Without a true minor league season on which to fixate, I’ve been spending most of my time watching and evaluating young big leaguers who, because of the truncated season, will still be eligible for prospect lists at the end of the year. From a workflow standpoint, it makes sense for me to prioritize and complete my evaluations of these prospects before my time is divided between theoretical fall instructional ball, which has just gotten underway, and college fall practices and scrimmages, which will have outsized importance this year due to the lack of both meaningful 2020 college stats and summer wood bat league looks because of COVID-19.

I started with the National League East, then completed my look at the American League West and Central. Below is my assessment of the AL East, covering players who have appeared in big league games. The results of the changes made to player rankings and evaluations can be found over on The Board, though I try to provide more specific links throughout this post in case readers only care about one team. Read the rest of this entry »

The San Diego Padres are arguably baseball’s most-exciting young team. They’re unquestionably also very good. Heading into the final day of the regular season, the A.J. Preller-built squad boasts the second-best record in the senior circuit.

How do the 2020 Padres compare to the 2013 Tampa Bay Rays and the 2016 Texas Rangers? Given their respective relationships with those earlier playoff clubs, I asked a San Diego slugger, and the team’s manager, for their perspectives.

“I don’t think there are a ton of similarities, to be honest with you,” expressed Wil Myers, who played for the 92-win Rays in 2013. “Talent-wise, I would say that this team is definitely better than that team, especially from an offensive standpoint. The pitching for the Rays was obviously really good — David Price was a Cy Young guy — but we have Dinelson Lamet, who is a Cy Young guy. We have pitchers from top to bottom. So if you compare the 2013 Rays to the 2020 Padres, I believe from a pitching standpoint it’s pretty even, but from an offensive standpoint this team is much different, and more dynamic, than that team.” Read the rest of this entry »

Until a few hours ago, the Cubs had been relying on the grace of Kyle Ryan as their sole bullpen left-hander. Lo, that is no longer the case: Per reports from Jon Heyman, the Cubs have acquired Andrew Chafin from the Diamondbacks for a PTBNL or cash considerations, and Josh Osich from the Red Sox for a PTBNL.

Chafin has been a consistently useful pitcher over the course of his career, accruing 4.0 WAR over six seasons prior to this one. Though he sports an ugly 8.10 ERA in 2020, his more reasonable 3.88 FIP suggests that there has been some amount of bad luck affecting him over his very small sample of work — he has, after all, only thrown 6 2/3 innings so far this season. Though he’s walked more batters than is usual for him, his 30.3% strikeout rate is consistent with his career numbers. The same is true of the velocities on his three pitches. And aside from a disastrous appearance on July 29, when he failed to record an out and allowed three runs on a homer and a double, Chafin really hasn’t been all that bad.

Chafin has been on the Injured List since August 19 with a left finger sprain. According to Heyman, the D-backs will pay Chafin’s salary down to the minimum, hoping for a “low-level prospect” to come back to Arizona should Chafin make a quick return from his injury, which is clearly what the Cubs expect. When Chafin does come back, he should certainly be an improvement over Ryan. Read the rest of this entry »

The Colorado Rockies made a minor outfield upgrade on Monday, acquiring outfielder Kevin Pillar from the Boston Red Sox for a player to be named later and international slot money.

The Rockies are acquiring Kevin Pillar and cash from the Red Sox in exchange for a PTBNL and 2019-20 international slot money, per source.

— Mark Feinsand (@Feinsand) August 31, 2020

Now, you may be thinking, “Rockies plus Szymborski means the latter is mad about something!” While you’d frequently be accurate, it’s not so in this case. Short of someone mind-blowing like Brendan Rodgers being the player to be named later — Brendan Rodgers will not be the player to be named later — this is a perfectly reasonable upgrade to the roster that is unlikely to cost the team much. Outfield defense has always been one of those awkward problems for a team in Colorado, thanks to the phenomenon, unusual in most locales, of having a massive home run park that also has a gargantuan outfield. Glove-only players tend to not get the same offensive advantages in Coors and the amount of outfield real estate makes it dangerous to have a marginally defensive center fielder man the position, as the team discovered with Charlie Blackmon.

Kevin Pillar had a solid little run with the Blue Jays as a glove wizard who could hit the occasional homer. He’s in his 30s now and there has been some decline, especially defensively, but if push comes to shove, I think he’d be a better defender in center than most of the Rockies’ options. David Dahl, the normal center fielder in 2020, has been out with back issues and I feel that Pillar’s still likely to be better defensively than either Garrett Hampson or Sam Hilliard. With Dahl’s injury history and the Rockies still hovering around .500, a coin-flip to make the playoffs, I think this kind of move — one that doesn’t hamstring future moves — is a good transaction to make.

Pillar hits the ball hard enough that there’s probably some decent offensive upside in Coors as well. He’s hit .274/.325/.470 in 2020 and thanks to Alex Verdugo playing left after Andrew Benintendi’s injury, he’s spent a lot of time in the thankless, awkward task of playing Mookie Betts‘ position in right. Pillar is a free agent after the 2020 season and the Red Sox are at the bottom of the American League, so there was no real reason for the team not to make a trade rather than let him walk for nothing after the season.

The Colorado Rockies have a lot of work to do to right an organization that’s largely pointed in the wrong direction. But picking up Kevin Pillar doesn’t make it any more difficult for the team to (theoretically) do these things in the offseason and gives them a marginally increased chance of making the playoffs this year. A good pickup, so I’ll holster my snark for the moment.

The San Diego Padres have added another bat to 2020’s second-best lineup so far, acquiring first baseman Mitch Moreland from the Boston Red Sox for two prospects, third baseman Hudson Potts and center fielder Jeisson Rosario. Moreland will almost certainly slot in as the team’s full-time designated hitter, occasionally spelling first baseman Eric Hosmer.

If during a word association game prior to the season, you had said “stopgap first baseman,” I almost certainly would have answered with “Mitch Moreland.” Never amazing but also rarely terrible, Moreland has been a fixture as the long-term/short-term first baseman for Boston the last four seasons. Peaking at 2.2 WAR for the 2015 Rangers, he’s put up between 0.7 and 1.0 WAR in six other seasons, building a handy little pillow fort between average and replacement level.

This season, on the other hand, has been something better. Moreland has already hit the 1 WAR milestone in just 22 games thanks to a .328/.430/.746, 203 wRC+ line. No, he’s not suddenly channeling the shade of Ted Williams, but he’s legitimately hitting for more power than he typically does. By Statcast’s barrels per batted ball event, Moreland ranks second in baseball behind only Miguel Sanó. It’s not that he’s actually hitting the ball that much harder, but he’s gotten more loft in his swing; Moreland’s 20-degree average launch angle against fastballs and 19-degree average launch angle against breaking pitches are career highs, both nearly double his marks from 2019.

And while Moreland is unlikely to ever finish among the league leaders in home runs, he has become quite good at harvesting pitchers’ regrets. Statcast defines “meatballs” as middle-middle pitches; an average hitter swings at about 75% of those. Moreland’s rate is at 87.3% in 2019 and 2020 combined, meaning he’s only half as likely as the typical player to leave his bat on his shoulder for those pitches. Here’s his radial chart against middle-middle over those two seasons:

Read the rest of this entry »

Nothing can deflate the excitement surrounding a hopeful contender like a leaky bullpen, but as is the case most years, several teams have encountered just that kind of luck in the opening weeks of the 2020 season. At various times, the relief corps of the Cubs, Reds, and Padres have all been a hurdle for those teams to overcome, rather than an asset assisting them in their playoff pursuits. As much as those units and others have struggled this season, however, no team’s group of relievers has made victories harder to achieve than that of the Phillies. Their bullpen ERA of 8.00 is the worst in baseball by more than two runs. Unsurprisingly, that has had a big impact on Philadelphia’s postseason hopes — at 10-14, the team is last in its division, and second-worst in the National League.

Instead of packing it in, however, the Phillies have dialed up some assistance from the last place team in the other league. Late Friday night, Philadelphia struck a deal to acquire right-handed relievers Brandon Workman and Heath Hembree from the Boston Red Sox in exchange for right-hander Nick Pivetta and minor league arm Connor Seabold. Boston also sent $815,000 in cash to complete the swap, assisting the Phillies in paying the $1.05 million owed to the two relievers for the rest of the season.

Of the pair heading to Philadelphia, Workman offers the most upside. A Tommy John survivor who was still spending significant time in the minors as recently as 2018, Workman broke out in 2019 with some truly elite numbers — a 1.88 ERA, 2.46 FIP, 2.1 WAR, and 13.06 K/9. When I examined him near the end of last season, I found he’d made a number of changes to his approach. He was suddenly throwing his curve nearly half of the time, and had found a way to to dramatically reduce the number of strikes he threw without suffering a noticeable drop in opponents’ swing rate. Read the rest of this entry »

Five of the first 12 picks in the 2016 draft were high school pitchers. In order, those selections were: Ian Anderson to the Braves (third overall), Riley Pint to the Rockies (fourth), Braxton Garrett to the Marlins (seventh), Matt Manning to the Tigers (ninth), and Jay Groome to the Red Sox (12th). Not surprisingly, their respective development paths have varied, injuries hindering the progress of fully half.

Chris Mears — at the time a pitching crosschecker for the Red Sox — was especially enamored with Manning.

“I liked his athleticism, his looseness, his fastball quality,” said Mears, who is now one of Boston’s two pitching coordinators, along with Shawn Haviland. “I thought he would be a longer-term development type guy — the Tigers have done a really good job; he’s made adjustments faster than I would have anticipated — but I remember him being a guy I really wanted.”

Asked why he’d viewed him as a longer-term project, Mears cited Manning’s basketball background, and “less pitching experience than many high-school draftees have at that point in their careers.” Moreover, Manning is 6’ 6” and “usually those long-lever guys take a little bit longer to get the feel of repeating their delivery.” Mears also saw a breaking ball that while having good shape and spin, wasn’t always consistent.

Which doesn’t mean he wasn’t enthralled with his potential. Mears first saw Manning at the Arizona Fall Classic, and based on that look he and Josh Labandeira, Boston’s Northern California area scout, went to see him early the following spring. Read the rest of this entry »

Take a look at the bottom of the standings around the league, and you’ll find some expected names. The rebuilding Pirates, Royals, Mariners and Giants all occupy a last-place spot in their respective divisions, while similar teams like the Tigers and Blue Jays are hovering near the basement and below .500. Yet tucked into that group of teams that came into the season with no hope is a franchise just two years removed from 108 wins and its fourth World Series title in the last 16 seasons: the Red Sox. And while 2020 has been a predictably dismal showing for those aforementioned clubs, Boston’s season has been one surprisingly long tumble down an endless flight of stairs. Entering Friday’s play, the Sox are a miserable 8–18 and losers of nine out of their last 11 games. They’re also firmly in last place in the American League East, staring up at the Orioles, whom they trail by 4 1/2 games.

On the one hand, that’s not where anyone predicted the Red Sox to be. They were no juggernaut in 2019 at 84–78, and losing Mookie Betts was only going to hurt. Consequently, our preseason prediction was a modest 31–29 record with a third-place finish in the division and playoff odds of 64.7% with the new expanded format. But while these weren’t the ‘27 Yankees reborn, this also wasn’t a shipwreck visible from miles away. Instead, it’s been a sudden and violent collapse that’s taken them fully out of the playoff picture. The Red Sox’s projected record for the season is now a dismal 25–35, and their resulting postseason odds are just 10.4% — lower chances than every AL team but Seattle and Detroit.

On the other hand, the Red Sox have come by their awful start honestly, thanks in large part to one of the worst pitching staffs the game has ever seen. Boston hurlers have given up the most runs in the majors (160), resulting in a run differential of -43 that’s third worst in baseball, and have a ghastly ERA of 6.01, putting them in a virtual tie with Detroit (6.03) for last place, and in the running for the worst team ERA of the modern era. Only the 1996 Tigers, who put up a 6.38 mark en route to 109 losses, and ‘99 Rockies, who posted a 6.03 figure, have done worse in the last 85 years. The Red Sox are tied for San Francisco for lowest WAR among pitching staffs (-0.6), have given up the second-most homers in the league (43, alongside the Giants), are third in walks allowed (107, tied with — you guessed it — the Giants), and rank 24th in Win Probability Added (-2.69).

It gets uglier. Owing to injuries, trades and an offseason they more or less skipped, the Red Sox have already used 11 different starters in just 26 games, and those guys have been lit up for a 6.50 ERA in 101 innings (their staff FIP is an only modestly better 6.16). Most of those pressed into service are overmatched rookies and fringe major leaguers, with the Sox cycling through cast-offs like Ryan Weber, Zack Godley, and Chris Mazza. When that hasn’t worked (which is often), Boston has been forced to go with an opener-style strategy of using its worst relievers from the get-go; consequently, the team not only is averaging a mere 3.88 innings out of its starters, but has also allowed a ridiculous 59 runs across the first, second and third innings of its games. The only constants rotation-wise are Nathan Eovaldi and Martín Pérez, and both have been mediocre at best: The former has a 4.98 ERA and seven homers allowed in 34 1/3 innings; the latter is at 4.07, which leads the team, but coupled with a strikeout rate of just 16.5% and a bloated walk rate of 13.6%. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a lousy time to be the Red Sox these days, running an American League-worst 6-16 record while allowing over six runs per game. Chris Sale and Eduardo Rodriguez are out for the year, Rafael Devers and J.D. Martinez aren’t generating anything close to their usual firepower while much of the lineup wheezes, and 3,000 miles away, Mookie Betts is off to an MVP-caliber start with his new team, the Dodgers.

On Monday, Betts continued his early-season rampage, homering for the fifth time in five games. This time it was a leadoff shot against the Mariners’ Justin Dunn:

That was the 21st leadoff home run of Betts’ career, a total that’s tied for seventh since 2014, his first year in the majors; George Springer leads with 36. It was Betts’ ninth homer of the season, which would have tied him for the National League lead with Fernando Tatis Jr. if the Padres prodigy hadn’t hit two against the Rangers (the second of which broke the Internet and the game’s insufferable unwritten rules). The 27-year-old right fielder is hitting .319/.374/.681 with 1.6 WAR, tied with Brandon Lowe for third in the majors behind Tatis and Mike Yastrzemski (both 1.8).

Last Thursday, while his former team was losing so badly to the Rays that they used both catcher Kevin Plawecki and infielder Jose Peraza on the mound, Betts homered three times against the Padres. It wasn’t just any three-homer game, either — and not just because his first homer, off Chris Paddack, came on a pitch off the plate and away (a rarity Ben Clemens broke down on Friday). It was the sixth three-homer game of Betts’ career, which tied the major league record:

There are some prodigious home run hitters on that list; four of the 17 players above hit at least 600 in their careers, while two more are in the 500s and three in the 400s. Betts, on the other hand, is still two homers shy of 150, and yet there he is at the top alongside Sosa (609 homers in 18 seasons) and Mize (359 homers in 15 seasons, a total suppressed by his losing three prime seasons to World War II). He’s been helped a bit by playing in a homer-heavy era, and by Fenway Park as well, in that he’s the only player with three three-homer games there, as many as Nomar Garciaparra and Ted Williams put together. Read the rest of this entry »

Jim Gentile had 21 multiple-home-run games, the most historic one coming in 1961 when he hit grand slams in back-to-back innings. More obscure, but no less interesting, was a two-homer effort at Fenway Park three years later. Playing for the Kansas City A’s, the man known as ‘Diamond Jim’ triggered a skirmish in the Red Sox dugout with his dingers.

“A dear friend of mine, Dick Stuart, was playing first base for Boston,” the now-86-year-old Gentile told me recently. “They finished batting practice, and as I was walking up to the cage, he yelled at me, ‘Diamond, how ya hitting ‘em?’ Then he threw me his bat, and said I should try it. On my first swing, I hit the ball into the bullpen. I got out of the cage and went to throw it back to him, and he said, ‘No, keep it.’

Bill Monbouquette was on the mound for the Boston that day. A solidly-built right-hander, ‘Monbo’ not only had a no-hitter and a 20-win season on his resume, he was a self-described red-ass (a segment in this 2015 Sunday Notes column serves as evidence). If Gentile didn’t already know that, he would soon find out… albeit from a safe distance.

“Come game time, I’ve got my bat in my hands,” recalled Gentile. “I’ve also got Stuart’s bat in my hands. I figured, ‘Heck, I’m going to use his.’ I probably shouldn’t have. There’s kind of an unwritten rule that if someone gives you something like that, you wait until you get out of town. But I walked up there with his bat, and hit the ball in the bullpen. A couple innings later, I hit another one in the bullpen.”

As Gentile was rounding the bases, Red Sox catcher Bob Tillman picked up the bat and saw Stuart’s name on it. Moreover, he told Monboquette. Read the rest of this entry »