If there’s one player whose 2019 season is off to a more conspicuously inauspicious start than Nationals reliever Trevor Rosenthal, who has yet to retire a batter through four appearances (including one on Sunday), it’s Orioles first baseman Chris Davis, who has yet to record a hit. Like Rosenthal, Davis’ run of futility has actually carried over from his previous season. He’s now approaching the major league record for consecutive hitless at-bats by a non-pitcher, held by Eugenio Velez (0-for-46 in 2010-11), and is putting the rebuilding Orioles in an awkward position given his huge contract, which could become the largest sunk cost in major league history.

Already known for his all-or-nothing extremes, which included him hitting 53 homers in a season (2013) and striking out 219 times (2016), the now-33-year-old Davis appeared to find the bottom last year, when he hit .168/.243/.296 for a 46 wRC+ while striking out in 36.8% of his plate appearances, numbers that all ranked dead last among the majors’ 140 qualifying hitters. Whether it was mechanical flaws, eyesight troubles, medication issues (he has a therapeutic use exemption for an ADHD drug, an issue that led to a 25-game suspension in 2014, when it wasn’t properly addressed), or mental struggles, Davis and the coaching staff weren’t able to find the answer to his problems. Including slightly subpar defense (-1.7 UZR), his -3.1 WAR tied for the majors’ sixth-lowest mark since 1901. He closed the season while stuck in a 1-for-39 skid, with a September 14 double off the White Sox’s James Shields his only hit after his second plate appearance on September 5. He went hitless in his final 21 at-bats, with 14 strikeouts (he walked twice and was hit by a pitch within that span). In an act of mercy, the Orioles — who were on their way to 115 losses, the third-highest total of the post-1960 expansion era — didn’t play him in their final eight games, preventing Davis from digging an even deeper hole. Read the rest of this entry »

Griffin Canning on is on the fast track after a delayed start. Drafted 47th-overall by the Angels in 2017, the righty didn’t made his professional debut until last April. By June he was taking the mound for the Triple-A Salt Lake Bees. That’s where the 22-year-old UCLA product is to begin the current campaign, one rung below the majors, with a chance to reach Anaheim in the not-too-distant future.

When the call-up comes, Halos fans can expect to see a pitcher who combines power and pitchability. His approach to his craft is a mixture of art and science.

“I think you can find a middle ground on the two,” said Canning, who ranks fourth on our Angels Top Prospects list. “For me it’s moe of an art — I’ve kind of always thought you can be born with it — but at the same time, you can use those science tools to help you get better.”

When I talked to him during spring training, I asked the youngster what type of artist he envisions himself as. I wasn’t looking for a Monet or van Gogh comp, but I was wondering about his thumb print on the mound. Read the rest of this entry »

In my short time so far at FanGraphs, there have been a couple of underlying similarities between the player profile-style pieces that I have written. All three of them have been about under-the-radar pitchers, whether it be about Chase Anderson or Dan Straily or Jimmy Yacabonis, and all three articles have focused on their individual pitches or repertoires.

Today, I will take a different tact. First, it’s about a hitter, and second, this hitter is not, by any means, “under-the-radar.” José Ramírez slashed .270/.387/.552 in 698 plate appearances last year, producing a total of 8.0 WAR, a figure that ranked third in all of baseball. Ramírez even had a solid case at the American League MVP award, finishing third behind Mookie Betts and Mike Trout. That’s really good! That’s better than really good; it’s elite. Ramírez has truly been one of the best players in baseball over the last three years now, and we should all appreciate that.

The problem is, though, José Ramírez actually hasn’t been good lately. And I’m not just talking about his slow start to the 2019 season (11 wRC+ in his first 20 PA); Ramírez’s slump has actually been quite long. Over his last 40 games, dating back to August 21 of last season, Ramírez has slashed .170/.298/.279 across 178 plate appearances. His 60 wRC+ during this stretch was the 17th-lowest in the major leagues, among 228 players with at least 100 plate appearances. That puts him in the undoubtedly-not-elite 7th percentile. Just to add insult to injury, this excludes the 2018 postseason, in which Ramírez did not record a single hit and managed just one walk across 12 plate appearances, good for a .000/.083/.000 line. Read the rest of this entry »

Last month, in the wake of Bryce Harper’s signing with the Phillies, I took stock of the Nationals and raised an eyebrow at the limited fixes administered to a bullpen that has required annual midseason makeovers, and that last year tied for 25th in the majors in WAR (0.6). General manager Mike Rizzo’s big offseason moves regarding the unit were to sign Trevor Rosenthal, who missed all of 2018 due to Tommy John surgery, and Kyle Barraclough, who pitched to a 4.20 ERA and 4.98 FIP with the Marlins. So far, it hasn’t gone well, to say the least. The unit as a whole has an 11.02 ERA through five games.

Barraclough has only been charged with one run allowed in 3.1 innings, but he’s also allowed five out of five inherited runners to score. That’s no good, but it’s nothing compared to the travails of Rosenthal, a 28-year-old righty who, during his Cardinals tenure, pitched to a 2.99 ERA and 2.60 FIP while saving 121 games from 2012-17.

On March 30 against the Mets, Rosenthal entered a tied game in the eighth inning and proceeded to allow back-to-back singles to Wilson Ramos and Jeff McNeil, then walked Amed Rosario (a tough thing to do given the kid’s 4.9% walk rate last year) and served up a two-run single to J.D. Davis. Manager Davey Martinez gave him the hook in favor of Barraclough, who immediately balked in a run, and two outs later, allowed a two-run double by Pete Alonso. Thus, four runs were charged to Rosenthal, who didn’t retire a batter.

Undeterred, Martinez called on Rosenthal again the next day with the Nationals trailing the Mets 5-2 and runners on the corners courtesy of mid-March signing Tony Sipp. Facing Rosario again, Rosenthal threw just one pitch, which the 23-year-old shortstop lined for an RBI single. Sean Doolittle relieved Rosenthal and allowed back-to-back singles, the second of which scored Rosario. Another day, another outing with a run allowed but no out for Rosenthal. Read the rest of this entry »

The first week of baseball is a wondrous time to be a baseball fan. It’s also a weird time to be a baseball writer. On one hand, baseball is happening, and that’s a relief after the long dark night of the offseason. On the other hand, not that much baseball has happened, and most of the seemingly noteworthy stories are small-sample noise. Give me an early-season take (Tim Beckham is great! Sandy Alcantara is a top-10 pitcher!), and I’ll likely dismiss it as a fluke. One performance this week, however, made me sit up and take notice. Corbin Burnes struck out 12 batters on Sunday, and the way he did it should have Brewers fans, and baseball fans in general, salivating.

At first glance, Burnes’ start against the Cardinals is a textbook case of not reading too much into a single start. He struck out 12 batters and walked only one, which is obviously incredible. On the other hand, he gave up three home runs and only lasted five innings, producing a what’s-going-on split of a 6.53 FIP and 0.00 xFIP. If I were a betting man, though, I’d wager that the strikeouts are more predictive than the home runs. Why? Corbin Burnes’ fastball was absolutely ludicrous, and in a way that you can’t fake.

Most of the things that happen in a baseball game are contextual. Did a pitcher strike a lot of hitters out? Well, consider who was batting. If it’s a bunch of high schoolers or the 2019 Giants outfield, that’s an extenuating circumstance. Did he give up a lot of home runs? A ton of factors go into that. One thing that isn’t contextual is a pitch’s spin rate. The batter doesn’t influence it. Pitch selection doesn’t influence it. It doesn’t take long to stabilize. It’s basically as clean as it gets in baseball statistics — you throw the ball, and you get your results.

When Burnes threw the ball on Sunday, the results were off the charts. Burnes fired 61 four-seam fastballs on Sunday. His velocity was down a tick or so from last year, when he worked out of the bullpen — nothing unusual about that. His spin, on the other hand, was wholly new. Burnes averaged 2912 rpm, and it’s hard to explain how crazy that is. It was nearly 150 rpm higher than last year’s league leader in average spin rate, Luke Bard. The fastball that Burnes spun most slowly, at 2660 rpm, would have been good for the second-highest fastball spin rate in baseball last year.

Burnes has always been a high-spin pitcher (11th in baseball among pitchers who threw at least 100 fastballs in 2018), but this is an entirely different level. Spin rates vary from start to start, but not like this. In fact, Burnes made thirty appearances last year, and the gap between the highest spin rate he recorded and the lowest was 270 rpm. Sunday’s start was 200 rpm faster than last year’s highest rate. Graphically, that looks pretty absurd, like so:

Read the rest of this entry »

As a part of the FanGraphs staff predictions for this season, I picked the Boston Red Sox to win the American League East, and the New York Yankees to pick up a wild card slot. All 32 of us picked the Yankees to make what would be a third consecutive trip to the postseason. And our preseason projections pegged the Bronx Bombers for 99 wins, the best record in baseball, and a whopping 66.4% chance of winning the American League East. The Yankees – on paper, at least – were and are good.

But life, they say, is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. The Yankees have started slowly, yes, but a 2-4 record is hardly alarming when you’re less than a week’s worth of games into a 162-game season. More worrisome is the fact that the Yankees’ injured list is suddenly beginning to resemble an All-Star team in its own right. First, newly extended center fielder Aaron Hicks went from tweaking his back in Spring Training to receiving two cortisone shots to an indefinite injured list stint with a lower back strain. That’s not good, seeing as Hicks is the second most valuable center fielder in the American League since 2017, behind some guy named Mike Trout. Still, the Yankees are deep, and they could plug Brett Gardner into center field without suffering a major catastrophe.

If this had been the team’s only major injury, the team might have been fine, especially on the back of what was projected to be an elite starting rotation. But also-newly-extended ace right hander Luis Severino joined Hicks on the shelf late in Spring Training after suffering rotator cuff inflammation, and isn’t expected back until May. Shoulder problems, including rotator cuff injuries, are notoriously finicky in pitchers, and while there’s no reason to believe Severino’s injury is more serious that we know, we also don’t know how the hard-throwing right-hander will fare after returning from the injury, particularly after not having had a single Spring Training start. With C.C. Sabathia’s farewell tour on hold after offseason heart surgery, the Yankees’ rotation suddenly started to look a little thin.

But no matter. The Yankees still had a fearsome lineup and perhaps the best bullpen ever, right? But then Dellin Betances’ spring training fastball clocked in the high-80s, and it wasn’t long before a shoulder impingement was diagnosed as the cause of his missing velocity. So Betances joined the list of the Yankees’ walking wounded.

Of course, why should the pitching staff have all of the fun? On the same day, two lynchpins of the Yankees’ fearsome lineup – outfield adonis Giancarlo Stanton and sophomore third-sacker Miguel Andujar – both suffered significant, and potentially long-term, injuries. Stanton suffered a left biceps strain whilst swinging and missing in just the team’s third game of the season, and Andujar suffered a small tear of his labrum diving into third base in the same game. By the end of the team’s second series of the year against the Tigers, Troy Tulowitzki had joined the injured list as well with a calf strain.

How bad are the Yankees’ injuries? Right now, including Tulowitzki, New York has 11 players on its injured list; no other team has more than eight. Here’s the complete list, with 2019 Depth Charts projected WAR:

• Miguel Andujar (1.9)
• Dellin Betances (1.1)
• Jacoby Ellsbury (0)
• Didi Gregorius (1.6)
• Ben Heller (0)
• Aaron Hicks (3.2)
• Jordan Montgomery (0.2)
• C.C. Sabathia (1.4)
• Luis Severino (4.1)
• Giancarlo Stanton (4.2)
• Troy Tulowitzki (0.9)

That’s 18.6 projected fWAR on the injured list at one time, which is more than the 2019 projected WAR for the entire Orioles team. That might also be understating the value of these players; they posted a combined 26 WAR in 2018. Some of these injured list placements were expected; after all, both Gregorius and Montgomery are still recovering from Tommy John surgery and aren’t expected back until midseason, and outfielder Ellsbury fell into a temporal vortex and likely will never be heard from again. Still, that’s a contending team’s starting third baseman (Andujar), starting shortstop (Gregorius), the replacement for the injured starting shortstop (Tulowitzki), starting left fielder/designated hitter (Stanton), and starting center fielder (Hicks), along with its No. 1 (Severino) and No. 4 (Sabathia) starters, and primary setup reliever (Betances), all injured at once.

That’s a lot of WAR for any team to lose, even the Yankees, even temporarily; the team is missing the equivalent of one and a half Mike Trouts. So in some ways, it’s a minor miracle that even after losing that much talent, the team is still projected to win 95 games. In fact, owing to the Red Sox’s nightmarish West Coast trip, the Yankees’ odds of winning the division have remained relatively steady since Opening Day, though they have dipped slightly.

The good news is that the Yankees’ pitching staff is well equipped to weather the storm. Johnny Loaisiga and Domingo German have both impressed as replacements for Sabathia and Severino. Even without Betances, a bullpen featuring Adam Ottavino, Zack Britton, and Aroldis Chapman is still fearsome, even if Chad Green has been hittable in the early going. James Paxton and Masahiro Tanaka have been great. Sabathia is expected back before the end of April, with Betances back around the same time. Severino’s return is somewhat murkier, but projected around May or June. In short, the Yankees should still spend the bulk of their season with their pitching at least largely intact.

The larger problem is one you wouldn’t have anticipated going into the season: the offense. And unlike the pitching staff, help isn’t arriving any time soon. Stanton hopes to be back in early May barring a setback, but Andujar is without a timetable and still may require season-ending surgery. All of a sudden, an infield without a place for D.J. LeMahieu to play regularly just a week ago is deploying Tyler Wade as its starting second baseman. Didi Gregorius won’t be back until the second half.

With so many big bats missing, the result is about what you’d expect. The Yankees gave up just six runs in their most recent three-game set against the Detroit Tigers, but scored only five and dropped two out of three. Tuesday, a lineup featuring D.J. LeMahieu batting fifth managed just one run against Jordan Zimmermann; Wednesday, the team struck out 18 times against a Tigers pitching staff that ranked just 24th in pitcher WAR, 25th in FIP, and 26th in strikeout rate in 2018.

The second wild card gives the Yankees a considerable margin for error, as does their depth. It might all prove to be fine. That said, with Tampa Bay, a deep and talented team in its own right, off to a 5-1 start, and the Red Sox healthy, the Yankees might not have the luxury of treading water until their injured players return if their goal is to win the division. Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez can’t carry the offensive load by themselves, and Greg Bird is himself injury-prone. Clint Frazier is talented, but untested and coming off a concussion that ruined his 2018. Unless the team is willing to use heavy doses of Mike Tauchmann and Tyler Wade moving forward, the Yankees may have no choice but to start looking for offensive help from outside the organization.

This spring, Randal Grichuk is following Mike Trout. The outfielder whom the Angels drafted with the 24th pick in 2009, one slot before they chose a player who’s already in the conversation for the greatest of all time, is the latest to agree to a long-term extension. It’s significantly less than Trout’s 12-year, $430 million pact, of course, but Grichuk nonetheless guaranteed himself a substantial payday by agreeing to a five-year, $52 million deal with the Blue Jays, covering the 2019-23 seasons. That’s not too shabby for a player who was viewed as a fourth or fifth outfielder when he was acquired from the Cardinals in January 2018.

As the Blue Jays have steered themselves into rebuilding mode by shedding the likes of Jose Bautista, Josh Donaldson, J.A. Happ, Russell Martin, Troy Tulowitzki, and others over the past 18 months, either via trade or free agency, the now-27-year-old Grichuk has emerged as more than just a backup. Last year, he started 84 games in right field, another 25 in center — largely when Kevin Pillar, who coincidentally was traded to the Giants on Tuesday, the same day that Grichuk’s deal was announced, missed time with a shoulder sprain — and one in left field. Despite hitting just .106/.208/.227 in 77 plate appearances before missing all of May due to a right knee sprain, he set a career high with 25 homers while posting his highest on-base percentage (.301), slugging percentage (.502), and wRC+ (115) since his 2015 rookie season. Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday, the Rockies and 24-year-old right-hander German Marquez reached an agreement on a five-year, $43 million contract extension, with the deal first reported ESPN’s Jeff Passan. The contract includes a club option for a sixth year, though that becomes a mutual option if Marquez finishes at or near the top of the Cy Young voting twice during the life of the extension, which runs through 2023.

The deal encompasses one pre-arb year (this season), all three of Marquez’s arbitration years, and either one or two of his would-be free agent years, depending on what happens with that club option. He’s now on track to hit free agency at age 30.

Marquez is a pro scouting success story and an example of how development often continues after players have reached the big leagues. Th Rockies acquired him from Tampa Bay along with Jake McGee in exchange for Corey Dickerson (who Tampa later traded for fringe prospect Tristan Gray) and Kevin Padlo (who did not make our Rays prospect list). Marquez reached the big leagues in his first season as a Rockie.

Then just a competent strike-thrower with two plus pitches — a fastball and a curveball — Marquez was in the middle of our 2017 top 100 prospects list in anticipation of him developing a third pitch, which occurred during his 2018 breakout in the form of a new slider. After tinkering with his seldom-used changeup and a hard slider during the spring and first half of 2018, he leaned more heavily on the slide piece down the stretch in 2018 and was dominant toward the end of the season.

What’s next? Perhaps increased two-seamer usage, which could be especially meaningful as a way of keeping the ball on the ground in Coors Field. It’d be ideal for Marquez to continue refining his changeup but, despite his strike-throwing prowess, he has some issues with release consistency (it was better last year, but is still relatively varied) that might impede development in this area if you buy that things like feel and release consistency are indicators of change development, which I do.

We don’t know how a new CBA might have impacted Marquez’s free agency were he not to have signed a deal and hit the market at 28. The financial security afforded by extensions makes more sense for pitchers, who are at greater risk of suffering a career-altering injury. But Marquez hasn’t been injured since 2014 and is built like a tank, so perhaps he’s at less risk of breaking than, say, Blake Snell, who seemed to set the market for this type of extension a few weeks ago.

A 2.7 WAR contributor in 2017 and a 4.2 WAR arm in 2018 (who was trending up late in the year), Marquez is clearly part of a Rockies very long-term core that includes recently-extended Nolan Arenado, Kyle Freeland, David Dahl and whomever among the Ryan McMahon, Garrett Hampson, Brendan Rodgers, Raimel Tapia, etc. group turn out to actually be good. Daniel Murphy and Charlie Blackmon have deals running through 2021, and Trevor Story is under team control during that stretch, too.

Other than Ian Desmond, who has been a replacement level player for the last two years, there are no scary long-term deal on the books, so the Rockies should be free to pay to add to this competitive core while it’s together for the next three seasons, especially while 40% of their division is rebuilding. The most likely trade chips on the farm are Tyler Nevin and Colton Welker, who are blocked by Arenado, and McMahon/Murphy.

After a strong 2017 campaign for Tampa and Baltimore led some observers to declare, perhaps prematurely, that the former No. 1 pick had finally figured out how to sustainably deliver on his sky-high potential, Tim Beckham’s 2018 performance was sufficiently awful (a 79 wRC+ over 402 plate appearances) that the Baltimore front office declined to tender him a contract and left him to sign a $1.75 million deal with the Mariners in early January. Well, for a guy who was probably only intended to hold the middle of the field warm until J.P. Crawford gets the call up to Seattle at some point later this summer, Beckham has had a remarkably good first week in the Queen City:

Usually, I wouldn’t note a first week like this except in passing — Preston Tucker was hitting .435 through his first seven games of 2018, after all — except for two things. First, Beckham was hurt — with a core muscle injury that required surgery — throughout much of 2018, which suggests that perhaps his poor performance over the full season was less a reflection of a regression from 2017’s breakout and more what you’d expect from a player toughing it out through a debilitating injury. Second, Beckham has actually had a pretty good five weeks, dating back to September 1st of 2018. Since that date, his wRC+ of 186 is eighth-best in the game.

Beckham has always had good power to all fields, but until 2017, that power was too often undercut by a tendency to end at-bats early by swinging at the first pitch he saw offered close to the zone. In 2017, he solved the mental hurdle that had pushed him to try to do too much and instead started taking a few pitches early in at-bats until he found the one he wanted. “These days,” he told me back then, “I want to see the ball in the zone where I can drive it, and if it’s not” — here, a pause — “I want to trust that it’s going to be a ball.” The core injury hindered his ability to execute on that mindset in 2018, yes, but since September of last year, he’s been able to put it into practice again. The results have been impressive. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s something that won’t surprise you. The number one starter in all of baseball last year, when it came to getting batters to chase pitches outside the strike zone, was Patrick Corbin. Of course it was Patrick Corbin! Dude threw 95% sliders last year, and that’s only a little bit of an exaggeration (it was a little over 41%, if you’re intent on checking my math). The second guy on the list, a minuscule 0.1% of out-of-zone swing rate behind Corbin, was Jacob deGrom. I mean … yeah. DeGrom had a 1.7 ERA last year and struck out 32% of the batters he faced. People swung at a lot of pitches outside the strike zone.

At number three, though, the list takes an unexpected turn. The third-highest chase rate in baseball last year belonged to Miles Mikolas, and it’s hard to think of a pitcher who resembles Corbin and deGrom less than Mikolas does. While the aforementioned duo both had top-10 strikeout rates among qualified starters, Mikolas was in the bottom ten. Corbin and deGrom were exemplars of the new three-true-outcome direction baseball has taken (mostly one true outcome, in their case), while Mikolas had essentially the lowest three true outcome rate in all of baseball. What does it mean to generate a ton of swings outside the strike zone but few strikeouts?

Making sense of how Miles Mikolas operates is difficult. He’s kind of a unicorn — you probably think you can name pitchers like him, but none of them fit. Is he Kyle Hendricks, the pinpoint control artist with a preposterous changeup? Mikolas doesn’t even throw a changeup. He also sits around 94.5mph with his fastball, top 20 among qualified starters in 2018. Hendricks has the slowest fastball in that group. Is he a rich man’s Mike Leake, perplexingly effective despite never striking anyone out? That’s not it either — Leake never generates swings and misses, and never is barely an exaggeration here. He’s had a bottom-10 swinging strike rate every year he’s been a qualifying pitcher. Mikolas, meanwhile, is around league average. Leake also, somehow, throws significantly fewer strikes than Mikolas — Mikolas put the ball in the strike zone a league-leading 48% of the time last year. Read the rest of this entry »