At the Yankees’ end-of-season press conference at Yankee Stadium on Friday, the team revealed that shortstop Didi Gregorius will undergo Tommy John surgery and, as a result, miss a substantial portion of the 2019 season. For better or worse, the announcement of his absence threw plenty of fuel on a hot-stove fire that’s been lit early by the Yankees’ elimination, as this would appear to intensify the team’s interest in pending free agent Manny Machado.

First, Gregorius. Manager Aaron Boone believes that the 28-year-old injured his right elbow while retrieving a rebound off Fenway Park’s Green Monster during one of the AL Division Series games, though general manager Brian Cashman said that when the team acquired him from the Diamondbacks in December 2014, he already had a partial tear that was “asymptomatic” and that the current tear was “the finishing part of something that was a sleeping giant.”

Either way, it’s a bummer. Gregorius is coming off a breakout season in which he recorded a .268/.335/.494 like with 27 homers, 10 steals, a 122 wRC+, and 4.6 WAR. All but the batting average represent career highs. He did all of that while missing 16 games in August and September due to a bruised left heel and then five games in late September due to a cartilage tear in his right wrist. Playing through the latter injury, he went 4-for-17 with a double in the Yankees’ five postseason games.

Read the rest of this entry »

With the presence of two analytically driven clubs in the NLCS, much of the attention paid to the series will focus on how each team responds to moves made by the other in an effort to gain the upper hand. For the Brewers, one area particularly well suited for creative decision-making is the rotation. As documented by Jeff Sullivan last week, Brewers starters recorded the highest collective ERA of all this year’s playoff teams after accounting for league and park. The weaknesses of the rotation, however — in the hands of a club willing to ask questions — also represents an opportunity for creative solutions.

Consider: in the team’s incredibly important Game 163, manager Craig Counsell opted for the team’s best starting pitcher, Jhoulys Chacin, on short rest. Then, in Game One of the Division Series against the Rockies, the Brewers piggybacked Brandon Woodruff and Corbin Burnes before going with Chacin on short rest again for the second game of the series. Counsell bypassed Wade Miley until Game Three of the Division Series and passed over Gio Gonzalez entirely.

For the series with the Dodgers, though, those final two pitchers, Gonzalez and Miley, have been named as the starters for Games One and Two, respectively — even though nominal ace Chacin is available on full rest. In this case, however, the use of the two lesser pitchers might ultimately give the Brewers and advantage,

The Brewers employed a bit of gamesmanship with regard to their probable starters for the NLCS, waiting until just yesterday to announce their choices. How they deploy their rotation, though, could have a real effect on the starting lineup selected by Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. To get a better sense of what I mean, let’s start by examining the potential lineups for the Dodgers with the right-handed Chacin on the mound versus either of the two left-handers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, I examined the federal grand jury probe currently looking into possible misdeeds by the Los Angeles Dodgers in Latin America. Even in a best-case scenario, it would appear as though the organization (or, at least, individuals associated with the organization) is in some real trouble.

According to a report yesterday from the Daily Beast’s Adam Rawnsley, however, it would appear as though the Dodgers have been named in conjunction with a completely different matter, as well. From Rawnsley’s piece:

The email from the manager of a Hampton Inn in Glendale, Arizona, stunned the Los Angeles Dodgers. A minor-league player recently signed by the team had been accused of harassing and then sexually assaulting a hotel housekeeper. The situation, the manager wrote, was “unacceptable.”

“I guess for a few weeks now [the player] has been making remarks and asking her to go out with him,” the manager wrote in an email to a team official that was obtained by The Daily Beast. “She keeps telling him that she has a boyfriend and is not interested but he still keeps making comments. . . . On Sunday things elevated where she was cleaning another room and he came up behind her and grabbed her,” the email continued. “She pushed him back and he came back and grabbed her yet again. She told him that she wasn’t interested and that he needed to leave and he did.”

While the unnamed minor leaguer’s conduct is certainly worthy of some attention in and of itself, the incident is perhaps even more notable both for (a) the Dodgers’ behavior in its wake and (b) the larger implications for domestic-violence policy (or its absence) in the minor leagues.

Regarding the first of those points, Craig Calcaterra provides some further information.

According to internal emails, the Dodgers investigated the incident and, by all indications, believed the maid’s account. High-ranking officials were in the loop, including then-head of player development Gabe Kapler who said in an email that he was “embarrassed for our organization.” Another Dodgers official said that the player was lucky not to be in jail. The police were not called, it seems, as the maid did not wish to alert authorities.

As to the housekeeper’s motivations for not reporting the incident(s), I won’t address that here. There are many possible reasons. If one takes as credible the maid’s account of events, however — which the Dodgers themselves appear to have done — it’s likely that the unnamed minor leaguer’s conduct amounts to a criminal act of some kind (which is relevant for reasons I’ll discuss below).

Read the rest of this entry »

The Brewers and Dodgers, Team Entropy’s darlings, both had to win Game 163 tiebreaker games to claim their respective division titles. They then dispatched their NL Division Series opponents with relative ease this past week, with the former sweeping the Rockies and the latter taking three out of four from the Braves. Now they’ll meet in the NLCS, which opens tonight at Miller Park. The Brewers, NL Central champions, earned home-field advantage by virtue of their 96 wins, whereas the Dodgers, the NL West champs, won a comparatively modest 92 games.

Besides being very good baseball teams that nonetheless had to work overtime to avoid going the Wild Card route, the Brewers and Dodgers have some commonalities. They’re analytically-driven clubs whose managers, Craig Counsell and Dave Roberts, work well with their front offices in ways that show outside-the-box thinking, the former most notably with regards to bullpen usage and the latter with regards to the lack of a set lineup and a lot of in-game position switching. Both teams were among the NL’s best at run-prevention, with the Dodgers allowing a league-low 3.74 runs per game and the Brewers ranking fourth with 4.04. Nor was that just a function of ballpark or other environmental factors. The pair also ranked first and fourth in ERA- (88 and 91, respectively), and first and fifth in FIP- (90 and 97, respectively).

What’s more, both teams have power galore and have been quite reliant on the home run. The Dodgers and Brewers ranked Nos. 1 and 2 in the NL in homers (235 to 218); the latter had the NL’s top “Guillen Number,” the percentage of runs scored via homers (46.5%) while the former was fourth in the league. The Brewers outhomered the Rockies 4-2 in their series, with five of Milwaukee’s 13 runs (“only” 36.8%) coming via the homer; the Dodgers outhomered the Braves 8-2, with 14 of their 20 runs (70%) scoring via dingers.

Read the rest of this entry »

There are a lot of pitchers, right? There are a lot of pitchers, and, therefore, there are a lot of relievers. Some of them have long been great. Some of them have more recently been great. Others have just kind of hung around. Many of them are relatively anonymous. Ryan Pressly has been one of the more anonymous ones. He’s been in the majors since 2013, but we’ve almost never written about him here. Rian Watt did change that a month ago. He wrote a whole article about Pressly, who was dealt from the Twins to the Astros near the end of July.

Watt focused a lot on Pressly’s curveball. He’s been leaning heavily on that pitch, especially since arriving in Houston. Pressly, who’s a righty, throws a four-seam fastball, a curveball, and a slider. It’s an interesting mix for a reliever to have, and it’s further interesting how easily Pressly goes from one pitch to another. He’s not a one-pitch specialist. He’s not a two-pitch specialist. He mixes. He likes everything he throws.

He throws that slider more than a quarter of the time. He’s had a slider for a while. Most pitchers have. But there’s something different and special about Pressly’s slider today. Absolutely, the curveball is important. The fastball’s important, too. It all works together. But Pressly’s slider in 2018 has been baseball’s single most unhittable pitch. That’s measured by how infrequently it’s been hit.

Read the rest of this entry »

The vast majority of our focus right now is on the playoffs, and rightly so. Dan Szymborski is writing postmortems on the teams whose seasons effectively ended in August or September, while Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel are doing prospect stuff. Other than that, we’ve been writing about the events we have literally waited all season to watch. But due to some pummeling in the Division Series, we’ve all been robbed of playoff games for a few days, and the Marlins and Nationals attempted to fill that void with a trade.

Nationals Receive

• RHP Kyle Barraclough

Marlins Receive

• International Bonus Pool Money

A year ago, international bonus pool money was traded at a pretty frenzied pace. There were a lot of teams unable to spend that money due to restrictions from prior spending, and there were a lot of teams trying to create as much space as possible in an effort to sign Shohei Ohtani. The Marlins’ motivation to obtain bonus pool space now is pretty obvious. Yesterday, the club hosted Cuban prospects Victor Victor Mesa, Sandy Gaston, and Victor Mesa, Jr. According Eric and Kiley’s report yesterday, the Marlins are the favorites for Victor Victor Mesa; they had the following to say about the young Cuban:

Mesa hit some balls out to his pull side during batting practice, showing 50-grade raw power, but he has a linear, contact-oriented swing that we think will lead to below-average power output in games. There’s no question he can hit, defend, and add value on the bases, but there’s real doubt about the game application of his power. In aggregate, it looks like an average to slightly below-average offensive profile on an above-average defender at a premium position. Scouts think Mesa is a low-risk, moderate-impact prospect who should be ready for the big leagues relatively soon. He garners frequent comparisons to Cubs CF Albert Almora. There’s a chance Mesa has a three-win season or two at peak, but expectations are more of a solid 1.5- to 2.0-win type player. He’s a 45+ FV on our July 2nd version of THE BOARD, which would be somewhere in the 130 to 175 range overall in the minors.

Mesa presents Miami with an opportunity to obtain a prospect cheaply, and obtaining more signing bonus money increases their chances to do so. As for the cost, Barraclough is an interesting reliever. You might remember him as a guy who struck out 37% of batters and gave up just a single home run in 75 MLB appearances. That version of Barraclough was really good, but that version is from three seasons ago. You might also remember him as a slightly less effective pitcher who struck out 30% of batters and put up a decent 3.66 FIP and 3.00 ERA. That version is now two seasons in the past.

All versions of Barraclough have featured a roughly 14% walk rate, and his most recent season featured a 25% K-rate and eight homers in 55.1 innings. That’s a below-replacement-level season. Worse still, five of his eight home runs happened in 13.1 second-half innings. After a smoke-and-mirrors first half where he put up a 1.00 ERA despite a 3.66 FIP and looked on pace to repeat his 2017 season, Barraclough had 13 strikeouts and 11 walks in the second half, which included a stint on the disabled list for back stiffness. Some combination of a high asking price plus a very poor July resulted in the Marlins holding on to Barraclough at the trade deadline, likely hoping that he might recover some lost trade value over time.

The Marlins opted not to see if Barraclough could recover any of that value and traded him away at a very modest cost. The righty is projected to make $1.9 million in arbitration, a cost even the Marlins would reasonably absorb if they believed Barraclough would be better next season.

Everything has trended worse over the past few seasons. Hitters have been more patient on offerings out of the zone, and when they do swing, they make more contact.

As a result, he’s had to make more hittable pitches in the zone.

That’s meant fewer swings-and-misses.

It isn’t as though the league has caught up to Barraclough. It’s actually the opposite; he has pitched down to the league level as seen by his drop in fastball velocity.

Batters have learned to lay off the slider, due perhaps in part to having just a hair more time to react to the fastball. Two seasons ago, Barraclough was getting swings on his slider outside of the zone around 40% of the time, and batters swung and missed on those pitches more than two-thirds of the time, helping him to a whiff rate of more than 20% on the pitch. This past season, he induced swings out of the zone closer to 20% of the time and his overall whiff rate has been cut in half. He has used a changeup a little bit more and it has been fairly effective, but the overall outlook isn’t good unless he can get hitters to chase that slider.

It’s possible Barraclough was just a little hurt as the season wore on and a full offseason of rest will get him back where he needs to be. Relievers are a volatile bunch, as seen by both Barraclough’s rise in 2015 and 2016, and his fall this year. We probably don’t know what he will offer next season until at least March of next year. For a Washington club that has had issues with its bullpen in the past, he’s worth a flier to see if the old version of Barraclough shows up.

The Nationals aren’t acquiring a proven closer, a guy they can expect to handle the seventh inning, or a guy that can come in and shut down the opposition. That was Barraclough a few years ago. What the Nationals are getting now is a lottery ticket, a chance to hit on the old dominant reliever might still be in there. To truly remake the pen behind closer Sean Doolittle, the club should probably make three or four more moves like this one in order to find a solid arm for later innings.

Lance McCullers Jr. put up some pretty good numbers during the regular season. The Houston Astros hurler had a 3.86 ERA and a 3.50 FIP and punched out 10 batters per nine innings. It wasn’t all peaches and cream — a forearm strain limited him to 128 innings — but he was nevertheless a stalwart on one of baseball’s best teams.

He still has room to grow. McCullers turned 25 years old earlier this month, and in terms of consistency, he remains a work in progress. Borderline unhittable when on top of his game, he’s prone to implosions. Four times this year he allowed five or more runs in fewer than five innings. McCullers readily admits he needs to learn how to limit such damage.

To a large extent, he’s already learned how to best utilize his plus stuff. Tapping into technology and the attained knowledge of veteran teammates — plus the study of others — he’s evolved into a thinking-man’s power pitcher. Thanks to a mid-90s heater and a hammer curveball, augmented by that studious approach, he’s on the doorstep of becoming elite.

———

Lance McCullers, Jr.: “To [learn and develop] a pitch, you need to have a knack for putting what you see, and what you study, into real life. You have to be able to put it into action. I’ve spent a lot of time with Dallas Keuchel. He’s been a huge mentor for me. Read the rest of this entry »

Goodnight, moon. Goodnight, even-year World Series wins. Goodnight, bowl of mush. Goodnight, even-year playoff appearances. Goodnight, Jeff Samardzija’s arm…

In 2018, the Giants beat out the Padres in the NL West. Unfortunately, they didn’t do much else.

The Setup

With three World Series championships over the decade and a fourth playoff appearance, it’s hard to have that much pity for the Giants, who have won more than their share of trophies.

Having aggressively spent after the 2015 season, signing Johnny Cueto and Samardzija in free agency just a week apart, the Giants can’t be blamed for lack of effort. The $251 million invested in the team that offseason was third in baseball. And it paid off, too, with Cueto and Samardzija combining for over 400 innings and 8.1 WAR, in addition to Madison Bumgarner, who had yet to start suffering a freak injury at the start of consecutive seasons.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees’ 2018 campaign came to a disappointing end on Tuesday. After a 100-win regular season that, under normal circumstances, would have won them the division, they were forced to face the A’s in the American League’s Wild Card game. And while they managed to get past Oakland, New York ran into trouble against a Boston club that produced 108 victories, losing the final two games due, in part, to rookie manager Aaron Boone’s reluctance to utilize his bullpen.

Now the focus for the Yankees moves to 2019, when the team will be forced to compete not only with the Red Sox but also the lofty standards set by the club’s 2018 season.

In a sense, 2018 was a transition year for the New York. On the one hand, yes, they began the season by trading for the National League MVP and ended it with 100 wins. On the other, though, rookies — most notably Miguel Andujar and Gleyber Torres — accounted for 1,528 of the club’s plate appearances, the highest total for the franchise since 1969, when Bobby Murcer became a full-time starter. The club’s 5.7 WAR from rookie position players is the third-highest total in the past 30 years behind only last season (due solely to Aaron Judge) and 1989 (when Alvaro Espinoza, Bob Geren, and Roberto Kelly were rookies).

As part of their “transition,” the team finally reduced their payroll by a sufficient amount to avoid the competitive-balance tax and reset the penalties associated with it. From 2014 to -17, the Yankees spend an average of $256 million per year in payroll and penalties combined, per Cot’s Contracts. This season, they are likely to end up around $195 million. The Yankees, in other words, just cut payroll by $60 million. And not only that: because they drew 300,000 more fans than last season and also face a more modest revenue-sharing burden under the new CBA, New York likely ended up with $100 million more in 2018 than previous seasons. In light of that, it’s unsurprising to find that the organization is reportedly planning to buy back the YES Network from Disney when the latter sells it off to acquire part of FOX’s assets. The Yankees are awash in cash, and they shouldn’t have any limitations in free-agent spending this offseason.

Read the rest of this entry »

UMP: The Untitled McDongenhagen Project, Episode 4
This is the fourth episode of a weekly program co-hosted by Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel about player evaluation in all its forms. The show, which is available through the normal FanGraphs Audio feed, has a working name but barely. The show is not all prospect stuff, but there is plenty of that, as the hosts are Prospect Men. Below are some timestamps to make listening and navigation easier.

0:25 – What the guys have been up to

1:34 – TOPIC ONE: Playoff Thoughts with Jack Handey

2:14 – Plans ahead for eliminated teams

2:20 – Colorado Rockies: which prospects are ready, players headed to free agency or one year away, what sort of moves do they make given their competitive situation, featuring Nolan Arenado, Charlie Blackmon, Brendan Rodgers, German Marquez, Garrett Hampson

8:34 – Atlanta Braves: the various ways to approach this offseason, featuring Nick Markakis, Kurt Suzuki, Johan Camargo, J.T. Realmuto, A.J. Pollock, Bryce Harper

14:05 – Who is the NL East favorite in 2019?

16:43 – Cleveland Indians: solving the big holes in the outfield, building on the rock solid rotation, possibly trading from the strength of elite international program

20:50 – Breaking down how Cleveland fell short in the series vs. Houston, including Kiley’s thoughts about an article from The Athletic

24:24 – We make ill-advised World Series picks

25:34 – TOPIC TWO: The Mesa brothers + Sandy Gaston workout

28:30 – Kiley’s adventure in Miami and why this even was different than other open Cuban workouts

30:42 – Eric gives his take and we get into the FBI investigation

36:48 – Does an international draft solve some of these problems? Will the FBI investigation impact the next CBA? What’s the track record of MLB and the player association fixing these sorts of issues?

43:56 – TOPIC THREE: The Kyler Murray intrigue is increasing!

44:18 – Eric usurps Mel Kiper’s draft coverage hair throne

44:50 – Eric is steamed at the football draft illuminati

50:26 – Cal quarterback/center fielder Brandon McIlwain is back on the radar in both sports

51:20 – Kiley has some beef about Kyler Murray as well

53:22 – The guys audition to be football scouts, finding some similarities with baseball

1:00:45 – Eric has to leave to go have his mind blown by Forrest Whitley

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @kileymcd or @longenhagen on Twitter or at prospects@fangraphs.com.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 1 min play time.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS