A few bumpy outings aside, Shaun Anderson has had a solid rookie season with the San Francisco Giants. Since debuting in mid-May, the 24-year-old right-hander has won three of five decisions, and on six occasions he’s gone at least five innings while allowing just a pair of runs. Overall, he has a 4.87 ERA and a 4.37 FIP in 12 starts.

Anderson is comfortable on a big stage. He pitched in the College World Series while at the University of Florida, and last summer he took the mound in the All-Star Futures Game. The former Gator came into this year ranked eighth on our Giants Top Prospects list.

He was originally Red Sox property. A third-round pick in 2016, Anderson was shipped to San Francisco thirteen months later, along with now-19-year-old righty Gregory Santos, in exchange for Eduardo Nunez. The days-before-the-trade-deadline deal brought Boston a player who helped them win a World Series — Nunez has since been DFA’d — while San Francisco got an up-and-comer who doesn’t fit a conventional mold.

College relievers rarely become big-league starters, and this is an era where pitchers typically pump gas and miss a lot of bats. Anderson is an anomaly in both respects. The erstwhile closer has a pedestrian 92/93mph heater, and he’s punching out just 5.7 batters per nine innings.

Asked about his approach, Anderson described it as “attack.” Undaunted by big-league hitters in the box, he’s all about mixing and matching, and working down in the zone. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2017, Shane Greene appeared to have turned a corner. He was coming off his first season as a near-full time reliever, one he’d finished with an ugly ERA (5.82) but a pretty nifty FIP (3.13). The latter mark, as is typically the case, proved to be the more predictive number, as he finished the 2017 season with a 2.66 ERA, though it came with a slightly higher 3.84 FIP. The following season, the wheels came off again, as he posted a 5.12 ERA and a 4.61 FIP. All told, Greene entered 2019 with a career 4.89 ERA and 4.14 FIP in five seasons split between the Yankees and the Tigers. What’s he up to now? Pretty much what you’d guess: leading all major league pitchers with an ERA of 1.06 in 34 innings.

It may seem surprising, but Greene has been around for some time now. He’s already 30, has been both a starter and a reliever for extended periods of time, and has been given a prominent role on a few lost Tigers teams over the years. Yet because of the drastic swings in his performance from year to year, we seem to know very little about him. Even if we focus solely on this year, there is still conflicting information. His ERA is obviously fantastic, but it comes with a 3.65 FIP and a 4.04 xFIP. To put the last number in context, his xFIP during his forgettable 2018 season was 4.05. Considering his contract status (he’ll be a free agent after 2020) and his role as closer for a 29-61 team, Greene is going to be a popular name in trade conversations for the rest of the month. It seems pertinent to ask, then: What exactly do we make of him?

Let’s get a few underwhelming facts about him out of the way first. His opponents’ BABIP of .179 this season is well below his career average of .304, and his strand rate is 86.1%, well above his career average of 69%. Those stats depend a lot upon luck, and 34 innings is a minuscule sample size for luck-based metrics. The fact that Greene is performing so well in them — seventh in the majors in BABIP, 32nd in LOB%, among all pitchers with at least 20 IP — gives us good reason to be suspicious of Greene’s suddenly elite ERA.

It’s easy enough to look at those measures and declare Greene as the beneficiary of unsustainable luck, and a clear candidate for regression — in fact, it’s too easy. Because while he may appear lucky at first glance, there are reasons to believe Greene really is a notably better pitcher than he’s ever been. Read the rest of this entry »

The list of batters who go down in the count 0-1 least often mostly makes sense. Mike Trout and Cody Bellinger are in the top five, due to a combination of their sterling batting eyes and pitchers staying away from them. Justin Smoak, Mike Moustakas, and Anthony Rizzo comprise the rest of the top five, and even if they don’t quite have the fearsome power of Bellinger and Trout, they have enough power that pitchers often pitch them carefully. Smoak has the lowest ISO of the five at .205. Pitchers are being rationally cautious.

Number six on the list will make you question what you think you know about first strike rate. David Fletcher, the Angels infielder, is number six, and he couldn’t look any more different than the guys ahead of him. I don’t mean physically, though that’s true as well — at 5-foot-10 and 175 pounds, Fletcher isn’t an imposing power presence. No, what I mean is that Fletcher plays baseball in a style that can best be described as a throwback. Not only that, he’s succeeding, putting together a second consecutive solid major league season despite a game that would look more at home in the 1980s than in 2019.

If Tyler O’Neill is one extreme of the game, David Fletcher is the other. Think of a stereotype about baseball in 2019, and Fletcher probably defies it. Strikeout rates inexorably on the rise? Fletcher is striking out 8.3% of the time this year, the lowest rate among qualified hitters. Big swings and big whiffs? Fletcher makes contact on a dizzying 92.1% of his swings. The world gone mad for home runs and power? Fletcher’s .126 ISO is 12th-lowest in baseball this year, and that comes largely from his 20 doubles; he hits home runs on 5.6% of his fly balls, the sixth-lowest rate in the majors.

It’s easy to read the headlines in 2019, to see Pete Alonso hitting balls to Andromeda and Christian Yelich crushing home runs on nearly a third of his fly balls, and think that the only way to succeed in baseball is via home runs. There’s some truth to that, honestly — as pitchers throw harder and harder, stringing together a series of hits gets increasingly challenging, and a home run lets the offense skip all of that. That’s not a rule, though — it’s merely the path of least resistance. Read the rest of this entry »

Below are some changes we made to The BOARD in the past week, with our reasons for doing so. All hail the BOARD.

Moved Up

Ronny Mauricio, SS, New York Mets:
We got some immediate feedback on Monday’s sweeping update, which included more industry interest in Mauricio. The average major league swinging strike rate is 11%. Mauricio has a 12% swinging strike rate, and is a switch-hitting, 6-foot-4 teenager facing full-season pitching. It’s common for lanky teenagers to struggle with contact as they grow into their frames, but Mauricio hasn’t had that issue so far.

Oneil Cruz, SS, Pittsburgh Pirates:
One of us was sent Cruz’s minor league exit velocities and they’re shockingly close to what Yordan Alvarez’s have been in the big leagues. Of course, there remains great uncertainty about where Cruz will end up on defense, and hitters this size (Cruz is listed at 6-foot-7) are swing and miss risks, but this is a freakish, elite power-hitting talent.

Marco Luciano, SS, San Francisco Giants:
This guy has No. 1 overall prospect potential as a shortstop with 70 or better raw power. He belongs up near Bobby Witt, who is older but might also be a plus shortstop while we’re still not sure if Luciano will stay there.

George Valera, OF, Cleveland Indians:
Valera is torching the Penn League at 18 and a half years old, and we’re not sure any high school hitter in this year’s draft class would be able to do it. His defensive instincts give him a shot to stay in center field despite middling raw speed, and his swing should allow him to get to all of his raw power, so it becomes less important that his body is projectable. He would have been fifth on our 2019 draft board were he playing at a high school somewhere in the U.S., so he’s now slotted in the between JJ Bleday and C.J. Abrams on our overall list. Read the rest of this entry »

On this date one year ago, the baseball season was in the midst of its brief halt for the All-Star Game in Washington, D.C. For the Oakland Athletics, it felt as if the season was just getting started. Through the end of May, the team had merely been average, at least by the most traditional statistic: win-loss record. On May 31, the A’s were 29-28. But a 68-37 record (a 105-win pace) over their final 105 games turned a decent season into an excellent one. The A’s finished 97-65, the franchise’s best record since 2002, en route to capturing the second AL Wild Card spot.

In 2019, the Athletics are writing the script to a sequel. On May 31, the team was again 29-28, but since that time, their 26-13 record is the second-best in the American League and the fourth-best in baseball overall. During this stretch, their pitching has been remarkable:

Read the rest of this entry »

Terrance Gore’s job is to come into games as a pinch-runner and steal bases. He might want to do more, but at the major league level, baserunning is his calling. Entering this season, Gore had totaled one hit, one walk, and one HBP in his career, including the postseason. Despite almost never reaching base, Gore has 32 career steals and had been caught just five teams before this year. Of his 61 appearances before 2019, 55 have come in September, when rosters are larger, or in the playoffs, when fewer pitchers are required. The Royals gave Gore a shot at slightly more playing time this year, but ultimately designated him for assignment. After he cleared waivers, he was traded to the New York Yankees for cash considerations, so Gore might once again loom large in September and the postseason.

What’s weird about Gore this season is that his stolen base numbers aren’t very good. He’s 13-of-18 on steals, and while that might be just fine for most players, when stealing bases is a huge part of your job, it’s really not that great. His sprint speed is one of the best in the game, so it’s pretty curious that he’s been caught stealing five times. Maybe teams are onto him, though that never stopped him before. Let’s take a closer look.

Gore’s first caught stealing happened on April 17 in the eighth inning. He didn’t get caught stealing so much as he got caught leaning as the photo shows below.

Gore’s next misadventure on the basepaths happened against the Yankees on April 21. Second one same as the first. Read the rest of this entry »

In a year not otherwise flowing with surprises on the team level, the Texas Rangers have been a big one. A 50-46 record isn’t one that’s dominating the American League or the AL West but it’s good enough that if the season ended today, the Rangers would finish 16 games ahead of their preseason ZiPS projections on a seasonal basis. One of the players most responsible for Texas’s surprise prediction-rebellion is Mike Minor. At 8-4 with a 2.73 ERA — even his 3.82 FIP is just fine in 2019’s Sillyball environment — Minor made his first All-Star Game. From missing two seasons with shoulder problems to becoming a successful Royals reclamation projection to growing into a solid No. 2 starter to being named an All-Star, Minor’s emergence has been one of the best stories in baseball in 2019. And sports being cruel sometimes, the Rangers may very well be best-served by allowing Minor to wear another uniform in the denouement.

Coming into 2019, the computer’s reasons for Rangers skepticism were straightforward: Texas had some interesting, top-tier talent but also a stunning lack of depth around the diamond. Not a single Ranger had a three-WAR season in 2018 and the team’s WAR leader, Jurickson Profar, was an Oakland Athletic. Even the team’s most interesting talent had questions, whether it was Joey Gallo‘s batting average, Jose Leclerc‘s sustainability, Rougned Odor alternating between being Jeff Kent and Clark Kent, or Nomar Mazara’s puzzling lack of development. On some level, ZiPS wasn’t wrong, as the Rangers still lack depth, but it missed out on the magnitude of their good performances. Mike Minor and Lance Lynn look like pitchers you’d actually like pitching in a playoff game, Joey Gallo has spent much of the season challenging the Alomar Line instead of the Mendoza, and Hunter Pence is having one of the wildest, out-of-nowhere offensive comebacks that I can remember.

So, given all these happy surprises, which have led to real playoff contention, why should they explore a Minor trade? Read the rest of this entry »

On an extremely superficial level, Tyler O’Neill looks like any other high-level prospect bouncing between the minors and the majors. After posting a 107 wRC+ in his first shot at Triple-A in 2017, he’s been excellent there over the past two years, putting up a combined 143 wRC+ in 427 PA. He’s been above-average in parts of two seasons in the majors — a 121 wRC+ over 232 PA. If the Cardinals didn’t have such an outfield logjam, he might have earned more major league playing time; indeed, the team traded Tommy Pham last summer in an attempt to find more plate appearances for O’Neill and Harrison Bader.

Look even slightly closer, though, and the narrative of O’Neill as average baseball player falls apart. Here is O’Neill, after his teammates tore off his jersey and undershirt following a walk-off home run. Even through the water droplets on the camera lens, his bulk is obvious:

How average can someone with biceps the size of most human beings’ legs be? Read the rest of this entry »

Justin Turner jumpstarted his career following a swing change prior to the 2014 season. The Los Angeles Dodgers third baseman has spoken on the subject several times, with no shortage of stories chronicling his journeyman-to-slugger evolution.

That doesn’t mean that Turner doesn’t have more to say about hitting. He still has plenty to share on the intricacies of his craft, both philosophically and as they pertain to his own experience. When it comes to a good thing, there’s always room for more.

The conversation that follows took place this past Sunday.

———

David Laurila: Do you see hitting as more or an art, or more of a science?

Justin Turner: “Honestly, I think it’s both. When you’re talking about the mechanics of the swing, and the position you’re trying to get in, there is definitely science involved. You need to understand how your body works — or, if you’re working with someone else, understanding how their body works — in order to get into the best position to have consistent success.

“Then, when you’re in the box, you have that cat-and-mouse game with the pitcher you’re going to face three or four times. How is he going to attack you? How is he going to approach you? That’s more of the art of hitting.”

Laurila: Doing what feels natural isn’t always going to be optimal. Is that accurate?

Turner: “Usually, what’s natural is what’s comfortable. You definitely want to feel comfortable in the box, but sometimes when you get into bad habits, comfortable isn’t always the right answer. I think there’s a time for feeling uncomfortable, to get yourself out of some unwanted habits you have. If that makes sense.”

Laurila: Can you elaborate? Read the rest of this entry »

Adam Wainwright wasn’t supposed to be pitching this season. After a 13-year run that had become increasingly injury-plagued since 2015, he was contemplating retiring at the end of 2018. His five-year contract extension, which had been paying him almost $20 million annually, was expiring at the end of the year and he had spent the majority of the season on the injured list with elbow inflammation. At 37 years old with a very successful and storied career under his belt, no one would have questioned him if he had hung up his spikes.

Wainwright returned to the mound for four starts in September and rediscovered his feel for pitching, even if his results didn’t exactly match. He allowed 12 runs in just over 22 innings in the final month of the season despite posting a 3.21 FIP during that stretch. Instead of a last-minute retirement tour, those four games became the building blocks for his resurgence this year.

It turns out the Cardinals weren’t ready to part with Wainwright either. They re-signed him to a one-year, incentive-laden contract with a $2 million base salary. With Carlos Martinez injured and then sent to the bullpen, Michael Wacha ineffective and also relegated to relief, and Alex Reyes not yet ready for prime time, the Cardinals have had to rely on Wainwright a little more than they were supposed to. Read the rest of this entry »