Shin-Soo Choo’s seven-year contract with the Rangers didn’t end the way anyone wanted it to, either in the grand scheme or the specifics. In a season already shortened by the COVID-19 pandemic, he missed additional time due to oblique and calf strains, then sprained his right hand on September 7. He recovered in time to return to the lineup for the season’s final game, beat out a bunt to lead off the home half of the first inning… and then sprained his left ankle tripping over first base. D’oh!

Alas, that might have been the final play of Choo’s major league career. Though the 38-year-old outfielder/DH sought a contract for the 2021 season and had interest from as many as eight teams (some of them contenders), earlier this week he agreed to return to his native South Korea via a one-year deal with the SK Wyverns of the Korea Baseball Organization. “I want to play in Korea because I want to play in front of my parents and I want to give back to Korean fans,” he told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Jeff Wilson.

Read the rest of this entry »

DL Hall isn’t No. 83 on our 2021 Top 100 Prospects list because of his command. Then again, he sort of is. With a better grasp of the strike zone than he’s shown, the 22-year-old left-hander would be ranked much higher. Since being drafted 21st overall by the Baltimore Orioles in 2017, Hall has walked just over five batters per nine innings.

But then there’s the power arsenal. These words, written by Eric Longenhagen, help explain why the 6-foot-2, 200-pound Hall has a chance to one day dominate hitters at the highest level:

“Ultra-competitive, athletic southpaws with this kind of stuff are very rare. Here’s the list of lefty big league starters who throw harder than Hall, who averaged 94.9 mph on his fastball in 2019: Jesús Luzardo, Blake Snell. That’s it.”

———

David Laurila: Lets start with something Eric Longenhagen wrote in your prospect profile. Is “ultra-competitive” a good way to describe you?

DL Hall: “I do think that I’m a super-competitive guy. Everybody that steps in the box, I try to own. I like winning, and I hate losing.”

Laurila: Do you hate losing to the extent that it actually bothers you?

Hall: “That’s a tough question. It definitely bothers me, but I’ve also learned how to learn from it, if that makes sense. I learn from losses now, versus dwelling on them.” Read the rest of this entry »

Way back in mid-November, when the free agent market was still moving at a glacial pace, the Braves signed Drew Smyly to a one-year deal worth $11 million. After years of injury issues, Smyly finally appeared to be (relatively) healthy in 2020. He increased the velocity on each of his pitches by 2.6 mph, helping him post the highest strikeout rate and lowest FIP of his career, though it came in just 26.1 innings.

Eleven million dollars might seem like a bit much for an injury-prone starter who showed the briefest glimpse of a breakout last year, at least on a relative basis. Corey Kluber signed for $11 million; Garrett Richards got $10 million; and James Paxton signed for $8.5 million. If healthy, each of those other starters likely has more upside than Smyly. Still, Atlanta was willing to take the chance in the hopes that Smyly’s velocity holds and portends a bigger breakout in 2021.

Fast forward a few months and Atlanta is again betting on another injury-prone player who had a mini-resurgence in 2020. This time around the money risked is even lower. On Sunday, the Braves brought in Jake Lamb on a one-year, non-guaranteed, major league deal worth $1 million.

Since 2017, Lamb has played in just 165 games, with a major shoulder injury and a quad injury sidelining him for much of the ’18 and ’19 seasons, respectively. During those two years, his wRC+ hovered right around 78 and the power he displayed during his breakout seasons in 2016 and ’17 was glaringly absent. For the first 18 games of the 2020 season, the same struggles persisted. After limping to just a 14 wRC+ in 50 plate appearances, the Diamondbacks cut him loose on September 10. Five days later, he signed with the Athletics after Matt Chapman went down with a season-ending hip injury. With the A’s, Lamb looked completely rejuvenated, slugging three home runs in 13 games and posting a 141 wRC+.

Anyone can look good over a 13-game stretch, but for Lamb, it was a glimpse at what could be if his body was healthy again. His average exit velocity was right in line with what he had posted in years past, over half the balls he put in play came off the bat at 95 mph or higher, and his barrel rate was 10.8% in Oakland. But even though his power returned in this tiny sample, the excellent plate discipline skills he’s shown in the past disappeared.

It’s nearly impossible to glean anything from Lamb’s performance in Oakland, let alone take anything away from the combined 99 plate appearances between the A’s and the Diamondbacks. But the Braves felt like they had a need on their roster and were confident enough in Lamb’s health to bring him in for spring training. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Pittsburgh Pirates. 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. Each blurb ends with an indication of where the player played in 2020, which in turn likely informed the changes to their report if there were any. 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.

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley preview the 2021 Athletics with Alex Coffey of The Athletic and the 2021 Phillies (30:13) with Matt Gelb of The Athletic.

Audio intro: The Divine Comedy, "Come Home Billy Bird"
Audio interstitial: George Harrison, "Stuck Inside a Cloud"
Audio outro: The Apples in Stereo, "Play Tough"

Link to Alex on Beane
Link to Alex on players’ reactions to Semien leaving
Link to Ken Rosenthal on Semien’s exit
Link to Alex on Oakland’s offseason and finances
Link to Alex on the 1955 Mays/Aaron exhibition team
Link to Sam on the Phillies’ rebuild
Link to Matt on the Phillies’ revamped player dev
Link to Matt on the Phillies’ rebuilt bullpen
Link to Matt on Kingery
Link to Matt on Fuld’s promotion
Link to Matt on Dombrowski’s front office
Link to Matt on Harper and the Phillies’ offseason
Link to R.J. Anderson on Mathis
Link to Matt on the Phillies’ outfield failures
Link to Matt on the Phillies’ new roster

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“Already a physical presence as a teenager, Veen has big power potential and a pretty left-handed swing to go with a plus arm that should serve him well in right field.”

Those words, written by Eric Longenhagen, lead Zac Veen’s profile in our recently-released 2021 Top 100 Prospects list. The 19-year-old outfielder came in at No. 70, which is especially impressive when you consider that he’s yet to play a game — Fall Instructional League notwithstanding — at the professional level. A Port Orange, Florida native, Veen was drafted ninth overall last year by the Colorado Rockies.

Another quote from Longenhagen’s writeup bears noting: “His in-the-box actions are quiet and smooth up until the moment he decides to unleash hell on the baseball.” In short, the 6-foot-5, 210-pound Veen profiles as a middle-of-the-order slugger if he approaches his full potential.

———

David Laurila: I’ll start with a question I’ve asked several hitters over the years: Do you see hitting as more of an art, or more of a science?

Zac Veen: “For me, it’s more of an art. I’m more of a feel hitter and don’t really get into a lot of the analytics. Guys who look at a lot of video… I’d say it’s more of a science to them, but I like to stay away from a lot of that stuff. It can be helpful, but for the most part I’m more of a feel, see how the ball comes off the bat kind of guy.”

Laurila: It’s pretty common for young hitters to go into a cage and use technology when working to fine-tune their swings. Have you done that at all?

Veen: “I’ve tried it, my junior year of high school, but that caused me to overthink things a little bit. I’d take a really good swing, then I’d look at the video and be like, ‘Oh, wow, I can do this differently,’ instead of just being happy with a line drive to centerfield. That’s not something I want to do. When I take a good swing, I want to just be happy with it, and not be too picky about anything.”

Laurila: Is the swing you have right now, at age 19, essentially the same swing you had a few years ago, or has it evolved? Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re left-handed and can throw strikes, you have a chance to pitch forever. That appears to be Oliver Pérez’s plan. The 39-year-old southpaw agreed to a minor league deal with Cleveland last week, returning to the fold of the team for whom he’s pitched in the last three seasons. His contract includes an invitation to spring training, a clear path to being the bullpen’s top (and perhaps only) lefty, as well as appearance-based incentives.

Speaking from experience, if you want to catch casual baseball fans off guard, tell them that Pérez is still kicking around the majors. Particularly in New York, where he occasionally excited and often exasperated fans during his four-and-a-half year run with the Mets from 2006-10, the notion that he’s still plying his craft a decade and a half after his near-heroic effort in Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS went for naught can get quite a reaction. “Get the —- out of here,” is the usual response.

It’s been quite a journey for Pérez, who debuted in the majors with the Padres in 2002, was traded to the Pirates in the Jason Bay–Brian Giles blockbuster about 14 months later, and spent a few seasons in Pittsburgh, most notably striking out 239 batters in 196 innings at age 22, a point at which the sky appeared to be the limit. Dealt to the Mets in the Xavier Nady deal in 2006 — seriously, his transaction log is a chance to Remember Some Guys — he generally pitched well before patellar tendinitis turned his three-year, $36 million return via free agency into a sub-replacement level disaster that culminated with his being released in March 2011 while being owed $12 million. Down but not out, he remade himself as a reliever, evolved into a respected elder statesman, and is now heading into his 10th major league season as a lefty specialist, and his 19th overall, the most by any Mexican-born player. In that second life, he spent time with the Mariners, Diamondbacks, Astros and Nationals — and additionally toiled for the Reds in spring training and the Yankees in exotic Scranton/Wilkes-Barre — before resurfacing in Cleveland in mid-2018.

Since then, Pérez has had his year-to-year ups and downs, but he’s been generally quite effective, pitching to a 2.67 ERA and 2.83 FIP in 91 innings while striking out 28.8% of hitters and holding batters to a .256 xwOBA, the majors’ fourth-lowest mark among lefties who’ve thrown at least 500 pitches in that span, behind only José Castillo, Josh Hader, and Aroldis Chapman. Read the rest of this entry »

Christian Yelich had a rough 2020. That’s true of all of us, of course — global pandemics have that effect. You might even argue that his year wasn’t so bad in the grand scheme of things. He got paid $4.6 million dollars, didn’t suffer any catastrophic injuries, and made the playoffs. On the baseball field, however, he had his worst year as a big leaguer. Was it small sample theater, or something more worrisome? Let’s dig into his brief season and hunt for signs.

The first thing that jumps out at me when looking at Yelich’s 247 plate appearances is the strikeouts. The magic of his game has always been in his ability to smash the ball — increasingly into the air as time has gone on — without disastrous contact numbers. His previous high for strikeout rate was 24.2%, as a rookie in 2013. Since then, he’d consistently kept that rate around 20% while incrementally improving his quality of contact every year. Voila — an MVP.

Let’s dig in a little more, because strikeout rate is the composite result of many inputs. First, there’s swinging and missing. Yelich has historically lived around league average when it comes to connecting on swings. Last year? Not so much:

Yes, it’s a small sample. But Yelich swung at 381 pitches in 2020, enough that we can’t completely dismiss it. He swung at 112 pitches out of the zone, again enough to worry. And let me tell you, you don’t want to be near the top of this list:

There are good hitters here, sure. The ones who are doing well are doing so on the back of their power on contact, though, and there are no MVP candidates on the list. If you’re missing that often when you chase, you’ll be striking out a ton, likely too much to make up for it elsewhere. Read the rest of this entry »

Two days after pitchers and catchers officially reported to spring training, the Mets augmented their rotation — which they’d already upgraded significantly this winter — by landing one of the top remaining free agents, Taijuan Walker. The 28-year-old righty agreed to a two-year, $20 million deal that carries a player option for a third year, making him just the fourth free agent starter this winter to secure a multiyear contract.

A former supplemental first-round pick (2010) and consensus top-20 prospect (2012-14) while with the Mariners, Walker has been beset by injuries for most of his major league career. Shoulder woes wiped out much of his 2014 season, while ankle, foot, and blister problems limited him to an average of 27 starts from 2015-17 with Seattle (the first two of those seasons) and Arizona. He made just three starts in 2018 before needing Tommy John surgery, and then sprained his shoulder capsule in May ’19 while rehabbing; he threw a single inning that year in a start on the final day of the season.

Given that litany, it rated as quite the pleasant surprise that Walker was healthy enough to make 11 starts totaling 53 innings in 2020; he did that while splitting his season between a return to the Mariners and an August 27 trade to the Blue Jays. His 2.70 ERA was outstanding, 38% better than league average; after posting a 4.00 mark through his five starts with Seattle, he delivered a 1.37 mark in six starts for the Blue Jays, who won five of those six games while qualifying for the expanded playoffs, though he did not get a chance to pitch in the Wild Card Series.

Alas, that sterling ERA was something of a mirage. Not only did it conceal seven unearned runs, for a still-respectable RA-9 of 3.88, but his 4.56 FIP was actually six percent worse than league average. Relative to the major league averages for starting pitchers, both Walker’s 22.2% strikeout rate and 8.4% walk rate were slightly subpar, while his 1.35 homers per nine, for as gaudy as it was, was slightly better than average.

Statcast-wise, Walker’s 88.4 mph average exit velocity and 7.2% barrel rate were both similarly middling, ranking in the 50th and 48th percentiles, respectively. His 32.9% hard-hit rate was up in the 74th percentile, his .325 xwOBA down in the 29th percentile. Just as his 1.86 gap between his ERA and FIP placed him second among the 71 pitchers with at least 50 innings last year, his 39-point gap between his xwOBA and .286 wOBA placed him in the 91st percentile among pitchers who threw at least 500 pitches last year, all of which suggests some amount of regression ahead. Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, the Yankees and Brett Gardner came to a one-year, $4 million agreement. The deal includes a player option for 2022 and a team option if Gardner declines it. The contract solidifies the outfielder’s plan to spend his entire career in New York. Nominally, his return had been up in the air: The Yankees declined to exercise his $10 million option last fall and announced that Clint Frazier would be the club’s starting left fielder in 2021. But Gardner wanted to stay in New York, and he was willing to sign on for part-time duty in lieu of other options.

Had Gardner wanted a starting gig, he probably could have found it, as he seems to have plenty left in the tank. Prior to 2020, he had accrued 2.5 WAR or better every year since 2012. Last season, he posted a 110 wRC+ and 0.6 WAR in 49 games, numbers that probably undersell his ability. He got off to a dreadful start, batting just .165/.293/.299 through his first 36 games. In most years, that’s a bad April, but in 2020 that was his batting line when he woke up on September 10. He hit nearly .400 the rest of the way though, and then mashed in October to alleviate concerns that age had eaten into his offensive ability.

On the contrary, Gardner has aged spectacularly well. Just about the only thing that seems to have changed in his 13 years in the majors is the size of his neck, and even that’s been pretty subtle. Last year, Gardner posted a career-best walk rate, and also his highest average exit velocity since Statcast started tracking that metric. He did strike out and whiff more often than normal, but also raised his launch angle; sometimes there’s a bit of a tradeoff there. Perhaps most encouragingly, the Yankees still saw fit to use him in center field several times, and while his wheels may not spin quite as fast these days, he’s still a plus runner. ZiPS projects 1.8 WAR for him in 118 games, which would make him a 2-3 win player in an everyday role. For Aaron Boone, that’s a hell of an option to have on the bench. Read the rest of this entry »