There’s a kind of depressing infamy that comes with being a player on the losing end of a lopsided trade. Players like Glenn Davis, Ernie Broglio, and Larry Andersen are more famous for the players they were traded for than anything they did in their own careers. It’s an unfair bit of notoriety, too; there’s not much cosmic justice involved when Harvey Kuenn, who played in 10 All-Star games, is remembered more for a decision to trade Rocky Colavito he didn’t make rather than being a .314/.360/.426, 23.5 WAR hitter in seven full seasons with the Detroit Tigers. Jim Fregosi is another star who’s a member of this unfortunate club.

In the case of Fregosi, his run as an elite shortstop might actually be a distant third in the ol’ memory banks. If you asked a random baseball fan in 2021 what they know about him, at least one who isn’t an Angels fan, you’d likely get one of two responses: his status as the player traded for Nolan Ryan or his 15-year post-playing career as a manager for four teams, most famously those notorious misfits, the 1993 Philadelphia Phillies. But when Mike Trout blew through the Angels record for the most career WAR for a position player, the previous holder wasn’t Tim Salmon or Brian Downing or Darin Erstad or Bobby Grich. It was Jim Fregosi. Read the rest of this entry »

It has to be a wildly difficult thing, standing on a pitching rubber for the first time after a long absence caused by injury. Really, I’d submit that it is scary to do things in general. But I imagine it would be a special kind of burden to confront your fears on the mound, one of the loneliest places on earth. Sure, the defense is behind you, and the catcher does his best to guide you through; you have teammates and coaches cheering you on from the dugout. But the time has past for any of them to help you align your mechanics, or throw the ball as hard as you once did. You’re on your own, asking your body to do something it wasn’t built for and willing it not to fail you like it did last time.

The first time Jameson Taillon went through this process, he surely hoped he wouldn’t need to do it again. It was April 13, 2016, 955 days removed from the most recent game in which he appeared. Taillon, the second overall pick of the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2010, was coming off a 2013 season in which he tossed 165.2 innings between Double- and Triple-A, and looked sharp enough that a big league call-up early the next season looked like a sure thing. But plans changed when it was announced he would need Tommy John surgery in April 2014, then were disturbed even further when a sports hernia kept him off the mound in 2015 as well. When he returned to a Triple-A mound for Indianapolis in 2016, he was brilliant, holding a 2.04 ERA across 10 starts before finally earning his belated major league debut.

His latest return to the mound after a years-long absence hasn’t been quite as seamless. Now with the Yankees and looking to rebound from another UCL surgery and another 707 days away from pitching in games, he’s made two starts and allowed seven runs in 8.1 innings. He’s walked one, struck out 10, and surrendered three homers. The numbers from someone’s first two games after that long of a break are hardly worth putting under a magnifying glass, though. Right now, it feels more pertinent to celebrate the fact that he’s pitching again at all, and examine the ways in which he’s changed his process to not only try to stay healthy in the future, but also unlock greater success with his new club. Read the rest of this entry »

Joey Votto was on my mind even before I read The Athletic’s latest dive into the Reds first baseman’s singular personality. Chess devotee? Aldous Huxley reader? Mop enthusiast? Add it all to the Hall of Fame plaque alongside the MVP award, six All-Star appearances, and seven on-base percentage leads.

It wasn’t Votto’s quirks that were on my mind, however, so much as it was his lagging production. When he spoke of a changed approach to The Athletic’s C. Trent Rosecrans and Eno Sarris back in February, my ears perked up, and I made a mental note to track his progress.

Which, yikes. Through Monday, the 37-year-old first baseman was hitting .171/.209/.244 for a 24 wRC+, with a lone homer in 43 plate appearances representing his only extra-base hit. Keep hitting like that and he might wind up tending to a @JoeyMoppo Instagram account (please give us a @JoeyMoppo Instagram account) while somebody else plays first base. I kid, of course, but even in the season’s first two weeks, before any individual statistics have begun to stabilize, a 24 wRC+ isn’t where anyone want to be.

Read the rest of this entry »

There might be no player in baseball who is more fun to watch or more talented than Shohei Ohtani. On Tuesday, he beat out what looked like a routine groundball to shortstop for an infield single, with a sprint speed of 29.5 feet per second. Later that game, he drilled a ball 431 feet for a solo home run — one that left his bat at 108.9 mph, already his 11th batted ball of 105 mph or more this season. That’s all business as usual for the two-way star, even as he recovers from a blister that has kept him from making a start as a pitcher since April 4.

That April 4 outing, though, was truly one-of-a-kind. Ohtani put on a show, starting the game and hitting in the No. 2 hole, becoming just the third pitcher to hit for himself in a game with the DH spot available. Though the feat was unique, Ohtani’s appearance in the lineup as a pitcher was not a surprise. He and the Angels thoroughly discussed the strategy in spring training, and he pitched and hit leadoff in a game on March 21. While it was only spring training, Joe Maddon whipped up the coolest lineup card I have ever seen:

Shohei Ohtani pulls double duty today!

?? 1:10pm PT
? Fox Sports Prime Ticket
? @AngelsRadioKLAA pic.twitter.com/qNXDLAkWqo

— Los Angeles Angels (@Angels) March 21, 2021

Read the rest of this entry »

Ross Stripling was the featured guest on episode 905 of FanGraphs Audio, and something he said after we finished recording prompted what you’re about to read. Stripling mentioned that he could have spent the entire segment talking about the impact Clayton Kershaw — his Los Angeles Dodgers teammate from 2016-20 — has had on his career. That bug in my ear, I made it a point to circle back to the 31-year-old Toronto Blue Jays right-hander to explore that subject for print.

We ended up covering more than just that. Along with the matter at hand, Stripling delved into what makes Kershaw Kershaw.

First things first.

“I wouldn’t have had the success that I’ve had in the big leagues if it wasn’t for Clayton’s mentorship,” said Stripling, who has a 3.85 ERA and a 3.91 FIP over 444-and-two-thirds career innings. “I met him in the spring of 2014 — that was my first big-league camp — but ended up tearing my UCL and didn’t get to interact with him nearly as much as I wanted to. But he’s a North Texas guy — Highland Park — and I’m from South Lake. We’re 20 minutes apart, so I knew everything about him.”

That includes Kershaw having committed to Texas A&M, only to sign with the Dodgers out of high school in 2006. Stripling chose a different route. He spent four years at A&M, earned a finance degree, and was drafted and signed by the Dodgers in 2012. It was four years later that Stripling’s baseball education truly began to take root. Read the rest of this entry »

The Cubs dropped their third straight game on Monday night in Milwaukee to fall to 4–6, and even that record feels like a miracle for them. Their crew of low-velo/command types in the rotation haven’t performed well, and the offense has been a non-factor with a miserable .164/.264/.321 line in 312 plate appearances; Chicago ranks last in baseball in all three triple-slash categories. Of the regular starters, just three are over the Mendoza line, only three have an on-base percentage over .300, and only three are slugging over .300. The end result is fewer than three runs per game, and even in a wide-open NL Central, that is just not going to cut it.

There are numerous rough starts to dissect on the North Side. But I want to focus on Javier Báez’s continued struggles, in terms of both approach and contact ability, and a future that grows cloudier by the game.

Read the rest of this entry »

At 4-6, with losses in two straight series, the Cubs are off to a sluggish start, but one player who has impressed thus far has been closer Craig Kimbrel. After struggling for the better part of his first two seasons in the Windy City, he has not only demonstrated dominant form in the early going, he’s actually built upon a rebound that began in the middle of last season, one that suggests his recovery is no passing matter.

Kimbrel, who last pitched on April 8, when he recorded a five-out save against the Pirates — his first outing of more than three outs since Game 3 of the 2018 World Series — has retired all 14 batters he’s faced this season, nine via strikeouts, including the first five batters he faced in the new year. What’s more, he’s retired 24 in a row dating back to last September 12, and 35 out of 38 going back to the start of last September, 22 (57.8%) via strikeouts. In that span, he hasn’t walked a single hitter or given up an extra-base hit, meaning that he’s held batters to an .079/.079/.079 line, an 83.0 mph average exit velocity, just one hard-hit ball (95.0 mph or greater), and not a single barrel. That’ll do.

In other words, Craig Kimbrel is back.

Once the game’s most dominant closer, Kimbrel made seven All-Star teams while pitching to a 1.91 ERA and 1.96 FIP with a 41.6% strikeout rate from 2010-18, making seven All-Star teams along the way. He wasn’t as dominant in his time with the Padres (2015) or Red Sox (2016-18) as he’d been with the Braves, but he did help Boston win a World Series in the last of those seasons.

Though he saved 42 games in 2018, his highest total since being traded by the Braves, Kimbrel set career highs in home run rate (1.01 per nine) and FIP (3.13) that season, and then was scored upon in his first four postseason appearances — apparently because he was tipping his pitches — before righting the ship. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s always at the end of the sixth inning that it starts to feel real, that history begins to creep in at the edges, making its way onto the field of view, even as you might try to push it out. The way the game is arranged in sets of three, radiating outward, three into three into nine; when you’ve completed six, you’ve gone through nine twice, with nine more to go. Now comes the third time through the order, when you’ve held it this close. Now comes the part of the game that, especially in our era, it is rare for a starting pitcher to see. Through six, onto the seventh: the power to continue resting on one person’s rapidly fatiguing shoulders.

There have already been several no-hitters through six this season. Trevor Bauer gave up four runs in the seventh. Corbin Burnes and José Berríos matched each other out-for-out through six; Burnes opened the seventh by giving up a homer, and Berríos’ grip loosened in the eighth. Joe Musgrove, on Friday, through six at Globe Life Field, having given the Rangers nothing outside one errant pitch in the fourth; the Padres, with 52 years behind them, the only team never to see one of their own pitchers throw a no-hitter. Through six, those dark, towering stadium walls blocking out the fading sky. This strange hour is when things become unsettled; the precipice of possibility grows closer. You can just see over the edge, almost reach it. Twice, all nine batters have been retired. Nine more to go.

***

On a website that looks like it hasn’t had a design update for the last decade, there’s a news item from 2010 accompanied by a photo: on the right, Adrián González, wearing those bland, bygone navy Padres jerseys, holding a plaque and smiling; on the left, the vice president of the San Diego Hall of Champions. Towering above them both is a young man in the middle, also holding a plaque, wearing a letterman jacket and an awkward smile. They are all on the field at Petco Park, “Grossmont High senior JOE MUSGROVE continues to make headlines wherever he pitches,” the news item reads.

The Grossmont High baseball team is called the Foothillers — the ‘Hillers, for short. Located in El Cajon, in San Diego County, the program has an impressive track record when it comes to developing major-league talent. Steven Brault of the Pirates played there; so did Barry Zito, briefly, but he transferred. Joe Musgrove, as a sophomore, didn’t make much of a mark. He had only started pitching the year before, and he didn’t spend long on the varsity team before being demoted. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Houston Astros. 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.

After pitching his way back from the outskirts of oblivion last year, Trevor Rosenthal fared relatively well via free agency, landing a one-year, $11 million deal from the A’s. Unfortunately, he has yet to take the mound for the team, and now it appears that it could be awhile before he does, even in a best-case scenario. On Thursday, Rosenthal underwent surgery to alleviate thoracic outlet syndrome, a loss that hardly helps an A’s pitching staff that’s off to a rough start this season.

The 30-year-old Rosenthal spent 2020 with the Royals and Padres, notching 11 saves while tossing 23.2 innings with a 1.90 ERA and 2.22 FIP; both his 41.8% strikeout rate and 33.0% strikeout-walk differential ranked sixth in the majors among relievers with at least 20 innings. He made an impressive rebound from a rough 2 1/2-year stretch that began with late-2017 Tommy John surgery that cost him the last quarter of that season and all of ’18; when he returned, he struggled greatly with his control, walking 26 batters in 15.1 innings while being rocked for a 13.50 ERA, and getting released in mid-season by both the Nationals and Tigers.

Rosenthal agreed to a deal with the A’s on February 18, making him the last reliever from among our Top 50 Free Agents (where he was 36th) to find work. Among free agent relievers, only the pitcher he was expected to replace, Liam Hendriks, received a contract with a higher average annual value, and only Hendriks, Blake Treinen, Trevor May, and Pedro Báez received larger guarantees. Though slowed by a groin strain in early March, Rosenthal appeared to be on track to open the season with the A’s until a bout of shoulder inflammation led to his placement on the injured list on April 1. Read the rest of this entry »