Not every team approaches the offseason looking to get better in the same way. That much is obvious: budget alone can dictate much of a club’s activity on the free-agent market. A little bit less obvious, though, is how the present quality of a team’s roster can affect the players they pursue. Teams that reside on a certain part of the win curve, for example, need that next win more than teams on other parts. That can inform a team’s decisions in the offseason.

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The Tampa Bay Rays are a fascinating case study this offseason. They’re not bad, but it’s been a while since they were contenders. They haven’t finished with a winning record in any of the past four seasons, and as things stand right now, they aren’t projected as a 2018 playoff team either. Our depth charts currently peg them for having the 16th-best WAR in the majors, and the ninth-best in the American League. There isn’t a lot of separation between the Rays at 16th and the Diamondbacks at 10th, but by that same token, they’re not that far from the Orioles at 18th overall, either.

With some upgrades, the Rays could conceivably push a little closer to the top of the list and put themselves more firmly into the Wild Card mix. But as Craig noted on Friday, the Rays have already committed to a more expensive roster in 2018 than they did in 2017. As such, they may not have any money to spend in free agency. In fact, they may have to jettison some salaries. Who would they jettison, exactly? Let’s take a look:

So the Rays have eight players who are expected to make $5 million or more next season, either as part of their current contract or through arbitration (estimates of which have been provided by Matt Swartz). Brad Miller is projected to make $4.4 million in arbitration, which is also noteworthy.

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When I talked to Mike Rizzo in Orlando earlier this week, he told me the Washington Nationals have an eight-person analytics department that includes “three or four employees” who have been added in the last two years. The veteran GM also told me they have their own “Scouting Solutions, which (they) call The Pentagon.” In Rizzo’s opinion, his team has gone from behind the times to having “some of the best and brightest analytics people in all of baseball.”

A pair of uniformed-personnel changes further suggest an increased emphasis on analytics. Dave Martinez has replaced Dusty Baker as manager, and Tim Bogar has come on board as the first base coach. According to Rizzo, their saber-savviness played a role in their hirings.

“It was part of the process,” related Rizzo. “Davey is a 16-year major league veteran who can appeal to a clubhouse of major league players — there’s a respect factor there — and he’s also coming from two of the most-analytical organizations in baseball, in Tampa Bay and Chicago. He’s bringing that love of analytics and the implementation of those statistics with his thought process. Read the rest of this entry »

Every Major League Baseball organization has players who fly below the radar. They add value — or are projected to do so in the future — yet are underappreciated, if not unnoticed, by the vast majority of fans. The same is true for coaches, and even some managers, particularly at the minor-league level. Other behind-the-scenes personnel, such as scouts, are largely invisible. Given their contributions, many of these people deserve more accolades than they get.

With that in mind, I asked a cross section of general managers and presidents of baseball operations if they could point to a person in their organization who stands out as being under the radar. With a nearly across-the-board caveat that it’s hard to name just one, all gave interesting answers.

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Chaim Bloom, Tampa Bay Rays: “I’ll go with two guys who we feel strongly about that are actually no longer on the radar, because we just put them on our big-league staff. That would be Kyle Snyder and Ozzie Timmons. They were with us in Durham for a while and have played a huge role in the development of a lot of our young players. One of the reasons we’re excited about what’s coming was on display with that club. They won a Triple-A championship with a very young team.

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With just under two weeks to play in the regular season, much of the focus in media has turned to those teams participating in the postseason chase. We speculate on who’s going to get in, who’s best situated to advance in the postseason, etc., etc. By late September, though, the vast majority of actual major-league teams and players are already planning for next season.

And while the Rays have fallen out of the Wild Card picture, Rays pitcher Alex Cobb is positioning himself well for 2018.

After losing most of the previous two campaigns to injury and exhibiting something less than his previous form through the opening months of the current season, Cobb is saving his best for the second half. His surge is quite timely: he’s set to enter free agency this offseason, at a time when even reclamation arms can earn eight figures.

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Mikey York was coming off Tommy John surgery when the Tampa Bay Rays drafted him out of the College of Southern Nevada in the fifth round of last year’s draft. It soon became clear that he wasn’t fully recovered. The Las Vegas native was shut down after allowing 16 runs in just 9.1 innings at Rookie-level ball.

This year was a different story. York didn’t take the mound until late June, but once he did, he was lights out. In 11 starts between short-season Hudson Valley and Low-A Bowling Green, the 21-year-old right-hander allowed just 36 hits in 61 innings. He walked 11 and fanned 53, and finished the campaign with a 0.89 ERA.

Along with a repaired ulnar collateral ligament, the promising youngster possesses big-league bloodlines. His father, Mike York, played 13 professional seasons and had stints with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Cleveland Indians. Blessed with a feel for his craft and a bulldog mentality — Nolan Ryan and Greg Maddux are role models — Mikey York aspires to follow in dad’s footsteps as a Tampa Bay Ray.

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York on his repertoire and approach: “My biggest thing is that I like to command my fastball — throw it for strikes, get ahead early, work on the hitters. I like to get them off balance by mixing speeds, working inside and outside, changing eye levels. Most importantly, I let them put the ball in play.

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Sometimes it takes a while to really hear an idea. Justin Turner told me something two and a half years ago that only recently clicked. All it took for this idiot to finally understand was an illustration of a bat path, a couple of graphs, and like 10 others players articulating a similar thought. Maybe you got it the first time. The rest of you, though, might benefit (as I did) from hearing it again: go get the ball. It’s that simple, but it’s also not that simple.

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While writing about Miguel Sano last week, I connected two thoughts that had laid dormant next to each other for a while.

Those thoughts, as follows:

1. It’s easier to lift and drive balls that appear in certain parts of the zone; and
2. How pitchers approach batters in terms of location is part of an endless loop of adjustments that makes judging a batter’s true talent difficult.

That confluence of ideas led to an innocuous enough question: could we adjust exit velocity for pitch location?

The answer is yes, of course we can. The next question, however, was much more interesting: what the heck does this measure?

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Below are the updated summer top-10 prospect lists for the orgs in the American League East. I have notes beneath the top 10s explaining why some of these prospects have moved up or down. For detailed scouting information on individual players, check out the player’s profile page which may include tool grades and/or links to Daily Prospect Notes posts in which they’ve appeared this season. For detailed info on players drafted or signed this year, check out our sortable boards.

Baltimore Orioles (Preseason List)

1. Chance Sisco, C
2. D.L. Hall, LHP
3. Ryan Mountcastle, OF
4. Austin Hays
5. Cedric Mullins, OF
6. Cody Sedlock, RHP
7. Keegan Akin, LHP
8. Hunter Harvey, RHP
9. Jomar Reyes, 3B
10. Anthony Santander, OF/1B

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Below is a ranking of the prospects traded this month, tiered by our Future Value scale. A reminder that there’s lots of room for argument as to how these players line up, especially within the same FV tier. If you need further explanation about FV, bang it here and here. Full writeups of the prospects are linked next to their names. If the player didn’t receive an entire post, I’ve got a brief scouting report included below. Enjoy.
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