A pivotal series between the two teams atop the AL West kicked off on Tuesday with the Astros beating the A’s to extend their division lead to 4.5 games. It was an unusually shaky start from Chris Bassitt, who allowed six runs and couldn’t escape the fifth inning, but he turned the game over to Oakland’s bullpen with the game knotted at six runs apiece. The combo of J.B. Wendelken and Yusmeiro Petit, though, quickly changed that, allowing two runs in the sixth to put the A’s behind for good.

The A’s have routinely found ways to create value despite a small piggy bank, but the bullpen is probably the biggest concern with the team so far. That’s nothing unusual; most teams in the majors stress over their bullpen. But the A’s are not an ordinary team. During their current three-year streak of going to the playoffs, their bullpen has ranked in the top 10 in WAR each of those seasons and top five overall:

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The White Sox have spent the past two months atop the American League Central despite a lineup that’s been nothing close to whole. On a more or less monthly basis, the team has lost a key member of its starting lineup to the Injured List, beginning with left fielder Eloy Jiménez, who ruptured his left pectoral tendon just before Opening Day, and followed by center fielder Luis Robert, who strained his right hip flexor in early May, and then second baseman Nick Madrigal, who tore a pair of hamstring tendons in early June. Now they’ll be without Yasmani Grandal for at least the next four to six weeks, as the switch-hitting catcher tore a tendon in his left knee.

Grandal was already banged up, having departed last Friday’s game in the middle of the fifth inning due to tightness in his left calf. He didn’t play again until Monday. While batting in the sixth inning against the Twins’ Caleb Thielbar, his left knee buckled as he checked his swing on a high 0-2 fastball. He hobbled out of the batter’s box and was soon rolling on the grass in apparent agony, pounding his fists on the ground before being tended to by the White Sox’s head athletic trainer, James Kruk. Initial hopes that he had merely suffered a cramp were doused by manager Tony LaRussa, who in his postgame comments said that Grandal was on crutches in the clubhouse.

The White Sox called the injury a calf strain at the time, but on Tuesday, Grandal was diagnosed with a torn tendon. “I just think it was the twist he made as he made his swing,” La Russa told reporters. “Something got caught. It didn’t free up. You make a turn on it and it got caught and something popped.” The manager said that Grandal would return to Chicago to get a more complete diagnosis. [Update: Shortly after this was published, the White Sox announced that Grandal underwent surgery to repair the torn tendon, and that they will provide an updated timeline, though doctors “continue to expect Grandal to return during the 2021 regular season.”] Read the rest of this entry »

With just a week until the All-Star break, the Mariners have played their way into the thick of the AL Wild Card race, though our Playoff Odds remain skeptical. Based on their pre-season projections, you might expect their surprising success to be linked to two of their top prospects having made their debuts in mid-May. You’d be partially right. While Jarred Kelenic’s big league career hit a major hiccup, Logan Gilbert has been a solid addition to the Mariners’ beleaguered starting rotation.

Gilbert has made nine starts in the majors so far and has compiled a 4.10 ERA backed by an impressive 3.50 FIP. In an ideal world, the Mariners probably would have liked to see Gilbert develop a bit longer in Triple-A earlier this season, but a bunch of injuries to their rotation forced their hand a bit. James Paxton, Nick Margevicius, and Ljay Newsome are all out for the season. Marco Gonzales missed time with a strained forearm. Justin Dunn has been sidelined recently with some recurring shoulder issues. Yusei Kikuchi has pitched extremely well, and deservedly earned the team’s only spot on the American League All-Star roster, but behind him, the rotation has been rather thin. Gilbert’s success at the highest level stabilized that group at a critical point as they began making their way up the standings. With just over 40 innings pitched under his belt, we now have an adequate amount of data to start comparing his minor-league scouting report to his major league results. Read the rest of this entry »

You’re not as good at your job as Jacob deGrom is at his. That’s no knock on you — I don’t even know who you are, much less have access to your performance reviews or job history. But deGrom is one of the very best, in all of history, at the thing he does. I’m sure you’re a great accountant or whatever, but you just don’t stack up.

There’s good news, though. As it turns out, deGrom is actually relatable at times. Last Thursday, deGrom came into the office and had an absolutely miserable hour of work. He got smacked around the park and gave up three runs before recording three outs. And if one of the best of all time at a job can have an off day, then anyone can.

What does a deGrom off day look like? Like anyone’s, kind of. It starts with being a little sloppy, making a silly mistake that you know, even as you make it, isn’t right. For example, don’t leave a fastball, the second pitch of the game, here:

That’s not where pitches are supposed to go. It was a 100 mph fastball, but middle-middle is still not a good look, and Ehire Adrianza laced it past Dominic Smith and into the corner for a leadoff triple. Two pitches in, nothing was going right for the best pitcher in the game. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Chicago Cubs. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. As there was no minor league season in 2020, there are some instances where no new information was gleaned about a player. Players whose write-ups have not been meaningfully altered begin by telling you so. As always, I’ve leaned more heavily on sources from outside of a given org than those within for reasons of objectivity. Because outside scouts were not allowed at the alternate sites, I’ve primarily focused on data from there, and the context of that data, in my opinion, reduces how meaningful it is. Lastly, in an effort to more clearly indicate relievers’ anticipated roles, you’ll see two reliever designations, both on my lists and on The Board: MIRP, or multi-inning relief pitcher, and SIRP, or single-inning relief pitcher.

For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed, you can click here. For further explanation of Future Value’s merits and drawbacks, read Future Value.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It can be found here.

MLB passed the halfway mark of the 2021 season over the long holiday weekend, providing a convenient spot to take a break, look back over the preseason projections, and hopefully not cringe too much about how the predictions are shaking out. Since this is the big midseason update, I used the full-fat ZiPS model for individual players in addition to the normal depth chart reconfiguring, with all the high-fructose algorithms rather than the leaner one used for daily updates.

Let’s start with the American League standings.

I was making a “do not panic” argument on behalf of the Yankees back when they were 5–10 and some people were digging for their doomsday preparedness kits, and while it might not be time to find where you left those water purification tablets, the situation is bleaker now than it was three months ago. Not that the team is actually worse; New York has been on an 88-win pace in the games since that reference point. But an 88-win pace isn’t nearly enough to get out of an early-season hole in a division where there are three other teams with more than detectable pulses. Even projected to play solid baseball the rest of the season, the Yankees have gone from the favorite to the projected fourth-place team.

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Aroldis Chapman set off some fireworks at Yankee Stadium on July 4, though Mets fans almost certainly enjoyed them more than Yankees fans. For the seventh time in his last 14 outings, Chapman was scored upon, and for the second outing in a row, he served up a game-tying home run that led to a crushing defeat. The 33-year-old fireballer is in the midst of an ill-timed career-worst stretch, one that has dealt the Yankees’ playoff hopes a significant blow.

In the opener of a Subway Series doubleheader necessitated by Friday night’s rainout, Chapman entered in the seventh inning to protect a 5-4 lead. Under normal circumstances, that would have been a no-brainer move, but the decision raised some eyebrows not only given the closer’s recent struggles but the fact that setup man Chad Green had thrown just two pitches to retire Dominic Smith, the only batter he faced, to end the sixth.

Chapman got ahead of Alonso 1-2 via a three-fastball sequence: a 96.7 mph called strike on the outside edge of the plate, a 98.4 mph ball even further outside, and then a 96.9 mph swinging strike above the zone. When he switched to a slider (a pitch that Alonso has feasted upon this year, slugging .681 when he connects) and hung it in the lower middle of the zone (where Alonso has a .796 xSLG), the slugger crushed it, launching it 406 feet into the visitors’ bullpen:

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“We gave Pham up for Renfroe and a damn slapdick prospect?” Blake Snell bemoaned live on Twitch. He was reacting to a trade between the Rays and the Padres that took place during the 2019-20 offseason. Snell’s annoyance caused a bit of controversy – he ended up reaching out to said prospect, Xavier Edwards, to smooth things over – but it also popularized the term, to the point that it’s now part of our baseball lexicon.

What does it mean exactly, though? Urban Dictionary informs us that a “slapdick” is more or less an incompetent person (to put it nicely), but that doesn’t feel quite right in a baseball context. For me and presumably others, a slapdick hitter is someone who doesn’t hit for power and earns his keep by spraying the ball around – someone like Nick Madrigal. Although the Rays currently do not roster Madrigal, they do have this: As of this writing, their hitters collectively have the highest BABIP (.264) and wRC+ (57) on groundballs. A slapdick hitting team.

If your sabermetric senses are tingling, I understand. Due to the fickle nature of BABIP, continued success on grounders is a tenuous endeavor. It’s entirely possible the Rays have gotten lucky over the past few months. But in the spirit of FanGraphs, I began to wonder if there’s an extra dimension to this. The numbers, in fact, do posit an interesting idea – that the Rays have set themselves up for success on grounders, more so than most teams this season. Read the rest of this entry »

On hiatus since the onset of the COVID pandemic, the Learning and Developing a Pitch series returned last week with three pitchers telling the stories behind their sliders. Today, in the second of this year’s installments, we hear from Jake Brentz, Brooks Kriske, and Hirokazu Sawamura on their changeups and splitters.

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Jake Brentz, Kansas City Royals

“I never had a changeup in the minor leagues. I was fastball slider/breaking ball, but I always mixed around my breaking ball. I didn’t really find a breaking ball that worked for me until probably a year and a half, two years ago — not until I got to Triple-A.

“Paul Gibson is our pitching coordinator here with the Royals, and last year at the alternate site he told me, ‘Hey, I would like you to develop a changeup; I think it would be a very valuable pitch for you.’ So I really focused on developing one, throwing it as many times as I could during an outing. We were just playing each other — nothing really mattered — so it was just developing and whatnot. I’d throw it back to back to back, and messed around with grips. I found one that really worked for me, and then worked on it more over the offseason. In spring training I wasn’t throwing it a lot at first, but Mike [Matheny] came to me said, ‘I think your changeup can be a devastating pitch, so we’re going to throw that a lot.’ Over time, I’ve continuing to throw it. Read the rest of this entry »

Matthew Barefoot initially struggled to get a foothold in pro ball. A sixth-round pick by the Houston Astros in 2019 out of Campbell University, the now-23-year-old outfielder slashed a woeful .155/.241/.159 that summer in the New York-Penn League. On the heels of that abysmal debut, and with no 2020 minor league season in which to redeem himself, Barefoot was an afterthought on our 2021 Astros Top Prospect list.

He’s proceeded to make people stand up and take notice. Fueled by mechanical changes and a relaxed mental approach, Barefoot has been one of the best hitters in the Houston system this season. In 190 plate appearances split between the Low-A Fayetteville Woodpeckers and the High-A Asheville Tourists, the former Campbell Fighting Camel has socked a dozen home runs while slashing .329/.384/.618 with a 167 wRC+. Befitting his plus athleticism, he has 15 steals to boot.

Asked what was behind his his boffo numbers, Barefoot alluded to an age-old baseball adage: You can’t think and hit at the same time.

“This year, I’m able to just go out and play and let the results take care of themselves,” explained Barefoot. That’s been a real key for me. In my first season, I was working on a bunch of swing-mechanics stuff, so I really wasn’t competing how I wanted. I was more or less trying to make swing changes in-game, which made it really hard. Mentally, I wasn’t in a great spot every game.”

Organizations often don’t ask newly-drafted players to make meaningful adjustments until they report to instructional league. The initial months are mostly a hands-off acclimation period, allowing a player to simply get his feet wet in pro ball. That wasn’t the case with Barefoot. Read the rest of this entry »