Archive for Teams

After a couple false starts earlier in the week, the Houston Astros finally acquired right-hander Gerrit Cole from the Pittsburgh Pirates last night. As Travis Sawchik notes, the deal makes sense for both teams: the re-tooling Pirates get a collection of useful players, all within close proximity to the majors; the Astros, meanwhile, receive two years of a pitcher with a great arm and history of success. It’s mutually beneficial.

There’s a third party that might benefit from the deal, however, and that’s Cole himself. He might be worth more in Houston than anywhere else.

As a major leaguer, Cole has been either good or really good in each of his five seasons. There’s always this sense, however, that the former No. 1 pick could be great. Earlier this week, Travis Sawchik proposed one way that Cole could perhaps unlock the remaining upside in his 27-year-old arm –namely, by throwing his fastball less. In this way, his move to the Astros represent an opportunity: not only is Cole’s secondary stuff ready for more action, but his new team is uniquely suited to help this adjustment along.

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Dylan Carlson was the Cardinals’ first-round pick in 2016, so it’s easy to look at his numbers and say he’s been disappointing. After getting his feet wet with a .717 OPS in his draft year, he slashed a ho-hum .240/.342/.347 in his first full season. There have been flashes of power, yet the switch-hitting outfielder has gone deep just 10 times in 652 professional plate appearances.

Not to worry. While his performance has been anything but splashy, it’s important to consider that Carlson has been playing against older competition since signing. He spent the entire 2017 season in the Midwest League as an 18-year-old.

If he’s sometimes felt like he was in over his head, he was reluctant to admit it. When I asked him late in the season if being one of the youngest players on the field is ever intimidating, Carlson dove directly into the positive.

“It’s actually great to have teammates who are older and have been to college,” said the former Elk Grove (CA) High School standout. I can always lean on them for advice — I like being around older guys for that reason — and it’s also been fun coming out and competing against older guys. I’m learning a lot.”

Carlson claimed he’s essentially the same hitter he was when he entered the St. Louis system. While developmental strides have been made, there have been no mechanical overhauls or watershed moments. Aside from “standing a little taller in the box,” he’s just focused on “refining the basics.” Read the rest of this entry »

Gerrit Cole was reportedly traded to the Astros earlier this week. I wrote about that hypothetical move in greater length here and why Cole might fit well with Houston.

I wrote earlier this offseason that the Pirates ought to trade Cole. The Pirates are re-tooling to some degree, while the Astros are a World Series contender that has been motivated to find a starting pitcher. It makes sense for both parties.

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When FanGraphs conducted its annual free-agent crowdsourcing project just after the end of the 2017 season, the results suggested that Addison Reed would receive the third-richest deal among relievers this winter.

If the crowd were correct, Reed was in line for something remarkably similar to Mike Minor this offseason. So when Minor landed a guaranteed three years and $28 million at the beginning of December — that is, almost precisely the same figure for which he’d been projected by the masses — it seemed that, in theory, the crowd’s estimate represented a reasonable target for Reed.

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There are times when a single statistic grabs your attention. Such a time occurred for this author late last month, courtesy an excellent piece by Sahadev Sharma at The Athletic.

Sharma examined the number of innings recorded for every major-league team by pitchers they’d acquired via the draft since the arrival of the current curse-breaking Cubs regime ahead of the 2012 season.

During that timeframe, which includes six drafts, the Cubs have produced a total of 30 homegrown innings. Thirty! The Blue Jays lead the majors with 1,299 such innings. The Cardinals are second in the majors and lead the NL with 872, according to Sharma’s research.

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After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the San Francisco Giants. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Batters
“Baseball’s biggest disappointment,” is how Jeff Sullivan characterized the 2017 Giants back at the end of September. And not without reason: the club produced the league’s worst record relative to the preseason projections, a development expressed in graphic form just below.

On the one hand, that’s bad for the 2017 Giants. On the other, though, it’s probably good for the 2018 version of the club. The Giants are likely due — due perhaps more than any other team — for positive regression. Even if San Francisco were to field precisely the same roster this next season, that same precise roster would almost certainly outperform its disappointing predecessor.

The ZiPS projections appear to support this hypothesis. Here, for example, are the forecasts for San Francisco’s top-four returning hitters:

The core returning members of the Giants’ offense — Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford, Joe Panik, and Buster Posey — are projected, on average, to produce an additional win each in 2018. That’s in roughly the same number of plate appearances as 2017, as well, meaning that ZiPS is calling for all four simply to play better this season.

This isn’t to say the club’s field-playing cohort is without flaw. No outfielder, for example, is projected even to produce an average season. Nevertheless, a combination of positive regression and Evan Longoria (645 PA, 3.1 zWAR) ought to facilitate easy improvement over last year’s performance.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Cincinnati Reds farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from our own (both Eric Longenhagen’s and Kiley McDaniel’s) observations. The KATOH (stats-only) statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.

60 FV Prospects

Senzel had a spectacular season, slashing .321/.391/.514 between High-A and Double-A in his first full pro season. He’s one of the toughest outs in the minors, combining a patient, discerning, offensive approach with a simple swing, superlative hand-eye coordination, and bat control. Senzel doesn’t have monster raw power, nor does he seek to take max-effort swings by utilizing a big stride or leg kick. Instead, his power comes from precise, high-quality contact. He’s going to be a doubles machine with home runs coming opportunistically rather than as a core aspect of his approach, but he’ll still hit for power.

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I have an early, hazy memory of Benito Santiago explaining to a reporter the approach that had led to his game-winning hit moments earlier. “I see the ball, I hit it hard,” said Santiago in his deep accent. From which game, in what year, I can’t remember. Also, it isn’t really important: it’s a line we’ve heard before. Nevertheless, it contains multitudes.

We know, for example, that major-league hitters have to see well to hit well. Recent research at Duke University has once again made explicit the link between eye sight, motor control, and baseball outcomes. This time, though, they’ve split out some of the skills involved, and it turns out that Santiago’s deceptively simple description involves nuanced levels of neuromotor activity, each predictive of different aspects of a hitter’s abilities. Will our developing knowledge about those different skills help us better sort young athletes, or better develop them? That part’s to be determined.

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Hey, something happened!

Outfielder Jay Bruce has signed with the New York Mets, and FanGraphs readers nailed the terms, having collectively produced a median projection of three years and $39 million. [Give yourself a pat on the back!] Six of Dave’s top-20 free agents have now signed.

Notably, the ballots for those crowdsourced predictions were submitted before it was clear just how slowly the free-agent market would unfold. Since contracts signed after Jan. 1 tend to compare less favorably to the crowd’s projections, this contract should be considered a win for the Bruce camp, especially with the supply of sluggers available.

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Gerrit Cole is reportedly on the verge of joining the Astros:

Or… maybe he’s not:

In any case, it sounds like a deal will get done eventually:

Unless it doesn’t:

While something may or may not be imminent, such a trade would not be surprising: the Pirates have decided to retool at some level and Cole’s name has come up all offseason, first connected to the Yankees (though the Yankees were apparently unwilling to part with Gleyber Torres). The Astros are a top AL contender, the sort team looking to consolidate its position.

The possible return is not yet clear, though the Astros possess the sort of high-end prospects which the Pirates currently lack in their system. So, on the surface, this potential trade makes a lot of sense. A club headed for a rebuild sells two years of control of a top-of-the-rotation arm to a contender.

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