Kevin Goldstein and I have updated the pro portion of the Top 100, which means we quickly reviewed the placement of players in the 50 FV tier and above, and considered who was not yet in those tiers but should be based on how they’ve looked during the first month of the 2021 season. I still have three total org audits to do — Milwaukee, Oakland and the Cubs — before I start peeling graduates off the list. Those will be completed shortly. You can find the updated list here.

Also, if you missed it, Kevin and I updated our draft rankings and posted a Mock Draft on Monday.

The lone change up near the top of the 100 is Riley Greene moving into the top 20; he’s in the mix with several other similarly-aged players with the talent to be consistent All-Stars, like Bobby Witt Jr., Julio Rodríguez, and Corbin Carroll.

DL Hall moved into the 55 FV tier on the strength of his stuff. He’s still walking a fairly high rate of opposing batters but just on the strength of his three plus pitches, could be a Haderesque relief weapon even if he can’t start. Read the rest of this entry »

Jharel Cotton is trying to revive his career in the Texas Rangers organization. Three years removed from Tommy John surgery — and four years after making 24 starts for the Oakland A’s — the 29-year-old native of the Virgin Islands is taking the mound for the Triple-A Round Rock Express. Progress has been slower than ideal. In eight appearances comprising 17-and-two-thirds innings, Cotton has a 4.58 ERA and, more importantly, less feel for his deliveries that he did pre-injury.

He believes it’s only a matter of time.

“I didn’t play in 2018, I barely played in 2019, and 2020 was a scratch because of the pandemic,” Cotton explained earlier this week. “Now 1 have a full year, and within a full year I’ll be back to myself. I just have to keep putting in the work and trusting the process — going through the process of getting my arm to feel normal again. A lot of guys get back quickly and other guys get back not as quick. Everything will work out in its own time.”

Cotton’s velocity is slowly coming back — his fastball has been ranging between 92-96 mph — although his command has lagged a little behind. Ditto the crispness of his cutter, curveball, and changeup. But again, he’s not overly concerned. As he put it, “I lost a lot of those things, but I feel I’m putting the pieces back together.”

Cotton’s comeback isn’t the only reason I wanted to talk to him for today’s column. I also wanted to revisit a story I’d read about him back when he was still pitching for the A’s.

Originally in the Los Angeles Dodgers system, Cotton went to Oakland in August 2016 as part of a five-player deal involving Rich Hill. A few years earlier, he was a minor-leaguer making ends meet during the offseason. That’s when he learned to love shoveling snow. Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox caught us all by surprise by jumping out to an incredible start en route to an early-season lead atop the AL East. As Tony Wolfe wrote, the strong performance was largely thanks to consistent run-scoring and a dominant bullpen. Fast-forward to mid-May, and Boston is still there, first in the division and continuing to climb up various weekly Power Rankings (including our own). As impressive as the Red Sox have been at the plate, though, the rotation seems to have been overshadowed. I get it; there’s not a lot of name brand recognition. Their two best starters from 2019, Chris Sale and Eduardo Rodriguez, pitched a grand total of 0 innings in 2020. But after taking three of four from the Angels over the weekend, the Red Sox lead the American League in FIP (3.29) among starting pitchers.

Leading the charge is Nathan Eovaldi. His most recent start extended his streak without giving up a homer to 50 innings; he is the only qualified starting pitcher who has yet to do so. That helps make up for a modest 4.50 ERA and strikeout-per-nine rate of 8.46; his FIP is 2.15. Since he’s been in Boston, Eovaldi has struggled with home runs, allowing an average of 1.86 per nine over the past two seasons. That makes sense, as he’s always allowed a lot of balls to be put in play with a penchant for giving up the occasional dinger. But so far this season, the expected value in terms of xwOBA on those balls suggests that Eovaldi is eliciting softer contact, which is supported by his peripherals.

Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin. Read previous installments here.

Eric’s Notes (Games from May 12)

Cody Poteet, RHP, Miami Marlins
Level & Affiliate: MLB   Age: 26   Org Rank: 24   FV: 40 Line: 5 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 0 BB, 6 K

Notes
Poteet was a prospect several years ago, last on the Marlins list in 2017 (it was just 13 names long) as a potential backend starter. He had a two-tick velo bump during quarantine, and after sitting 89-93 and topping out at 95 in 2019, he’s sitting 92-95 and touching 96 now. He had a 10-strikeout start in his first 2021 minor league outing then was immediately promoted to the big league team for Wednesday’s start. It’s surprising that Poteet had such a late bump in velocity. His era of UCLA pitcher had already adopted Driveline principals, and I would have guessed he was already maxed out. Of his three secondaries, Poteet most-often deploys his changeup, a heavy, sinking offering in the 85-88 mph range. His slider has more linear movement than two-planed sweeping shape, but it can still miss bats if it’s located away from righty batters. His curveball has plus-plus spin rates but is easy to identify out of his hand since he has a sink/tail-oriented fastball, and Poteet hung a couple of them Wednesday, one of which got put into the seats. The limited utility of his breaking balls and his fastball being more of a grounder-getter than a bat-misser holds Poteet in the low-variance backend starter bucket for me. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Jarren Duran, CF, Boston Red Sox
Level & Affiliate: Triple-A Worcester   Age: 24   Org Rank: 7   FV: 45
Line: 2-for-5, 2 HR, 2 K

Notes
This is the kind of thing you like to see from a guy who clearly underwent a swing change last year but wasn’t able to play in actual games to show us if it was going to have a meaningful impact. In fact, when Duran went to Puerto Rico for winter ball after spending the summer at the alt site, he failed to hit for power there as well. Now he already has three homers in 2021, which is just two shy of his single-season career high. As he’s doing this, Duran is also striking out 33% of the time, a far cry from the ultra-low rates that helped make him a prospect in the first place. It’s rare for a prospect this old to be such a high-variance player. We’re all learning about how Duran’s swing change is going to alter his output in real time. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2018, Matt Barnes had a promising season for the Red Sox. He struck out 36.2% of the batters he faced en route to a 3.65 ERA and 2.71 FIP. His one weakness? He walked 11.7% of the batters he faced, a dangerous number. That pattern carried through to 2019; he struck out 38.6% of his opponents but walked 13.3% of them. That strikeout rate is wonderful, but the walks gave him little margin for error, as evidenced by 2020, when he struck out 30.4% of his opponents (still great) but walked 13.7% on his way to a below-replacement-level season.

In 2021, you’ll never believe it — Barnes is striking out the world again, with a 48.4% strikeout rate that’s fourth among relievers, behind only Aroldis Chapman, James Karinchak, and Josh Hader. Oh yeah — he’s also walking 4.8% of his opponents and has been quite possibly the most valuable reliever in the game. Let’s get an explanation for that, shall we?

At surface level, it’s easy! Take a look at swinging strike rate, a statistic that becomes reliable quickly:

A 19.1% swinging strike rate is excellent; top-of-the-league excellent, really. Also true: Barnes hasn’t changed his pitch mix. He’s a two-pitch reliever, with a riding four-seamer and hammer curve. He throws them both roughly half the time, and they spin more or less exactly opposite out of his hand, which seems to help them both play up:

Great, problem solved. Hard curveball, decent fastball, they both play into each other’s deception, sounds like a good reliever to me. One small problem: there are maybe 50 relievers like that in baseball, and Barnes was also like that in the past, when he was far more walk-prone without his current killer strikeout numbers. Read the rest of this entry »

So far, the Red Sox have been one of this season’s biggest surprises. Since Opening Day, the Sox have already increased their playoff odds by 23.6 percentage points up to 61.5%, the second-largest percentage point increase in baseball (Athletics, +25.7).

To reach the pinnacle of the AL East this quickly, Boston has been successful on both sides of the ball, but it’s the team’s offense that has found itself alone at the top of most major league leaderboards. Through games on Saturday, the Red Sox are slashing .269/.334/.445, with the batting average and slugging percentage each ranking tops among the 30 teams. Their .338 wOBA is seven points above the next-best team, the Dodgers, and their park-adjusted 115 wRC+ is three points above Los Angeles as well.

The entire lineup is hitting, but it’s their core five of J.D. Martinez (195 wRC+), Xander Bogaerts (176 wRC+), Rafael Devers (150 wRC+), Alex Verdugo (135 wRC+), and Christian Vázquez (100 wRC+) that have more or less led the way. And though this could easily be an article about any of those five players’ starts, I want to highlight Devers, whose .281/.371/.544 slash line through games on Saturday actually represents one of the biggest under-performances in baseball relative to his batted ball quality. Read the rest of this entry »

Eduardo Rodriguez has been one of the vital cogs for the resurgent Red Sox. Sure, Boston’s league-leading wRC+ is the main impetus for the club’s success. But both the starting rotation and the bullpen have been in the top third of the league and Rodriguez has been one of the larger actors of the former’s placement among the league-leaders. Rodriguez has accumulated 0.4 WAR in just four starts and 23 innings of work. He sports a 3.52 ERA and 3.34 FIP despite allowing a gaudy 17.4% HR/FB. The main driver of his results? Not only is he striking out a shade more than 29% of opposing hitters (after posting marks of 24.8% and 26.4% the previous two seasons), his walk rate sits at a sparkling 2.2%. This start is already extremely impressive. But in the context of what he endured in the very recent past, I would say it’s extraordinary.

For those unfamiliar, Rodriguez missed the entire 2020 campaign. It wasn’t due to an elbow injury or shoulder soreness or forearm tightness. Rodriguez suffered myocarditis; a heart condition connected to contracting COVID-19. Speaking to Joon Lee of ESPN, Rodriguez said he could not throw pitches without feeling significant fatigue brought on by the effects of his condition. He was unable to train for three months. This meant that not only did he miss last season but he was behind the proverbial eight ball when it came to preparing for the 2021 season.

Getting back on the mound was an amazing accomplishment alone. Having one of the most dominant starts to the season among all starting pitchers is one of the most surprising developments of the young season. Rodriguez has not just picked up where he left off. He has adjusted his pitch mix and fundamentally changed the method by which he attacks hitters.

His fastball velocity is down a half a tick, despite the league average increasing by half a tick.

But that hasn’t proven to be a problem. As I alluded to, he has made major tweaks to his arsenal in 2021. In his first three major league seasons, Rodriguez leveraged his plus fastball velocity by throwing the pitch about 60% of the time. As the velocity diminished, he began to rely on the pitch less in 2018-19. Now the four-seamer is his second-most used pitch:

The end of April always sees some teams with their hands hovering above the panic button, some pitchers wondering what the heck is happening, and others hoping their newfound glory is more than just a phase. As the month comes to a close, we’ll see all of those tropes beautifully on display. Here are the week’s best matchups.

Tuesday, April 27, 6:10 PM ET: Kenta Maeda vs. Aaron Civale

Heading into the season, three AL Central teams had playoff odds above 24%. Nearly a month into things, two of those teams are struggling with losing records (Minnesota and Cleveland), while the Royals, who had the fourth-lowest playoff odds of any AL team, are the surprise of the spring. This week brings the first Minnesota-Cleveland series of the year as both sides try to find their mojo. On Tuesday, they’ll each turn to guys with a wide array of pitches who currently occupy different ends of the success spectrum.

One year removed from finishing second in Cy Young voting and AL starter WAR, Kenta Maeda is searching for answers. He’s only seen the sixth inning once in his four starts this year, going exactly 6.0 innings in a game against the clawless Tigers. He’s had two starts flame out at 4.1 innings; his other outing was a meltdown at the Coliseum on April 21. The A’s clobbered three home runs, whacked five balls with exit velocities above 100 mph, plated seven earned runs, and hooked him after three innings.

Those big-time exit velocities are becoming a troubling trend for Maeda, a pitcher who thrived in his first five major league seasons by limiting hard contact. According to Statcast, Maeda had the lowest average exit velocity among all starters from 2015-20 who threw at least 500 innings. Today, he’s floundering in the 28th percentile for average exit velocity and the 29th percentile for hard-hit percentage, partially due to the fact that his four-seam fastball just flat out ain’t working.

Last season, when Maeda had the lowest average exit velocity of any starter and the highest K% of his career, hitters flailed their way to a .086 batting average and .103 wOBA (.150 xwOBA) on his fastball. The average exit velocity against that pitch (83.4 mph) was even weaker than his league-leading overall average (85.3). This year, that’s all gone awry. His fastball is getting lit up for a .313 average and .372 wOBA (.430 xwOBA). He even allowed a home run on the fastball for the first time in his Twins tenure. This Matt Olson skyscraper, measured at 107.8 mph on a middle-middle meatball, is a perfect encapsulation of how things are going for Maeda when his catcher puts down one finger.

Aaron Civale, on the other hand, has taken the thump out of opponents’ bats. Cleveland’s third-year righty is in the 88th percentile of exit velocity, and his heater is the one steadying the ship. As Devan Fink laid out, Civale has overhauled everything, mainly his philosophy on fastballs. After throwing a four-seam 2.5% of the time in 2020, he’s shot that percentage all the way up near 30.

It’s now Civale’s turn for a tour of the exit velocity leaderboard. His revamped changeup – which, as Devan also mentioned, is now a split-change – is working so well that he may even want to consider upping its dosage. The split-change is sending everyone back to the dugout having made weak contact (or no contact at all), but particularly left-handers, who have yet to record an extra base hit, and are slap boxing a 78.0 average exit velocity against this diverting action.

Like a scrap-hungry seagull or a fan with the day off tomorrow, Civale is also sticking around late into the game. As opposed to Maeda, Civale has pitched into the sixth inning in each of his starts, twice going seven frames or longer. With both teams looking to course-correct after chumpish starts, and the Royals’ making things even more crowded in the Central, Tuesday’s Maeda-Civale ticket is one to pinpoint.

Friday, April 30, 9:40 PM ET: John Means vs. Jesús Luzardo

Fresh off a resounding 8-1 win that ended Oakland’s 13-game winning streak, the Orioles meet the A’s for a second straight weekend series. John Means will attempt to keep Oakland earth-bound on Friday, matched up with the same youngster he defeated last time out. Means and Luzardo had a timeshare of the strike zone when they last linked up, pouring in strikes on over 60% of their identical 101 pitch counts.

Means has stuck to the same script for virtually his entire career, though this season he’s relegating his slider from supporting actor to bit part. With roughly 10 mph separating his fastball and changeup – Means’ most common offerings – the rock of the Orioles’ rotation is letting those two do the lion’s share of the work. Eighty-three of his 101 pitches in the clubs’ first meeting were either a fastball or changeup, and the A’s could only scrape together two hits in 6.1 innings. Will Means follow the same path when they collide this weekend, or will he try to confound Oakland by peppering in more sliders and curves?

Both pitchers will throw their fastballs more often than not, though they use different lanes of the highway. Per Baseball Savant, Luzardo was responsible for each of the 23 highest-velocity pitches in Sunday’s game against Means, topping out just a hair under 98 mph.

The Athletics’ Peruvian prodigy took the L thanks to Austin Hays’ two home runs, giving Luzardo five gopher balls in 25 innings, all provided by right-handed hitters. Since his big-league career began in 2019, Luzardo has allowed 15 home runs, 14 of which have come from the right side of the batter’s box. (To satiate your daily need for useless trivia, the only lefty to take Luzardo deep is Mariners’ 28-year-old rookie José Marmolejos.) Don’t let the Orioles band of nameless, faceless offensive players fool you. Though they’ve managed just one souvenir shot against lefties this season, Baltimore’s left-handed hitters are fifth in wRC+ against same-handed pitchers.

Friday, April 30, 9:40 PM ET: Jon Gray vs. Madison Bumgarner

Friday evening will be extremely conducive to the two-screen lifestyle, as Gray vs. Bumgarner gets underway at the same time as Means vs. Luzardo. Both of these towering NL West staples are intimately familiar with their opponent. Gray has tussled with the Diamondbacks 13 times in his seven-year career while Bumgarner’s career stats against the Rockies read like a full season for a 1960’s workhorse: 37 starts, 230.1 innings, 218 strikeouts, 62 walks. Despite inhabiting the same division as Bumgarner for his whole career, Gray has only matched up with the inimitable lefty twice. Entering round three, both guys are hot.

Gray shut out the non-Bryce Harper parts of Philadelphia’s lineup on Sunday, allowing just two runs on a pair of solo shots to the Phillies’ right fielder. Though he’s running the first double-digit walk rate of his career, Gray is doing well at keeping those base on balls from becoming runs. His 85.8 LOB% will surely come down, and his .208 BABIP will likely come up, but there are some encouraging trends that suggest Gray’s early-season fortune could be here to stay.

Keeping balls on the ground means they can’t be added to the collection of Coors Field moon shots, and Gray has gotten his groundball percentage back above 50%, much more in line with his 46.6% career average than the 36.7% outlier from last season. The Rockies also have to love their ace’s hard-hit rate, as it mirrors the numbers he maintained in 2016-17, the only seasons he’s eclipsed 3.0 WAR. So far Gray has been riding the slider – a pitch that’s been his best since 2019 – until the wheels fall off. Hitters began whiffing on it 40% of the time during that 2019 breakthrough, and this year they’re hardly faring any better, swinging and missing at a 42.5% clip and striking out in 19 of the 51 plate appearances that have ended with this unrighteous pitch.

The desert faithful will get their first look at Bumgarner since his seven-inning no-hitter. The zero hits part jumps out of the box score, but Sunday’s shortened no-no was also MadBum’s best all-around game as a Diamondback. It was his first start for Arizona without a walk, and he matched his Diamondback-high with seven strikeouts. Bumgarner generated 10 swings and misses on his cutter and curveball, the latter of which is quickly becoming an essential out pitch. With a Whiff% of 40.0 (and a staggering 75.0 against lefties), Uncle Charlie is bringing gifts every time he visits Bumgarner.

This could spell doom for Ryan McMahon, the Rockies’ left-handed hitting outfielder who’s carrying around an 0-for-10 with three strikeouts against the legendary lefty. Trevor Story, the only current Rockie with more than 18 plate appearances against Bumgarner, has also had a bad time. His 8-for-41 (.195/.233/.561) numbers are hilariously heightened by the fact that five of those hits have landed in the seats.

Under the Radar Matchup – Friday, April 30, 8:05 PM ET: Nathan Eovaldi vs. Kohei Arihara

Here’s the situation: Eovaldi has one of the lowest barrel percentages of any starter; Arihara has one of the highest. Unsurprisingly, Eovaldi has been one of the more valuable pitchers around, becoming one of the first American League hurlers to hit 1.0 WAR. He’s done it by converting to the church of groundballs, getting disgusting ride on his fastball, and harnessing a curveball that’s experienced a 180-degree turnaround in just two years.

As recently as 2019, Nathan Eovaldi was downright bad, trying to smile through the pain of home runs and walks. That is no longer the case, as Eovaldi is working on a streak of 42.2 consecutive innings without allowing a dinger, and his walk rate is a microscopic 4.2%, down from the 11.6% that severely hampered him two years ago.

While Eovaldi’s aversion to hard contact has very plainly made him Boston’s best pitcher, his Friday counterpart’s success has been much more confusing. Arihara was managing a 2.21 ERA (3.05 FIP) heading into his last start despite constantly getting hit on the thick part of the bat. After coming over from Japan on a two-year pact with the Rangers, Arihara experienced unbelievable luck through his first four starts until stopping by Guaranteed Rate Field on Sunday. His 93.9 EV (highest of any starting pitcher), 12.9% Barrel% (fifth-highest), and 50.0% HardHit% (tied for highest in the league), tell us that hitters are having a very easy time squaring him up. Yet, he went longer than five innings with zero earned runs in his two previous starts before getting beat up by the White Sox in his worst showing to date, pushing his ERA to 4.03 (4.17 FIP). Even after getting his “Welcome to MLB” moment in Chicago, Arihara still has a HR/9 under 1.00 and is feeding groundballs to 40.6% of his adversaries.

His teammate Mike Foltynewicz, who has the dubious distinction of being neck-and-neck with Arihara on HardHit Mountain, has a 5.32 ERA, 6.78 FIP, and leads the world in home runs allowed. Baseball is hard and unfair.

Tim Mead announced earlier this month that he’ll be stepping down as President of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in mid-May. Who will replace Mead in that prestigious position is unknown, and to my knowledge no names have been bandied about beyond Cooperstown itself. That being the case — and with the caveat that some are less practical than others, for a variety of reasons — let’s consider a few potential candidates.

John Thorn was the first person that came to mind when this subject was presented to me recently. Currently the Official Historian for Major League Baseball, Thorn checks all of the boxes, with one possible exception. At age 73, he doesn’t profile as a long-term fit in that role. (The soon-to-be-departing Mead — formerly the Vice President of Communications for the Los Angeles Angels — is 62, while his predecessor, Jeff Idelson, is now 56.)

Josh Rawitch. who serves as Senior Vice President, Content & Communications for the Arizona Diamondbacks, strikes me as an intriguing possibility. A 1998 graduate of Indiana University, Rawitch has held multiple positions in baseball and is also an adjunct professor at Arizona State’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Unlike Thorn, he would profile as a long-term fit.

SABR CEO Scott Bush would likewise qualify as a long-term option. Formerly the Senior Vice President for Business Development with the Goldklang Group, as well as an Assistant General Manager for the St. Paul Saints, the 38-year-old Bush has a business background other candidates may lack. Read the rest of this entry »