Eight Major League Baseball teams won an initial victory on Wednesday in two federal lawsuits contesting MLB’s minor league pay practices under the minimum wage and overtime laws. At the same time, however, the judge denied the league a potentially more sweeping victory in the cases.

The two lawsuits were filed in California last year by former minor league players who allege that they received as little as $3,300 per year, without overtime, despite routinely being required to work 50 or more hours per week during the playing season (in addition to mandatory off-season training). MLB and its thirty teams responded to the suit by challenging the plaintiffs’ claims on a variety of grounds. Wednesday’s decision considered two of these defenses in particular.

First, 11 of the MLB franchises argued that they were not subject to the California court’s jurisdiction and therefore must be dismissed from the lawsuit. Second, all 30 MLB teams argued that the case should be transferred from California to a federal court in Florida, which they argued would be a more convenient location for the trial.  In its decision on Wednesday, the court granted MLB a partial victory, agreeing to dismiss eight of the MLB defendant franchises from the suit due to a lack of personal jurisdiction, but refusing to transfer the case to Florida. Read the rest of this entry »

I wrote yesterday about the uncertainty surrounding the #1 overall pick, but that doesn’t keep scouts from trying to figure out who will go in the subsequent picks. It’s way too early to have any real idea what’s going to happen beyond the top 10-15 picks, but the buzz is growing in the scouting community about how things will play out and you people are sustained by lists, predictions and mock drafts. You’re welcome.

I’d bet it’s more telling on draft day to make judgments using the buzz and all the names I mention, rather than the one name I project to be picked, but you guys already don’t read the introduction, so I’ll shut up. For reports, video and more on these players, check out my latest 2015 MLB Draft rankings, or, if your team doesn’t pick high this year, look ahead with my 2016 & 2017 MLB Draft rankings.

UPDATE 5/11/15: Notes from this weekend’s college games: Dillon Tate was solid in front of GM’s from Arizona, Houston and Colorado. Dansby Swanson was even better, in front of decision makers from all the top teams, including Houston, who may still be debating whether they’d take Swanson or Rodgers if given the choice (Rodgers’ season is over). Carson Fulmer did what he usually does and probably has a home from picks 7-17 depending on how things fall on draft day, with an evaluation similar to Marcus Stroman and Sonny Gray as previous undersized righties with stellar track records and plus stuff.

Andrew Benintendi went nuts at the plate again (I’ll see him and Fulmer this weekend). And, finally, Jon Harris was excellent, rebounding from a not-so-great start, so, at this point, I would make Harris the 9th pick to the Cubs and slide Trenton Clark down a few picks, but still comfortably in the top 20. I also updated the 2016 MLB Draft Rankings as a few top prospects came off the DL and impressed, further strengthening the top of that draft, which is far and away better than this year’s draft.

1. Diamondbacks – Dansby Swanson, SS, Vanderbilt
I wrote about this more in depth yesterday, where I wrote it’s down to CF Garrett Whitley, C Tyler Stephenson and CF Daz Cameron with some chance RHP Dillon Tate is still in the mix and SS Dansby Swanson possibly involved. After writing that, I heard that Arizona is definitely considering those prep players, but teams don’t think they’ll pull the trigger on a way-below-slot prep option and they are leaning college, with Tate and Swanson the targets and SS Alex Bregman also getting some consideration as a long shot.

I’ve heard Arizona wants a hitter here and GM Dave Stewart was in to see Vanderbilt last night. I had heard they were laying in the weeds on Swanson, so, for now, I’ll go with Swanson here. To be clear, Arizona hasn’t made any decisions yet, so this group could still grow or they could change course. One scouting director told me yesterday when asked what he thought Arizona would do that “it sounds like they are going to do something crazy.” Until a few hours before this published, I had Arizona taking Whitley, so this is still very much in flux. There’s also some thought that Tate or Swanson were the targets all along and the rumors of cut-rate high school options have just been a ploy to get the price down–you can pick your own theory at this point.

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Chase Utley just finished the worst month of his major league career. The 36-year-old second baseman with knee problems in his past played well last season, hitting .270/.339/.407, with his 4.5 WAR leading National League second basemen. Last year was his his tenth straight season with more than three wins and the eighth time in his career he has had at least four wins in his career. An offseason ankle problem slowed his Spring Training regimen, and the results in April have not gone Utley’s way. Much of the underlying statistics are similar for Utley and pitchers do not appear to be pitching him differently, but the results have been lacking. For a player of Utley’s caliber, chalking up a bad month to a rough run of luck is simple for a player in his prime, but at Utley’s age, questions will linger whether he might be done as an effective everyday player.

Chase Utley hit a meager .114/.198/.200 in 81 plate appearances, and his wRC+ of 1 was second worst among the 186 qualified hitters, besting only Matt Joyce. Utley has played at an incredibly high level for a long time, and there are sure to be lengthy discussions about his possible induction to the Hall of Fame, but April’s production was far below the standards Utley has set over the course of his career. Utley had the worst month of any in his 13-year career.

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We rarely talk about Aaron Harang. When we do, it’s usually to describe him as a “safer” player rather than a good one, or perhaps to poke a little fun at his appearance. He never ranks very highly when it comes time to make lists, and we’re generally at a loss to describe his success. And yet, he keeps churning out solid seasons of baseball.
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We’ve moved our from the west — both NL and the AL — and covered both the NL and AL Wests the last two days. Today, we’ll do both eastern divisions, starting with the National League.

The Projected Standings

The easiest division in baseball to handicap. The favorites just have to avoid implosion to punch their ticket to the postseason, with only two teams even pretending to put up a fight, and neither one looking quite ready for the postseason yet. The fight for second place could be a Wild Card battle, but more likely, there is only one playoff team here, and it’s probably going to be the one we’d all expect.

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Everything you know to be true in your heart but hasn’t been proven by stats is worth hanging on to, even if just a little bit, and privately. The stats may catch up some day. This isn’t to say that all conventional wisdom is correct. This is to say that all “statistically-proven” wisdom is not always going to continue to be true.

Take swinging strikes, called strikes, and Vance Worley.

Vance Worley blew up in 2011. He struck out more batters on a rate basis than he ever had in the minor leagues. He did it with one of the worst swinging strike rates among starters that year. He did it with called strikes — he was fifth among starters with at least 2000 pitches that year. He did it with style, as you can see thanks to Zoo With Roy:

As 2012 approached, I was tasked with figuring out his fantasy value for the upcoming season. I had a personal preference for the swinging strike. To me, there’s no cleaner statistical happening in baseball — that the batter swung and missed is irrefutable. And the swinging strike as a moment is both triumphant and despondent, all in at once. It renders a one-nothing August game watchable. It’s beautiful.

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Making the Phillies outfield isn’t exactly a challenge these days, especially with Domonic Brown slated to start the season on the disabled list. Herrera will likely be flanked by Ben Revere in left and some combination of Darin Ruff and Grady Sizemore in right. Cesar Hernandez is also in the mix, but he’s probably less consequential than any of the players I’ve already named. It comes as no surprise that the Phillies ranked in the bottom four for all three outfield spots in this year’s positional power rankings.

Even so, Herrera didn’t have his roster spot handed to him. He’s earned it with a strong spring. The 23-year-old has hit .321/.356/.339 this spring with 6 steals. He didn’t just beat up on A-Ball pitchers either. According to Baseball-Reference’s opponent quality metric, his average opponent has been a Quad-A pitcher, on average. Spring numbers aren’t all that predictive, but they also aren’t entirely useless. And for players like Herrera with such a limited track record against quality pitching, even the smallest piece of data helps. Read the rest of this entry »

The Chicago Cubs made big news yesterday when they demoted Kris Bryant as he is clearly better than other players remaining on the major league roster. Leaving Bryant aside, there are several other prospects throughout the majors who will not get starting roles with their teams who might already be better than the players ahead of them, including fellow Cubs prospect Javier Baez. There are myriad reasons to keep a player in the minors, some related to service time, some related to player readiness, some related to lack of urgency to win, and some due to sunk costs already on the major league roster.

Below are four players who could help their team now, with three players on teams that could contend, but will likely not make the major league roster. Other players who were considered, but not discussed in depth below are Rob Refsnyder on the New York Yankees, Alex Meyer and Miguel Sano of the Minnesota Twins, Archie Bradley of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Joey Gallo of the Texas Rangers and potentially Micah Johnson of the Chicago White Sox. The numbers below come from the FanGraphs Depth Charts. All plate appearances are prorated to 600 and all innings pitched are prorated to 180.
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Maybe the problem is on our end. Maybe the problem is the increasingly unrealistic expectation of health, establishing a psychological baseline no longer supported by the modern game. In this game, pitchers get hurt, and while pitchers have always gotten hurt, because pitching is a dangerous thing, the sense is things are getting worse, and we have to adjust to what that means. Maybe we just need to mentally brace ourselves for the seemingly inevitable blows. Last season, the elbow robbed us of Matt Harvey and Jose Fernandez, among so many others. Already this season, we came in nervous about Masahiro Tanaka, and now the elbow might have claimed Yu Darvish and Cliff Lee.

The two have different injuries. Darvish has a slight tear of the UCL, and the overwhelming likelihood is Tommy John surgery that’ll knock him out until into next season. Lee doesn’t seem to have a UCL problem, but he still might have a UCL problem, and even if he doesn’t, he’s dealing with the same discomfort that forced him to be shut down last summer, and if Lee requires a surgical fix, the estimate is a recovery of 6-8 months. Darvish might try to pitch through, but we know how that usually goes. Lee might try to pitch through, but in the best-case scenario, that means pitching through pain. We might not see Darvish until the middle of 2016. We might not see Lee ever again on a major-league mound. It’s too early to know anything for sure, except that the news of the last few days has changed the baseball landscape.

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With the Red Sox recently adding Yoan Moncada to the fold last week (details and audio interview), the biggest international domino has fallen and now there’s more certainty for teams and agents going forward about what teams can spend on July 2nd. In an early draft of this article, I was going to point out that MLB still hadn’t told teams what their international bonus pools were, in an effort to discourage teams from agreeing to verbal deals since they wouldn’t know the exact figure of what they could spend. MLB sent out those figures this week, and they fell in line with what teams expected: last year’s slots with a 5-7% bump.

I reported back in December that up to 12 teams were rumored to be considering or had already put enough agreements in place to exceed their bonus pool. I conceded that nowhere near that many would do it and that looks to be true, with closer to five teams looking likely to go over, but many more looking to spend their full pool and maybe trade for a little more, along with rumors of teams considering going over in 2016. Part of the reason for the uncertainty about which teams are going over is the uncertainty surround young Cuban players.

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