Archive for Teams

Cal Quantrill’s potential is considerable. Drafted eighth overall by the Padres in 2016 despite having undergone Tommy John surgery while at Stanford — he missed all of his junior year and much of his sophomore season — the 23-year-old right-hander possesses a combination of plus stuff and pitchability. Baseball America and MLB.com rank him as the fourth-best prospect in the San Diego system, while our own list — expect that soon — will have him a bit lower.

Quantrill, who is lauded as having one of the best changeups in the minors, has made seven starts for Double-A San Antonio this season and has a 3.52 ERA, a 3.29 FIP, and is striking out 8.2 batters per nine innings. He discussed his multi-pitch mix, and his take-no-prisoners approach, during spring training.

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Cal Quantrill: “I’m a fastball pitcher. Am I a power pitcher? I guess that would depend on how you want to define it. To me, a power pitcher is someone who attacks hitters, regardless of how fast their fastball is. They don’t fool around — they don’t play around with the edges of the strike zone — they go right after them. Getting ahead in the count is something I take great pride in. I try to make hitters get themselves out, and I want that to happen quickly so that I can go deep into games.

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NEW YORK – On Thursday night in the Bronx, the Regression Monster clawed back at CC Sabathia, whose stellar work over his previous three starts had been one of several factors in the 17-1 surge that allowed the Yankees to overtake the hot-starting Red Sox and claim sole possession of first place in the AL East. Though no longer able to muster the 95 mph fastball of his heyday, Sabathia’s remade repertoire — along with the smoke and mirrors produced by a .211 batting average on balls in play — had helped him to a 1.39 ERA entering the night, the league’s second-best mark among starters. Alas, the Red Sox teed off on a handful of pitches that Sabathia called “probably too good to hit with two strikes” and allowed a season-high four runs in a rain-shortened four-inning start. The Yankees’ 5-4 loss brought their eight-game winning streak to a halt and at least temporarily ended their sole occupancy of first place in the AL East.

Though Sabathia netted a season-high 15 swings and misses against the Red Sox, he was peppered for nine hits, three of which never left the infield — death by BABIP. Just after he served up a solo homer to Hanley Ramirez to start the fifth, putting the Yankees in a 4-0 hole, the skies opened up and drenched the playing field, causing a 55-minute rain delay and ending the 37-year-old southpaw’s night after just 80 pitches. The Yankees lineup, though held to just one hit by Sox starter Eduardo Rodriguez and reliever Matt Barnes over the first six innings, rallied to tie the game in the seventh, only to fall behind for good via J.D. Martinez’s eighth-inning solo homer off Dellin Betances.

“I felt pretty good, maybe a little too aggressive a couple times with two strikes,” said Sabathia afterwards. Indeed, while he had held opposing batters to a .159/.183/.261 line with two strikes (the AL average is .175/.247/.280), five of the nine hits he surrendered were two-strike hits. Each one led to runs: Mookie Betts‘ game-opening ground rule double, the three straight third-inning hits by Betts, Andrew Benintendi (a double), and Ramirez that keyed a two-run rally, and Ramirez’s solo homer.

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You sure wouldn’t think there would be anything wrong with the Diamondbacks. They currently have the best record in the National League by multiple games, and even after a loss on Wednesday, there’s an eight-game gap between them and the Dodgers with almost a quarter of the season already gone. They survived the absence of Steven Souza Jr. They’re actively surviving the absence of Jake Lamb. They’ll try to continue to survive the absence of Taijuan Walker. No team ever stays totally healthy.

And one of the big early stories has been the breakthrough by Patrick Corbin. After eight starts, Corbin owns a 2.12 ERA, with an easy career-high rate of strikeouts. The biggest change for Corbin has been an increased reliance on his best pitch — his slider. He’s now throwing the pitch at multiple speeds, sort of going the way of Rich Hill or Lance McCullers. Corbin is setting himself up for an offseason payday. And on the surface, he’s cruising, having allowed just two runs over his last two starts.

Yet something underneath is incredibly worrisome. Something fundamental to the very idea of pitching. Corbin has suddenly lost his zip. No one would do that on purpose.

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Earlier today, Jeff Sullivan examined the most changed hitters — change for better and for worse — in the game.

In this post, I want to revisit one of the hitters most famously averse to change — for better and for worse — in Eric Hosmer.

From speculating on what sort of contract he might receive to analyzing the contract he actually did receive to evaluating his swing mechanics, this author and others at FanGraphs considered Hosmer at some length during the offseason. He was one of the key figures of public interest in what seemed like the longest winter ever.

It only seems appropriate that we revisit Hosmer this spring — particularly after I approached him in Arizona during exhibition season and asked him about whether he was thinking about making changes.

That conversation didn’t start well.

“What are you trying to ask me? About launch angle?” exclaimed Hosmer as I (indeed) attempted to use that precise term, which can have a negative connotation in clubhouses. The conversation proceeded rather amicably, though, and Hosmer even disclosed he had spent some time exploring the “Air Ball Revolution” and how he could possibly benefit from coming aboard.

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It feels like the Rangers have been playing out the string since somewhere around the fourth inning of Opening Day, even before injuries knocked Elvis Andrus, Adrian Beltre, Delino DeShields Jr., and Rougned Odor out of the lineup. But just because they’re already nine games below .500 (15-24) and no threat to contend for a playoff spot doesn’t mean they don’t mandate some attention. Beltre, who’s back in the lineup, is an all-time great, Joey Gallo is a fascinating player, Bartolo Colon is the eighth wonder of the world, and if you don’t want to see what Jurickson Profar can do with regular playing time after so many setbacks, you must be some kind of monster. Right now, though, the Ranger to watch is Nomar Mazara.

The 23-year-old Mazara has been on some kind of tear lately. Over his past nine games, he’s hit seven homers, including two against the Tigers on Wednesday. In the seventh inning, he tied the game with a solo homer off Daniel Stumpf, and in the 10th inning, he won it with a walk-off shot off of Warwick Saupold. Get outta here:

That second shot, a scorcher down the right-field line, had an exit velocity of 117.1 mph. Coming into Wednesday, there had been just five homers of 117.0 or more, two by Giancarlo Stanton and one apiece by Marcell Ozuna, Hanley Ramirez, and Kyle Schwarber. Hours after Mazara joined the club, so did Aaron Judge — the owner of seven such shots last year, including a season-high 121.1-mph homer on June 10 — via a laser into Yankee Stadium’s Monument Park. Anyway, it’s a cool group to be part of.

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The Toronto Blue Jays managed the singular feat Tuesday of being no-hit and having that no-hitter register as only the second-worst news of the day. Whenever that happens, you know you’re having a very bad day.

Per ESPN:

All-Star closer Roberto Osuna of the Toronto Blue Jays was charged with assault Tuesday and put on administrative leave by Major League Baseball, preventing him from playing for at least a week.

Osuna assaulted a woman, according to Toronto police.

Now, obviously there’s a lot to unpack here, and we don’t have all of the facts. In fact, at this point all we know is that Osuna was arrested for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend, then released. Multiple sources have confirmed that the incident in question was indeed one of domestic violence. But the Blue Jays had what might be considered an interesting response to the allegations.

“We are taking the matter extremely seriously, as the type of conduct associated with this incident is not reflective of our values as an organisation,” the team said.

Osuna has been placed on administrative leave per Article II of the Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Policy in the CBA, a move the team says it “fully supports.”

Let’s start with the Blue Jays’ statement. As a lawyer, among the first things one learns is that words matter, and what struck me about that statement is what was missing from it. Nowhere in that statement is there any qualification, like the words “allegedly” or “if true.”

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Position: Analyst, Player Development

Location: Chicago, IL

Description:
The Chicago Cubs are seeking an analyst to join the Research and Development group in Baseball Operations. This role will focus on the management and analysis of data gathered on players in the Chicago Cubs minor league system and will work closely with the both the Player Development and R&D departments. Succesful candidates will bring a background in analytics, a strong interest in evidence-based coaching and development, and the communication skills to work effectively with player development personnel to apply analytics and improve the effective understanding of data to optimize prospect performance and progression.

Responsibilities:

• Research, develop and test methods and models for the purpose of player assessment and developmentIdentify technologies, analyze data and translate into tangible coaching and skill development objectives.
• Effectively present analyses through the use of written reports and data visualization methods to disseminate insights to members of baseball operations and player development personnel.
• Handle analysis requests from and conduct studies to support player development personnel, coaches, and players.
• Conduct in-depth evaluations of Cubs prospects.
• As needed, travel to minor league affiliates to support player development initiatives.
• Identify, diagnose and resolve data quality issues.
• Examine and implement sports science technologies that may offer innovative data solutions.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in an quantitative field such as statistics, engineering, applied math, physics, quantitative social sciences, computer science, operations research.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Proficiency with SQL
• Working knowledge of advanced baseball statistics
• Experience with programming languages (e.g., C, Python or R)
• Experience or strong interest in using baseball data to support coaching or skill development

The Chicago Cubs are an Equal Opportunity Employer.

To Apply:
Please visit this site to apply.

In the annals of modern baseball history, we’ve seen some pretty bad teams win division titles, with the 1973 Mets and 2005 Padres claiming flags with just 82 wins apiece. If there was a silver lining to the 1994 strike, it’s that it spared us the possibility of a sub-.500 team making the playoffs, as the 52-62 Rangers were the best of the AL Worst, er, West. Which brings us to today’s AL Central. With the Indians (17-18) having lost four in a row and eight out of 11, the division lacks a single team playing .500 ball. Cleveland nonetheless leads the pack, and the division as a whole has a collective 68-102 record and a .400 winning percentage, the worst in the majors.

To be fair, the AL Central did project to be the majors’ worst. Via our preseason Playoff Odds page, here are the aggregated projected standings for the six divisions:

And here’s how the divisions sat as of Wednesday morning:

The AL Central has become MLB’s black hole, sucking losses into its gravitational field. Currently, it’s the only division collectively below .500 (the NL Central has rallied over the past few days), and there’s now a 103-point difference in winning percentage separating them from the worst of the other five divisions. Coincidentally, their collective run differential is 103 runs worse than any other division’s as well.

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Many of us have jobs. All of us have lives. And one thing that’s true about any job, or about any life, is that sometimes you wake up in the morning and you just don’t have it. Maybe you’re groggy, maybe you’re irritable, maybe you’ve got brain fog, maybe you have a headache. For whatever reason, there are simply bad days, and they can happen at random. They can come right after normal days, and they can come right after great ones. It’s all part of the experience of existence. You learn not to let the bad days define you.

Many of us have jobs, and all of us have lives, but few of us are performers. The average employee, when necessary, can hide herself or put forth a reduced effort. You can make yourself scarce, or even call in sick. If you’re just having a regular weekend day in the dumps, you can choose to stay in, to not engage with the world. Everyone has the right to bad days, and most people have the flexibility to more or less live their bad days in private. Other people don’t have to know when you’re off.

Performers, entertainers, have no such luxury. The responsibility is to perform for an audience, an audience that will quickly realize if something’s not right. The pressure to do well is ever-present, because, one way or another, you’re going to have to do something, and the people will judge you if what you do isn’t good. The stakes can be frightening, even paralyzing, because there’s no option to hide when you’re a performer. A performer like Dylan Bundy.

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Among all the transaction/acquisition vehicles available to teams — trades, waiver claims, free agency, etc. — the most unlikely to benefit a major-league roster in a forthcoming season is the minor-league free-agent signing.

Esteemed FanGraphs managing editor Carson Cistulli found that only 1% of minor-league free agents go on to produce at least 0.5 WAR or greater in the following season. They are scratch-off lottery tickets that are almost always misses. So when one hits, it’s worth examining.

Now, it seems one has!

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