In a postseason field dominated by the league’s foremost home run-hitting teams, the Tampa Bay Rays are one of a couple outliers. With 217 homers during the regular season, they ranked ninth out of the 10 playoff teams, and just 21st across all of baseball, one of just three playoff teams not to rank in baseball’s top eight in dinger-mashing prowess. But on Wednesday, they proved to be as capable as anyone of leaving the yard.

Yandy Díaz smashed a pair of solo homers, while Avisaíl García launched a two-run shot and Tommy Pham added a third, solo bomb as Tampa Bay silenced Oakland 5-1 in the American League Wild Card game at Oakland Coliseum. The Rays will face the World Series favorite Houston Astros in the ALDS beginning on Friday.

The home run heroics got started before many fans in Oakland were probably able to find their seats. Leading off the game, Díaz worked a 3-1 count against A’s starting pitcher Sean Manaea before getting a fastball high and outside, and hammered the pitch over the opposite field fence in right to push the Rays in front. Manaea settled in to strike out the next three hitters, but he wasn’t able to hold off further damage for long. He surrendered a leadoff single to Matt Duffy to start the second, and after falling behind García 2-1, attempted to even the count once more with another fastball out and over the plate. García punished it.

With an exit velocity of 115 mph, Garcia’s homer was the hardest-hit ball by a Rays player ever recorded by Statcast. And they were just getting started. Díaz made his second plate appearance of the game leading off the third inning, and made it look exactly like the first one. Read the rest of this entry »

Talk of low payrolls and stadium issues will be afterthoughts when MC Hammer throws out the first pitch before Wednesday’s American League Wild Card tilt between Tampa Bay and Oakland. Both teams created necessary distance between themselves and Cleveland to take a bit of a breath in the season’s final days, though Tampa’s late-September gauntlet (they played consecutive series against the Dodgers, Red Sox, and Yankees, then flew from Toronto to Oakland for this game) seems fairly exhausting. The reward for winning Wednesday is a Friday date with a juggernaut in Houston.

Oakland has yet to officially announce their starter (10 AM Wednesday is the roster deadline) though it’s expected to be lefty Sean Manaea, who will be on an extra day’s rest after throwing in Seattle on Thursday. Righty Mike Fiers threw on Friday and is also a possibility to start. Tampa Bay has already announced that 6-WAR righty Charlie Morton will take the ball. Let’s take a look at our starters (**denotes out pitch**).

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This is the fourth installment of this year’s Team Entropy series, my recurring look not only at the races for the remaining playoff spots but the potential for end-of-season chaos in the form of down-to-the-wire suspense and even tiebreakers. Ideally, we want more ties than the men’s department at Macy’s. If you’re new to this, please read the introduction here.

The final weekend of the 2019 season is upon us, and while five of the divisions and all of the super-complicated tiebreaker scenarios are off the table, with three games to play, each league has multiple scenarios that could result in at least one tiebreaker game. Seven hundred or so words is worth a picture, so first, behold this:

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Far from the bright lights of the pennant chase, history was made last August when Oliver Drake came in to pitch the ninth inning of an 8-2 Twins victory. That appearance marked the fifth major league team Drake had appeared for in 2018 alone. He wasn’t done there; Drake changed teams a further three times in the offseason, with some of the transactions just seeming silly:

Drake was good-natured about the whole ordeal, appearing on Effectively Wild to talk about his odyssey. Still, he was clearly eager to put the past behind him and find a home on a single roster. No one gets into baseball in hopes of endlessly bouncing between teams, good enough to play in the majors but replaceable enough to frequently be a roster crunch casualty.

If you haven’t been following closely this year, you might not have heard anything about Drake. Did he slip off the edge of major league relevance, stuck in the purgatory of Triple-A Durham? Nope! Neither did he continue his travels across the major leagues. Instead he got better, and he now figures into the Rays’ bullpen plans for the rest of the regular season and beyond.

How did a reliever who had previously defined the word journeyman turn into a key cog in one of the best bullpens in baseball? For lack of a better way to say it, Drake essentially took every part of his game and made it better. In a world of nonstop player development and video-aided pitch design, no player is ever truly a finished product, and even marginal ones are seemingly a tweak away from being effective; Drake is the perfect example of that. Read the rest of this entry »

With just over a week to go in the regular season, Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole are running neck and neck as favorites for the American League Cy Young award. Verlander leads the league in innings (212) and ERA (2.50). Cole has the lead in strikeouts with 302 with Verlander 19 behind. Even after accounting for Verlander’s 34 homers, his 3.28 FIP is still one of the best marks in the league. On Cole’s side are the strikeouts, a league-leading 2.78 FIP and a 6.7 WAR half a win clear of Verlander. Several other pitchers, like Charlie Morton and Lance Lynn, boast strong resumes, and with five slots on voters’ ballots, many pitchers will receive down-ballot consideration worthy of discussion.

While awards voting is a mostly objective process, when trying to differentiate between a group of very good pitchers, personal preferences are likely to play into the selections. When voters rely on particular stats, be it FIP, ERA, or some other metric, they are making decisions about the importance of defense, park, opponent, and how much talent a big league pitcher is expected to exhibit when it comes to contact quality. Before we get to all of those issues, let’s identify the candidates. There’s a fairly clear top seven among AL starting pitchers (Liam Hendriks might deserve some consideration as well) with Eduardo Rodriguez also included due to his rank based on Baseball-Reference’s WAR.

Here are the eight pitchers under consideration, with some traditional and more advanced statistics:

A look above shows Gerrit Cole leading in the more advanced statistics, with Verlander gaining the nod from traditional metrics, and Lance Lynn and Charlie Morton sort of splitting the difference between the two Astros. Shane Bieber and Lucas Giolito are a bit behind, with Giolito unable to add anything to his file after being shut down for the season. Mike Minor’s case is made by his low ERA combined with his difficult park, as his strikeouts and walks lag behind the other candidates. Eduardo Rodriguez is the poor man’s version of Minor.

If we looked at FanGraphs WAR, we’d see Cole as the leader due to his incredible strikeout rate and ability to limit homers, at least somewhat. Though he has a 20-inning deficit compared to Verlander, the strikeouts and homers make enough of a difference for Cole to take the day. Verlander and Lynn are in a dead heat when it comes to WAR, with the huge difference in home runs balancing Verlander’s lead in strikeouts and walks and Lynn’s more difficult park in which to keep balls in the field of play. Comparing Lynn to Morton, we see Morton with the homer advantage, but the innings deficit, combined with Tampa Bay being a hard park to homer in, gives Lynn the edge. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Madison Bumgarner, Emilio Pagan, and Jacob Waguespack— on how they learned and developed their cutter/sliders.

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Madison Bumgarner, San Francisco Giants

“I pretty much find myself saying ‘cutter-slider,’ just so there’s no confusion. I originally wanted to call it a slider, but it ended up with most people calling it a cutter. Movement-wise… in relation to my fastball it’s kind of like the speed of a cutter, but it moves a little more like a slider. Sometimes it will be a little shorter, though.

“I started throwing it 2010. I’d just got sent down from spring training and there was a guy named Horacio Ramirez, a left-hander from Mexico. He was there. He was an older guy who knew how to pitch, and he threw a cutter. I didn’t really have any off-speed pitches at that time; I basically didn’t throw anything all through the minor leagues, and then … I threw an actual slider, but it was no good at all. When I got to the big leagues in 2009 I threw it some, but it wasn’t no good. Read the rest of this entry »

September call-ups, both high-profile and totally innocuous, have been trickling in over the transaction wire for the last several days. As always, there are some who will have real impact on the playoff race and some who are interesting for the purposes of player evaluation, like your usual spare lefty reliever and catcher (by far the most common types of September additions). Some teams with no new names at all. Below I’ve compiled notes on every player brought up by an American League team since the start of the month, no matter how inconsequential; I’ve slipped some rehabbers and August 31 acquisitions in here, too. It’s a primer for you to get (re)acquainted with players who might impact the playoff race or the seasons to come. (The National League’s complement can be found here.)

Contenders’ Reinforcements

Houston Astros– OF Kyle Tucker, C Garrett Stubbs, RHP Josh James, RHP Jose Urquidy

Kiley and I have Tucker projected as an above-average regular, ranked 15th overall among prospects in baseball. I have no idea what kind of playing time he might get this month. Stubbs (24th in the org) has begun playing a little bit of second base and outfield. A part time, multi-positional role might help keep his tiny frame from breaking down, and enable Houston to get his long-performing bat in the lineup, as well as create flexibility on other parts of the roster.

James was 94-97 in rehab outings before he returned, then reached 99 on Monday. Urquidy projects as a strike-throwing fifth starter.

New York Yankees– OF Clint Frazier, RHP Jonathan Loaisiga, RHP Ryan Dull, RHP Chance Adams, LHP Tyler Lyons, INF Brenny Escanio (prospect)

I think it’s likely Frazier, who many scouts/teams continue to think has everyday ability, gets traded this offseason, both because he’s part of a crowded outfield/DH mix and because he and the org don’t seem to be a great fit. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2019 Arizona Fall League rosters were (mostly) announced today, and we’ve created a tab on THE BOARD where you can see all the prospects headed for extra reps in the desert. These are not comprehensive Fall League rosters — you can find those on the AFL team pages — but a compilation of names of players who are already on team pages on THE BOARD. The default view of the page has players hard-ranked through the 40+ FV tier. The 40s and below are then ordered by position, with pitchers in each tier listed from most likely to least likely to start. In the 40 FV tier, everyone south of Alex Lange is already a reliever.

Many participating players, especially pitchers, have yet to be announced. As applicable prospects are added to rosters in the coming weeks, I’ll add them to the Fall League tab and tweet an update from the FanGraphs Prospects Twitter account. Additionally, this tab will be live throughout the Fall League and subject to changes (new tool grades, updated scouting reports, new video, etc.) that will be relevant for this offseason’s team prospect lists. We plan on shutting down player/list updates around the time minor league playoffs are complete (which is very soon) until we begin to publish 2020 team-by-team prospect lists, but the Fall League tab will be an exception. If a player currently on the list looks appreciably different to me in the AFL, I’ll update their scouting record on that tab, and I may add players I think we’re light on as I see them. Again, updates will be posted on the FanGraphs Prospects Twitter account, and I’ll also compile those changes in a weekly rundown similar to those we ran on Fridays during the summer.

Anything you’d want to know about individual players in this year’s crop of Fall Leaguers can probably be found over on THE BOARD right now. Below are some roster highlights as well as my thoughts on who might fill out the roster ranks.

Glendale Desert Dogs
The White Sox have an unannounced outfield spot on the roster that I think may eventually be used on OF Micker Adolfo, who played rehab games in Arizona late in the summer. He’s on his way back from multiple elbow surgeries. Rehabbing double Achilles rupturee Jake Burger is age-appropriate for the Fall League, but GM Rick Hahn mentioned in July that Burger might go to instructs instead. Sox instructs runs from September 21 to October 5, so perhaps he’ll be a mid-AFL add if that goes well and they want to get him more at-bats, even just as a DH. Non-BOARD prospects to watch on this roster include Reds righties Diomar Lopez (potential reliever, up to 95) and Jordan Johnson, who briefly looked like a No. 4 or 5 starter type during his tenure with San Francisco, but has been hurt a lot since, as have Brewers lefties Nathan Kirby (Thoracic Outlet Syndrome) and Quintin Torres-Costa (Tommy John). Dodgers righty Marshall Kasowski has long posted strong strikeout rates, but the eyeball scouts think he’s on the 40-man fringe. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s no secret that Nick Anderson is one of my favorite pitchers. When he ran a near-50% strikeout rate for the first month or two of the year, only months removed from being traded by the Twins to avoid a roster crunch, I was hooked by the story. More than the story, I was hooked by his curveball, a mid-80s, 12-6 snapping thing that ate batters alive:

Of course, I wasn’t the only person to notice, not by a long shot: the 37% strikeout rate he ran with the Marlins was a top-10 rate in baseball, and that’s not exactly easy to fake. The curve clearly played, getting whiffs on 53.7% of swings, third-highest in baseball for a curveball, and it wasn’t just numbers on a spreadsheet either — you can’t watch that pitch to Carson Kelly above and not say “ooh that’s nasty.”

When the Rays traded for Anderson at the deadline, I was elated. Anderson wasn’t exactly a household name, but he is in my household, and it was quite a thrill seeing a playoff-contending team, one who employs a noted reliever discoverer, concur with me that Anderson was a monster. The Rays don’t quite have the same reputation as the Astros for improving pitchers, but they do have a reputation for getting the most out of relievers, and an unlocked Nick Anderson sounded amazing to me. Read the rest of this entry »

Ryan Yarbrough was in Maddux territory. He’d thrown just 89 pitches as he walked to the mound to begin the top of the ninth inning against the Seattle Mariners on Sunday with his Tampa Bay Rays leading 1-0, having allowed just three hits and no walks against eight strikeouts. The 27-year-old southpaw had two lefties waiting to face him, neither of whom had reached base that afternoon.

The inning started about as well as it could have, as Yarbrough took just 10 pitches to induce weak ground balls out of Mallex Smith and J.P. Crawford. He was now at 99 pitches and one out away from just the 18th complete-game shutout thrown in the majors this season. But as soon as Yarbrough got the ball back from the infield after Crawford’s groundout, he turned to see Rays manager Kevin Cash exiting the dugout and walking toward him. He tried to sneak in a word of protest before Cash got to the mound, but it was no use. His day was over.

“Obviously, a little angry,” Yarbrough said to reporters after the game, according to MLB.com. “But I think [Cash] would want me to be. I think he would want me to want to finish it. I don’t think I have any ill-will about it or anything.”

In the moment, Yarbrough did little to conceal the way he felt about the decision. Here’s the moment he sees Cash walking his way:

And here he is walking off the mound:

From Cash’s perspective, the move was a well-reasoned one. Tampa Bay was ahead by just one run, and the hitter on deck at the time, Domingo Santana, is plenty capable of doing enough damage to a mistake to make that lead evaporate. With the Rays possessing just a 1 1/2 game lead in the second Wild Card playoff spot, there was little margin for error in the big picture, too. Read the rest of this entry »