball rate among all pitchers who have tossed at least 50 innings.

The leading culprit behind his prolific groundball rates is his sinker. Sinkers have sharp downward movement that fade away from a pitcher’s glove-side. The downward movement, coupled with the pitch generally being lower in the zone, prevents hitters from squaring up the ball, instead impacting the upper-half, driving the ball into the dirt. This season, the average groundball rate for a sinker sits at 56.4% compared to 41.7% for all other pitch types. And Bummer has a great sinker, one that inspired a post from Devan Fink on these very pages last February. Devan demonstrated with a tidy model that Bummer’s sinker is an elite blend of velocity and arm-side and vertical movement, the perfect recipe for inducing piles of groundballs from the opposition. And Bummer’s sinker has remained excellent; in 2021, the pitch has a laughable 82.4% groundball rate. The pitch is so effective that it inspired its own profile from The Athletic’s James Fegan, which included an amusing story of Bummer picking up the pitch after watching Zack Britton pitch while the former dined at an Applebee’s.

Overall, Bummer has been an excellent reliever throughout his major league career. The White Sox signed him to a five-year contract prior to the 2020 season, with two club options tacked on to the end that can keep him on the South Side until 2026. Given the volatility of relievers, that’s quite the endorsement of Bummer’s skills and I find it difficult to fault Chicago for doing so. He has a career 3.23 ERA, a figure 26% better than league average when you consider the difficult confines of his home park. The park-adjusted FIP is just as impressive, sitting at 23% better than league average over 161.2 career innings. Read the rest of this entry »

A surprisingly deep group of free-agent pitchers this winter became a little less so over the weekend, as Lance Lynn agreed to a two-year extension with the White Sox. The deal guarantees at least $38 million for the veteran hurler through the 2023 season and will pay him $18.5 million in each of ’22 and ’23, with the Sox holding an option for ’24 worth $18 million and a $1 million buyout.

If you happened to surf over to our in-house depth charts, you would find the White Sox only looking up at the Mets when it comes to pitching, and given that six of the 10 Mets listed are currently out with injuries, I’d prefer to have Chicago’s starting five if I’m the benevolent dictator of a contending team. The rotation is currently projected to finish with 19.3 WAR, topping the majors and enough to give the Sox one of the top 20 rotations since we survived the Y2K bug. That’s an impressive accomplishment considering that they’re currently projected to finish right around 900 innings, about a hundred short of the rest of that top 20. And as there are good reasons to think the contending years are just starting, Chicago has an obvious interest in keeping such a high-performing group together for years to come; Carlos Rodón is now the team’s only significant free agent this offseason.

It’s been an impressive reversal of fortune for Lynn, who didn’t attract a ton of interest in his first two go-arounds in free agency. After posting a 4.82 FIP in 2017 upon returning from Tommy John surgery, he only fetched a one-year contract with the Twins, but despite seeing his walks and ERA balloon to career-worsts in ’18, he closed a three-year pact with the Rangers, albeit with a pay cut. Ranking fifth in the AL in pitching WAR this season and only 1 2/3 innings shy of qualifying for the AL ERA title, he looks like a good bet to pick up Cy Young votes for his third consecutive season.

Could Lynn have made more in free agency? It’s a more complicated question than you think. It’s also one that he had little interest in testing.

“When you start getting older in this game, you realize that where you want to play and where you want to be and what kind of organization you want to be a part of weighs a lot,” he said Saturday. “Over the first half of the season, just being able to see how everybody goes about their business here, the group that’s here and the group that’s going to be here for the next couple of years, it seemed like a pretty easy fit.

It’s not surprising to see Lynn go for stability over uncertainty. By all accounts, Chicago has been a terrific fit for him, and he’s become a favorite of the fanbase. The White Sox would have been quite content to start Dane Dunning; last December’s swap was about them wanting Lynn rather than not wanting Dunning.

The ZiPS projections liked Lynn to have a gentle decline through his 30s, but not one that was likely to merit a gigantic payday. The aging curve for pitchers tends to be more attrition-based than for hitters, but a long-term deal for Lynn would start to get him into his late 30s, where you do start seeing a significant dropoff in skills along with the playing time. ZiPS would have given him a longer-term deal — four years, $84 million — but the $45.5 million projection for the next two years is not a galaxy apart from his $38 million guarantee.

Recent free-agent classes have been relatively shallow when it comes to pitching talent, but this autumn’s harvest looks far more bountiful. ZiPS projects eight pending free-agent pitchers —  Max Scherzer, Clayton Kershaw, Justin Verlander, Kevin Gausman, Zack Greinke, Eduardo Rodriguez, Robbie Ray, and Marcus Stroman — to be worth at least three wins in the first years of their new deals, more than the seven it did for the previous two offseasons combined. There are some big names in that group, including several veterans also looking for two-or-three year deals. That also doesn’t include Noah Syndergaard, a pitcher who retains dizzying upside, and some interesting injury gambles in Corey Kluber and James Paxton. Given some of the name brand stars available, there was at least some risk Lynn ended up once again being a team’s consolation signing.

The league’s finances have to be considered as well. While the bottom line is certainly better than the Dickensian pauper status the owners usually suggest, it’s not at all clear that there are going to be a lot of teams hungry to spend this go-around. The vast majority of teams now appear to consider baseball’s de facto soft salary cap as if it were a harder one. On top of that, the collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the MLBPA expires on December 1, and unless the negotiations go shockingly smoothly, those talks will cast a shadow over baseball that’s likely to discourage teams from spending.

Whether or not he left money on the table, Lynn got a reasonable offer to stay on the team he wants to play for. The White Sox can now turn to the short-term need of picking up another bat and/or a second baseman for the season’s concluding chapters.

Shohei Ohtani is a unicorn in terms of two-way talent, but he’s not the only player who has shown an ability to provide value on both sides of the ball. And you don’t need to go back as far as Babe Ruth or Negro Leagues legend Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe to find examples. It’s not that long ago that Mike Hampton was putting up healthy offensive numbers in the DH-less National League, and Michael Lorenzen was pinch-hitting and playing the outfield for the Reds just two years ago. There is also Brendan McKay — he of the repaired labrum — who would presumably welcome a return to two-way play if the Rays were to give him that opportunity.

Cade Cavalli could conceivably handle his own as an Ohtani-lite. The top pitching prospect in the Washington Nationals system performed solely on the mound in his junior year at the University of Oklahoma, but he was both a pitcher and a corner infielder in the two years prior. And he raked. Cavalli’s sophomore numbers with the Sooners included a .319/.393/.611 slash line with five doubles, a pair of triples, and four home runs in 88 plate appearances. Including his freshman output, the Tulsa native went deep 10 times as a collegian.

I asked Cavalli for his thoughts on two-way players in MLB this past Friday.

“It takes a special person to be able to do that,” said Cavalli, who pitched in the Futures Game and is currently with the Double-A Harrisburg Senators. “There’s a lot that goes on; it’s not just playing in the game every single day. There’s early work, hitting, you’ve got your conditioning as a pitcher, you’ve got position work. It can take a toll on someone’s body. Read the rest of this entry »

Adam Frazier is a Pittsburgh Pirate. He’s also been good, which means contending teams will look to acquire him at the trade deadline. What organization wouldn’t want an above-average defender who’s also hitting .330/.397/.463? To give that another spin, his 137 wRC+ is third-best among second basemen with 300 or more plate appearances, right behind Max Muncy and Jose Altuve.

But you might have visited his FanGraphs page, scrolled to the numbers, and seen a red flag – that Frazier’s .366 BABIP is abnormal, considering his career before this season. That’s not all: There are significant differences between his actual stats and Baseball Savant’s expected stats, such as slugging percentage and batting average. He’s hit just four barrels so far, none of them surpassing the 110 mph mark.

So yes, it does seem like Frazier is biting off more than he can chew. But I think we can do better than the boy who cried regression because, well, what if he’s doing something new that’s contributing to his higher BABIP? The second baseman has always been one to make consistent contact while minimizing whiffs, so it’s plausible he’s unlocked a new gear. Back in May, I broke down Freddie Freeman’s uncharacteristically low BABIP by batted ball type, so let’s do the same for Frazier. Where is he getting his money’s worth? And compared to the league average, where is he falling behind?

These numbers are from our Splits Leaderboards, and they tell an intriguing story. Frazier is worse than average when it comes to line drives, which might be because of his middling power – a weak liner is usually an automatic out. Despite this, he’s making up for lost production via grounders and… fly balls? That’s odd. Somehow, Frazier’s fly balls aren’t leaving the ballpark or being caught by outfielders. Instead, they’re landing for hits. Read the rest of this entry »