The most obvious park-effect variable in baseball is Colorado’s altitude. Okay, nothing to be done about that. No way to pitch around it. The second-most obvious park-effect variable would have to be the Green Monster in Fenway. Boston’s got something no other place has, and it’s right there in left field looming over everything, and last week I took a look at how pitchers attempt to compensate for having that thing in play right behind them. In short, righties get pitched away more often, and lefties get pitched inside more often. It was all very intuitive, but toward the end, I threw in a note about an opposite effect I observed in Texas. Now seemed like as good an opportunity as any to turn that into a post of its own.

Globe Life Park doesn’t have a Green Monster. It doesn’t have any kind of monster, but it does have a justified reputation of being hitter-friendly. There are many culprits, but among them is a frequent gust that’s caused some fly balls to continue to carry out to right and right-center. It’s been referred to as the jetstream effect, and just as Boston is particularly hitter-friendly to left, Texas has historically been more hitter-friendly to right. How have pitchers dealt with that? Well, I guess I already told you.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the summer at ESPN and FG+, I wrote a piece that investigated just how terribly the recent trend of long-term extensions for players at least two years away from free agency had gone. While Ryan Howard was the obvious poster boy for “Wow, that was a bad idea,” the future deals given to Ryan Zimmerman, Ryan Braun, Joey Votto, Justin Verlander, Evan Longoria and others all look a little questionable now, either because of unexpected decline/injury in the period between the signing and the actual start date, or because of how much payroll space it’s taking up. Not all have gone badly — Felix Hernandez and Troy Tulowitzki have been worthwhile investments — but many have, and that’s without even knowing what’s going to happen when Miguel Cabrera’s eight-year extension kicks off in 2016.

Teams can’t exactly always wait until precisely one minute before free agency to give extensions to valuable players, but giving out these deals so far ahead of time is such a hugely risky proposition, because so much can go wrong, both on and off the field. Organizations may be buying the security of knowing that their player can’t walk away in the near future, but they’re trading off the very valuable ability to gain an extra year or two of information on that player, and it’s easy to see that some of these deals never would have been signed if the teams knew at the time what they knew when the original contract would have ended.

It’s with all that in mind that today I’m interested in looking at a youthful and valuable shortstop who is just about to start an eight-year extension he agreed to with his team two seasons ago. Texas’ Elvis Andrus is only 26, but he’s also coming off the two worst wOBA years of his career, years that came after ink hit paper. Is this contract doomed to sink the Rangers? Or is he still a valuable asset? Read the rest of this entry »

Yasmany Tomas, LF

Hit: 40/45+, Game Power: 55/65, Raw Power: 70/70, Speed: 45/45+, Field: 45/50, Arm: 45/45+

Upside: .275/.350/.480 with 25-30 homers, fringy defense & baserunning value in left field

Note: The “upside” line is basically a 75 percentile projection as explained here, while the tool grades are a 50 percentile projection. See the scale here to convert the hit/power tool grades into production.

Tomas is the latest Cuban defector to hit the market: he should be declared a free agent shortly and is holding private workouts in the Dominican this week after a big open workout for over 100 scouts from all 30 clubs on Sunday at the Giants Dominican complex. The above video is from last summer when the Cuban national team faced college Team USA in Durham, North Carolina. The Cuban team had a lot of trouble making contact against a loaded USA pitching staff (five pitchers from the staff went in the first round last June) and Tomas in particular struggled, going 3-for-19 with 3 singles, 1 walk and 8 punch outs over the 5 game set. Tomas was in bad shape and looked lost at the plate at times when I saw him, but he has shown big league ability in other international tournaments and as a professional in Cuba.

The carrying tool here is raw power, which draws anywhere from 60 to 70 grades on the 20-80 scale from scouts, but the question mark is how much he will hit.  Tomas has a short bat path for a power hitter and quick hands that move through the zone quickly.  The tools are here for at least an average hitter, but Tomas’ plate discipline has been questioned and he can sometimes sell out for pull power in games (here’s video of a particularly long homer in the WBC).  Some scouts think it’s more of a 40-45 bat (.240 to .250 average) that may keep Tomas from getting to all of his raw power in games, while others see a soon-to-be-24-year-old with the tools to hit and think the hot streak of Cuban hitters in the big leagues will continue with him.

Read the rest of this entry »

Because this is an internet baseball column in the year 2014, Derek Jeter was its original subject. The world doesn’t really need another Jeter column, especially one that smugly notes the uncanny similarities between Jeter’s season as a 40-year old shortstop and the 2007 season of Omar Vizquel, the last man to qualify for the batting title as a quadragenarian in the middle of the diamond.

Nobody needs to read that column. The Jeter farewell tour is almost over, and those who want it go to away will be happy and those who appreciate the generation of superlative play Jeter provided will be sad. My opinion on the matter doesn’t really matter. The exercise did bear fruit in one way, however. Looking that the Yankee Captain’s age-40 season (poor, even by 40-year old infielder standards) got me thinking about Jeter’s age-35 season, which was truly one for the ages.

It was 2009 and the Yankees won the World Series, thanks to Jeter’s heroics and a host of very pricey teammates all contributing in significant ways. But Jeter was incredible that year, posting a 130 wRC+ and just under 7 WAR* – it works out to be one of the ten best age-35 seasons since World War II.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve provided a lot of odds this season. There are current playoff odds, based on projections. There are current playoff odds, based on season-to-date numbers. There are current playoff odds, based on coin flips! There are past playoff odds, from any date in 2014. There are division series odds, and league championship series odds, and World Series odds. We’ve also, more quietly, provided single-game odds during the year. At the start of each day, these are based on the starting pitchers and the team projections. Later on, the odds are updated to take into consideration the respective starting lineups. We haven’t put these numbers to much editorial use, but they’ve been there, and over the course of the year most of the kinks have been worked out.

So, okay, keep that in mind. Those numbers have existed. Something else to keep in mind: the Rangers just swept the A’s in three games in Oakland. The Rangers are terrible. The A’s are just playing terrible. Have you connected the points? Allow me to connect the points. Turns out that was a particularly remarkable sweep.

Read the rest of this entry »

Look at the list of two-pitch starters these days, and you won’t find any left-handers. That’s probably because lefty starters have to think about opposite-handed hitters more than anyone. That’s probably also why more lefties use changeups than righties — the pitch is more effective against opposite-handed batters.

Well, Derek Holland’s changeup has seen better days, he’ll admit it. And he doesn’t throw his semi-consistent curve all that much. So how does the Ranger’s mustachioed lefty make it work?

Read the rest of this entry »

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

Here’s the scouting data (not the text report) from what I wrote on the Rangers list, their top prospect, Joey Gallo.

Hit: 30/45, Game Power: 60/70, Raw Power: 80/80, Speed: 40/40, Field: 45/50, Throw: 70/70
Upside: .260/.350/.500 (30-35 HR), fringy 3B or solid RF
FV/Risk: 60, High (4 on a 1-5 scale)
Projected Path: 2014: AA, 2015: AAA/MLB, 2016: MLB

For this, we’ll focus on the hit grade and upside and risk sections. I’ve re-posted a table from the introduction to this series, showing the scale most clubs use to project the hit tool.
Read the rest of this entry »

For much of the past two seasons, “enigma” has been an optimal word to describe Rangers pitching prospect Cody Buckel. Formerly a performance prospect extraordinaire who dominated the A-ball levels as a teenager, he suddenly lost all sense of the strike zone in 2013, walking 35 batters in 10 2/3 innings. It’s one thing to see a pitcher totally “lose it” in this fashion, but it’s another for that pitcher to be one who originally was lauded for his exceptional polish.

With Buckel entering the 2014 season still at just 21 years of age, a second-round pedigree, and a past history of dominance, the Rangers weren’t ready to cut bait just yet. A look at his statistics this past year reveal a pitcher who wobbled through a slightly less disgraceful year than his 2013—a 5.73 ERA in 59 2/3 High-A innings, mostly in relief, a disgusting (if much improved) 19.9% walk rate, and a solid 26% strikeout rate. Instead of being essentially unplayable, Buckel is now just bad.

Or is he?

Read the rest of this entry »

When our other prospect writers submit scouting reports, I will provide a short background and industry consensus tool grades. There are two reasons for this: 1) giving context to account for the writer seeing a bad outing (never threw his changeup, coming back from injury, etc.) and 2) not making him go on about the player’s background or speculate about what may have happened in other outings.

The writer still grades the tools based on what they saw, I’m just letting the reader know what he would’ve seen in many other games from this season, particularly with young players that may be fatigued late in the season. The grades are presented as present/future on the 20-80 scouting scale and very shortly I’ll publish a series going into more depth explaining these grades. -Kiley

Read the rest of this entry »

Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, D’Backs, Twins, Astros, Cubs, Reds, Phillies, Rays, Mets, Padres, Marlins, Nationals, Red Sox, White Sox & Orioles

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

Amateur Coverage: 2015 Draft Rankings, 2015 July 2 Top Prospects & Latest on Yoan Moncada

Scouts kept saying two things about the Rangers system: this is a deep group with prospects at every level and the Soria trade was a total steal. I know you guys would like to know where I’d guess Texas falls in terms of system strength and if Gallo is as good as some other elite power prospect, but I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve done my due diligence on each team. Here’s the primer for this series and here’s a disclaimer about how none of us really know anything, perfect to read before I attempt to tell you everything about the Rangers farm system.

Most of what you need to know is at those two links, but I should add that the risk ratings are relative to their position, so average (3) risk for a pitcher is riskier than average risk (3) for a hitter, due injury/attrition being more common. I’d also take a 60 Future Value hitter over a 60 FV pitcher for the same reasons. Also, risk encompasses a dozen different things and I mention the important components of it for each player in the report.  The upside line for hitters is the realistic best-case scenario (in general, a notch better than the projected tools) and the Future Value encompasses this upside along with the risk rating for one overall rating number.

Below I’ve included a quick ranking of the growth assets Texas has in the majors that aren’t eligible for the list and Dave Cameron shares some general thoughts on the organization. Scroll further down to see Carson Cistulli’s fringe prospect favorite. The next team up in the series, working from the bottom of the standings on up, is the Colorado Rockies.

Read the rest of this entry »