It’s undeniable that Nicholas Castellanos has changed his 2019 storyline. Castellanos has hit .330/.365/.665 as a Chicago Cub with 15 homers and 35 RBIs before even completing his second month with the team. When the Cubs won the World Series, they ranked second in the National League in runs scored, behind only the team playing on Planet Coors. The Cubs were a middle-of-the-pack offense in 2019 through the trade deadline, and the main culprit was underwhelming production from the outfield. Castellanos’s surge been enough for one particularly optimistic national writer to predict that Castellanos would get $100 million in free agency.

If you go by the first four months of the season, 2019 looked like a weak followup to Castellanos’s 2018 campaign, when he set career-bests in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, and WAR. As one of the best free-agents-to-be at a corner outfield position, it appeared likely that Castellanos would start 2019 with a new home given the state of the Detroit Tigers. Castellanos expressed a desire to have a trade completed before the season started, but no such transaction materialized until the trade deadline. That deadline trade was no blockbuster, with the Tigers only squeezing from the Cubs a single prospect ranked by THE BOARD, and a 40 FV prospect at that.

At the trade deadline, ZiPS projected the Chicago Cubs as the team that had the most to gain from adding Castellanos. But the longer-term question remains: should his post-deadline flurry change how clubs think of Castellanos going into the winter? Read the rest of this entry »

For teams that have been eliminated from playoff contention, September is a time for youngsters and debuts. Giving prospects a few weeks of major league experience is one of the great side effects of expanded rosters during the last month of the season. The Mariners have been auditioning their young talent since June — they’ve rostered 67 different players this season, a major league record — but the group of September call-ups were exciting nonetheless. After the Arkansas Travelers were eliminated from the Texas League playoffs, the Mariners promoted a group of four players from their Double-A affiliate: Donnie Walton, Art Warren, Justin Dunn, and Kyle Lewis.

Dunn and Lewis were the headlining names of this squad. Dunn had been ranked towards the back of a few top-100 prospect lists after his breakout last season. Lewis was a much bigger surprise. A first-round draft pick in 2016 — Jerry Dipoto’s first draft after taking over as Mariners GM in late 2015 — Lewis’s professional career was derailed almost as soon as it started. A nasty collision at home plate practically destroyed his knee after just 30 games in the minors. That injury sapped him of much of his athleticism and mobility for more than a year and he wasn’t fully healthy again until 2018. In that time, he tumbled down prospect lists and soon became an afterthought in an organization desperate for talent on the farm. Read the rest of this entry »

In a way, it’s a surprise Howie Kendrick is still playing in the majors. Last year, at 35 years old, he ruptured his Achilles tendon in a May 19 game against the Dodgers, ending his season after just 40 games. It was the second straight season in which Kendrick failed to play 100 games and the third straight year in which he came up short of 2 WAR. The Washington Nationals, meanwhile, had a fairly deep group of position players and had their eyes set on yet another postseason appearance. It would have made sense for both parties to agree to part ways. I’m not sure either foresaw a bounce-back season like the one Kendrick has put together in 2019.

Kendrick is hitting .343/.393/.577 with 16 homers in 113 games, good for a wRC+ of 146. His 2.8 WAR is the highest total he’s posted in any season since leaving the Angels after 2014. Nearly every other category is either a career-best or very close to it.

That’s only the beginning of the story of how good Kendrick has been. Statcast places him in the 94th percentile in baseball in exit velocity, the 100th percentile in xBA, and the 98th percentile in hard hit percentage, xwOBA, and xSLG. He is the only player in the majors with at least 50 batted ball events who ranks in the top 10 in xBA, xSLG, xwOBA, and hard hit percentage. By those metrics, Kendrick has actually underperformed his expected outcomes this season, with his .604 xSLG soundly outpacing his .577 SLG and his .422 xwOBA well in front of his actual wOBA of .406. Read the rest of this entry »

We probably don’t need to re-litigate the trade that sent Gerrit Cole from the Pirates to the Astros two years ahead of free agency. This post isn’t about what the Astros did to transform Cole or what the Pirates failed to do. This post is, to a certain extent, about who Gerrit Cole was, and who he is now, but it is less about how he’s changed and more about how he’s the same.

Every pitcher makes adjustments to try and get better and be more effective at getting hitters out. Some work better than others. Pitchers make these changes while staying in the same organization or while jumping to a different team. Injuries can sometimes derail development, as can trying strategies that just don’t work out. We know Cole wasn’t great with the Pirates in 2016 and 2017, and he’s been great with the Astros in 2018 and 2019. Hopefully this post serves as a reminder of how great Cole was in 2015 and how what he’s doing now is meeting incredibly lofty expectations his performance set for himself five seasons ago.

In 2015, Cole put up a 2.66 FIP, a 2.60 ERA, and 5.1 WAR, ranked 10th among all pitchers and first among pitchers 25 years old and younger, beating out Madison Bumgarner, Sonny Gray, Shelby Miller, and Carlos Martinez. Cole was just 24 years old at the time. To find some age-based comparisons, I looked at 24-year-old starters since 1990 within half a win of Cole. Read the rest of this entry »

Across all full-season minor league affiliates in 2019, the list of the top three hitters in K%-BB% looked like this:

1) Nick Madrigal
2) Wander Franco
3) John Nogowski

Madrigal, of course, was the fourth overall pick in the 2018 draft out of Oregon State and is currently ranked as the No. 26 prospect in baseball on THE BOARD. Franco, an 18-year-old switch-hitting shortstop, was considered the top prospect in the 2017 July 2 international signing class, signed for $3.85 million, and is currently the game’s top prospect. Both Madrigal and Franco are high-profile minor leaguers who have been projected to make a future impact in the big leagues for some time.

And then there’s John Nogowski. Read the rest of this entry »

Over in the American League, there’s a pretty clear top tier of Cy Young contenders in Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole, followed by a solid group of candidates likely to garner down-ballot support. In the National League, there looks to be a top tier of Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom followed by a cascading set of secondary candidates, but that first look doesn’t quite tell the entire story.

To provide some idea of the statistical disparities voters must contend with when making their decision, I looked at our FIP-based WAR as well as the RA9-WAR also available here at FanGraphs, Baseball-Reference’s WAR, and Baseball Prospectus’ WARP. I included for consideration any player in the top five of any of those lists. That search returned nine pitchers for the potential five slots on a Cy Young ballot. Those players are listed below, with a mix of traditional and advanced statistics:

We have Scherzer and deGrom in first and second by about a win over the next-best candidate, with deGrom pitching tonight. After those two, we have a lot of innings from Stephen Strasburg and Patrick Corbin, and fewer innings, but better peripherals, from Walker Buehler. After those three, we have four candidates who haven’t thrown a ton of innings, but all have much lower ERA’s than FIPs. As for how these candidates came to be considered, here are their WAR totals:

Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday, Miguel Rojas and the Miami Marlins agreed on a two-year extension, covering Rojas’s final year of salary arbitration and a year of free agent eligibility. The exact financial terms are undisclosed, but it appears that the contract’s guarantee is roughly in the $10-million range. The Marlins also get an option to get a third year from Rojas in 2022.

Miami currently stands in last place in the National League in WAR for hitters at 2.3. Your offense doesn’t reach those depths of sadness without being able to point your fingers at a lot of players, but Rojas is one of the few in the lineup who doesn’t shoulder a share of the blame. As of Thursday morning, Rojas has hit .285/.335/.383 in 2019, good for 1.9 WAR. He hasn’t been able to leverage the hitter-friendly environment for a boost in home runs — at five homers, he looks an easy bet to miss 2018’s total of 11 — but he has established himself as a top-tier defender this season. Read the rest of this entry »

Another year, another Oakland surprise.

In July, I wrote about how the Athletics deserved your attention, again. After starting the season 29-28 through the end of May, the A’s got hot. The team is 62-33 since, tied with Houston for the best record in the American League in this stretch. As the team racked up wins, their playoff odds grew, increasing from 10% on June 1 to 96% today. This is a trend you like to see if you’re an A’s fan:

Oakland is still not quite a lock to make the playoffs, but with a two-game lead over the Rays for the first Wild Card spot and a two-and-a-half game lead over the Indians for a playoff spot overall, you have to like their chances.

Incredibly, the 2019 A’s are behaving almost exactly like the 2018 A’s. As I mentioned in my July piece, coming into games on June 1, both the 2019 and 2018 squads were 29-28. After a scorching 68-37 finish, the 2018 team ended their campaign with 97 wins, the exact pace the 2019 A’s are on now.

Earlier this week, I wrote about Kolby Allard being the best pitcher traded at the trade deadline by WAR. Today, though, I want to talk about the team that has added the most post-August pitching value via July trades. It’s hard to think that Oakland would be in this position today without the contributions of three July additions.

For most of this season, the A’s needed pitching help, even despite generally positive results from the group of arms they rostered on Opening Day. Frankie Montas was suspended 80 games after testing positive for a PED in June, Sean Manaea spent the majority of the year on the Injured List recovering from shoulder surgery, and top pitching prospects Jesus Luzardo and A.J. Puk weren’t promoted to the majors until fairly recently. (They’re both in bullpen roles, partially out of necessity and partially because the rotation upgrades have been solid.) As a result, the A’s made three trades for pitchers in July: a deal with the Royals for Homer Bailey, another, separate deal with KC for Jake Diekman, and a deal with the Reds for Tanner Roark. Read the rest of this entry »

A Yastrzemski hit a home run in Fenway Park on Tuesday night, and if you’re any kind of student of baseball history, you might have felt some goosebumps. Two hundred miles away in the Yankee Stadium press box, I certainly did, because I’m old enough to remember the final years of the career of Carl Yastrzemski, a former Triple Crown winner and inner-circle Hall of Famer who retired in 1983 while owning the all-time lead in games played (3,308, since surpassed by Pete Rose) and the number eight spot on the all-time hit list (3,419, now ninth). I also recall the flicker of promise that was his son’s professional career in the mid-1980s, and the sad news that he passed away in 2004 at the too-young age of 43. With all that in mind, I can’t help but pull for Mike Yastrzemski, a 29-year-old rookie who on May 25 of this season became the first grandson of a Hall of Famer to play in the majors.

I was hardly alone. By all accounts, the youngest Yaz — who lists at nearly the same size (5-foot-11, 180 pounds) as his grandfather (5-foot-11, 175 pounds) and swings from the left side — was welcomed with open arms for his Fenway debut. He strolled across the outfield grass with “Poppy Yaz” prior to the game, receive a warm ovation upon coming to the plate to lead off the contest, and, in the fourth inning, sent a Nathan Eovaldi fastball 401 feet to center field:

The home run made Yastrzemski the first Giants rookie in 47 years to reach 20 homers (Dave Kingman did it in 1972) and just the second Giant to hit 20 in the past four seasons (Kevin Pillar beat him by 16 days). The blast and the hoopla that surrounded his debut were the highlights of what became a grueling, 15-inning, 24-pitcher September slog; it lasted five hours and 54 minutes, which in single-game terms is about as long as his grandfather’s career. Yastrzemski made a strong effort to bring it to an end earlier by leading off the 14th inning with a ground-rule double, his only other hit in eight trips to the plate. His Giants teammates stranded him, though they did go on to win, 7-6. Read the rest of this entry »

With just over a week to go in the regular season, Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole are running neck and neck as favorites for the American League Cy Young award. Verlander leads the league in innings (212) and ERA (2.50). Cole has the lead in strikeouts with 302 with Verlander 19 behind. Even after accounting for Verlander’s 34 homers, his 3.28 FIP is still one of the best marks in the league. On Cole’s side are the strikeouts, a league-leading 2.78 FIP and a 6.7 WAR half a win clear of Verlander. Several other pitchers, like Charlie Morton and Lance Lynn, boast strong resumes, and with five slots on voters’ ballots, many pitchers will receive down-ballot consideration worthy of discussion.

While awards voting is a mostly objective process, when trying to differentiate between a group of very good pitchers, personal preferences are likely to play into the selections. When voters rely on particular stats, be it FIP, ERA, or some other metric, they are making decisions about the importance of defense, park, opponent, and how much talent a big league pitcher is expected to exhibit when it comes to contact quality. Before we get to all of those issues, let’s identify the candidates. There’s a fairly clear top seven among AL starting pitchers (Liam Hendriks might deserve some consideration as well) with Eduardo Rodriguez also included due to his rank based on Baseball-Reference’s WAR.

Here are the eight pitchers under consideration, with some traditional and more advanced statistics:

A look above shows Gerrit Cole leading in the more advanced statistics, with Verlander gaining the nod from traditional metrics, and Lance Lynn and Charlie Morton sort of splitting the difference between the two Astros. Shane Bieber and Lucas Giolito are a bit behind, with Giolito unable to add anything to his file after being shut down for the season. Mike Minor’s case is made by his low ERA combined with his difficult park, as his strikeouts and walks lag behind the other candidates. Eduardo Rodriguez is the poor man’s version of Minor.

If we looked at FanGraphs WAR, we’d see Cole as the leader due to his incredible strikeout rate and ability to limit homers, at least somewhat. Though he has a 20-inning deficit compared to Verlander, the strikeouts and homers make enough of a difference for Cole to take the day. Verlander and Lynn are in a dead heat when it comes to WAR, with the huge difference in home runs balancing Verlander’s lead in strikeouts and walks and Lynn’s more difficult park in which to keep balls in the field of play. Comparing Lynn to Morton, we see Morton with the homer advantage, but the innings deficit, combined with Tampa Bay being a hard park to homer in, gives Lynn the edge. Read the rest of this entry »