In the first installment of the seventh annual Effectively Wild season preview series, Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Bryce Harper, Scott Boras, team meetings with free agents, the season preview series, the Super Bowl, and mortality, then preview the 2019 Reds (12:11) with The Athletic’s C. Trent Rosecrans, and the 2019 Athletics (47:46) with the San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser.
After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for more than half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Cincinnati Reds.
The team’s offense is solid, with the minor leaguers and the addition of Yasiel Puig, but it’s possible to get a little too excited. Even with career seasons from Scooter Gennett, Eugenio Suarez, and Jose Peraza (so far), the team only finished eight in the National League in runs scored and wRC+ last season.
What’s extremely interesting to me is figuring out which possible permutation of the starting lineup they actually go with in the end, because there are quite a few points of uncertainty, mainly in the outfield. There’s tantalizing upside with a healthy Jesse Winker and Nick Senzel available, the latter of whom has a great deal of positional flexibility.
But there are also some dangers. Matt Kemp may very likely be the least-valuable position player on the 25-man roster this spring, and certainly the worse option in the outfield. While Kemp’s offensive resurgence was helpful to the Dodgers at a time when few other players were either healthy or actually hitting, he was dreadful in the second-half of 2018 and his defense started regressing toward his typical terrible numbers with the glove. This depth chart assumes the Reds mainly use Kemp as a bat off the bench and a designated hitter in AL road games, but that’s not actually a guarantee that Cincinnati will be willing to bench a 2018 All-Star.
It’s a little strange, but the Reds non-tendered Billy Hamilton when they have open the exact spot at which he’d be most useful. Senzel’s been talked about as a center field option and Scott Schebler was surprisingly adequate there, but Hamilton would be a good backup for a team that’s hoping to be a serious wild card contender. If Kemp gets too much playing time in left, having a good defensive centerfielder would be doubly useful, lest the other team hit a lot of doubles into the gap of a Kemp/Schebler outfield.
Pitchers
The team’s rebuild has been hampered by two factors. The first was the timing of their various veteran trades, with the Reds having a knack for refusing to trade veterans at the height of their value and eventually getting less for them later on. This was most notable in the trades of Todd Frazier, Jay Bruce, and Adam Duvall. It remains weird that the Reds got a lot more for Alfredo Simon and Dan Straily than those three put together.
The other factor that has bedeviled Cincinnati’s rebuild is the inability to develop pitching from the fairly impressive group of arms that they acquired in recent years. The Reds had hoped to have at least a few solid, mid-rotation arms from the list of Anthony DeSclafani, Brandon Finnegan, Cody Reed, Keury Mella, Tyler Mahle, Amir Garrett, Sal Romano, and Robert Stephenson by this point. While the book’s not closed on this group, the team still don’t have a single healthy, dependable, mid-rotation-or-better starting pitcher.
With the offense looking like it could support a team with a winning record, it’s understandable that the Reds would feel a bit of impatience. There’s no guarantee Gennett will be in Cincinnati past this season and Votto’s age points to an inevitable decline in the not-too-distant future. If you can acquire three legitimate major league starters without giving up any of the organization’s crown jewels, why not? Senzel and Winker remain Reds as do Taylor Trammell, Hunter Greene, and Jonathan India.
My only question is whether it is enough. Dallas Keuchel would look nice at the top of the rotation; maybe you decide not to hang on to all said crown jewels if you can bring in a Corey Kluber with them. Tucker Barnhart isn’t a bad player, and catcher isn’t a major issue with the team, so if you’re going to give up at least one of the team’s top prospects, I’d rather do it for another pitcher rather than J.T. Realmuto, as terrific as he is.
Bench and Prospects
As noted, the Reds have had more than their fair share of pitching prospects not work out, but the system still has bright spots. Nick Senzel has survived into the high minors, as has Jesse Winker, and ZiPS is confident in both players long-term, even if the Reds haven’t quite figured out exactly where they’re going to play Senzel. I wouldn’t be unduly upset about Taylor Trammell’s 2019 projection; he’s not ready for the majors yet. And ZiPS already likes Tony Santillan better than any of the fringier starting pitchers the Reds currently have immured in the purgatory between Triple-A and the major leagues that they created with their winter pitching additions.
One pedantic note for 2019: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth chart playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.
Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors — many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2019. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production — a .240 ZiPS projection may end up being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future.
Players are listed with their most recent teams, unless I have made a mistake. This is very possible, as a lot of minor-league signings go generally unreported in the offseason.
ZiPS’ projections are based on the American League having a 4.29 ERA and the National League having a 4.15 ERA.
Players who are expected to be out due to injury are still projected. More information is always better than less information, and a computer isn’t the tool that should project the injury status of, for example, a pitcher who has had Tommy John surgery.
Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR — which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.
Last year’s Reds won 67 games. They won just four more games than the Marlins, and they won just five more games than the White Sox. They won 29 fewer games than the division-rival Brewers, and they won 28 fewer games than the division-rival Cubs. The previous year, the Reds had won 68 games. The year before that, they’d won 68. The year before that, they’d won 64. There’s been a running joke that the Effectively Wild podcast never talks about the Reds. That’s not actually true, but they’ve rarely been brought up on purpose.
And now, as you know, the Reds are making noise. They’re not signing Bryce Harper, and they’re not signing Manny Machado, but they did acquire Yasiel Puig, and they did acquire Alex Wood. They traded for Tanner Roark, and, on Monday, they traded for Sonny Gray. Gray is the one player under contract beyond just 2019. The Reds haven’t given the farm away or anything like that, but they have depleted their own longer-term resources. Clearly, the Reds have grown tired of being forgettable.
And that might well be the biggest behavioral driver. As an organization, they might’ve simply decided they wanted to be more competitive. It’s what so many people have wanted to see from more teams. As a fan, you want to go into a year with higher expectations. But there could also be a particular opportunity here. It’s worth examining the context in which the Reds are going to play.
In 2016, the Reds’ rotation ranked last in the majors in WAR. The next year, they improved, sliding all the way up to 29th. This past season, they wound up in 26th, and over the combined three-year sample, we find the Reds in 30th place out of 30 teams, nearly a full six WAR behind the next-worst White Sox. It hasn’t been for lack of talent; it’s been for lack of execution, for lack of development. The Reds, at some point, decided they weren’t going to take it anymore. Earlier in this offseason, the rotation added Alex Wood. Earlier in this offseason, the rotation added Tanner Roark. And now we have a holiday three-team exchange, bringing just another starting arm to Cincinnati.
Wood is going into his contract season. The same is true of Roark. The same is also true of outfield acquisition Yasiel Puig. The same is true of Matt Kemp. The same was true of Gray, but as a part of this trade, Gray and the Reds have agreed on a three-year extension, beginning in 2020 and worth $30.5 million. There’s a $12-million club option for 2023, and there are various salary escalators involved. The Reds are paying a high price here, but at least they’re doing it for a long-term player. And from the Yankees’ perspective, they knew it was going to get here eventually. Playing in New York, Gray just couldn’t succeed. Now it’s the Reds’ turn to work with the same puzzle pieces.
You may have heard of a statistic called “championship win probability added” (cWPA), which measures the extent to which any given baseball play contributes to a team’s chances of winning a championship. It’s a neat little statistic that can be used to write articles like this one, which identified Hal Smith’s three-run home run for Pittsburgh in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series as the biggest baseball play of all time. Joe Carter, Kirk Gibson, and Sid Bream also made it onto that list. cWPA is the type of statistic that conjures up, merely by its reference, vivid images of confetti-filled ballparks, raucous crowds, and men made high by glorious deeds. This article is about whatever the opposite of that is. Today, I’d like to take you on a journey to find the least consequential pitch of 2018.
How would someone even go about identifying the least consequential pitch of 2018? I’m sure there are a lot of answers to that question, some of which you will no doubt point out in the comments, but here’s mine: The least consequential pitch of 2018 is the pitch that least affected the outcome of the least important game of the season. A pitch that swung a late-season game between two eliminated clubs, however inconsequential that game might be to you, me, and Bobby McGee, cannot be the least consequential pitch of 2018 because, well, players on eliminated teams are players too, and a tree that falls amidst a Royals-Orioles game still falls for those players and for those fans. No, this pitch should be so inconsequential that even players with nothing left to play for decline to grasp at it for a taste of something once lost.
The first step is to find all the games played late in the season between teams that had by that point been eliminated from playoff contention. But this by itself is not enough of a standard, because teams like the Diamondbacks, while out of contention on the final day of the season, had as recently as September 1 had playoff odds of 37.4% (and higher before that). The sheen of consequence for Arizona was too bright to include the Diamondbacks. No, the game we are searching for should have been between teams that had been out of contention for a long time, ideally effectively since the beginning of the season. It should have been played between teams that had so long ago last tasted the sweet elixir of a playoff race that all the little things players do to keep themselves motivated during a long season had fallen aside. I present to you the playoff odds of the White Sox, Royals, Tigers, Marlins, Reds, and Padres, plotted over the course of the season, with the Red Sox’s odds thrown in there just for comparison’s sake:
I suspect some of you will note at this point that there’s a reasonable case to be made that a game between two teams who have locked up a playoff spot for most of the season (like, say, the Red Sox) deserves to be considered alongside games between bad ones as the least consequential game of 2018, as it is equally irrelevant to the outcome of the season. But any game between two contending teams is consequential insofar as it can be used to glean information about the nature of the playoffs to come, and brings with each pitch an injury risk to players who might determine the course of a seasons’ future. No game featuring the 2018 Red Sox could be considered the least consequential of 2018. The champions were playing. No, the game we want is one played, as late in the season as possible, between the six teams who never really sniffed contention at all in 2018.
Unfortunately for us, none of the final series of the 2018 campaign featured any of these six teams playing against each other. But the second-to-last series did. September 25-26 witnessed a two game set between the Reds (who entered 66-92) and Royals (54-102), in Cincinnati. The first game was a relatively taut affair won by the Royals 4-3 with a ninth-inning run; that game was too tense to work for our purposes. The second game, however, saw the Royals win 6-1. This game, I think, is a strong contender for the least consequential of 2018. You may disagree. But I’d argue that it was. All that was at stake — and it was a relatively low stake at that — was the Reds’ position in the 2019 draft order, and the 2018 Reds were not sufficiently bad that a win or a loss was the difference between the first, second, or third picks, where order really matters. I think, after some consideration, we have found our game:
But what of the least consequential pitch of that least consequential game? This one’s easier. The Royals scored in the first, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh innings; the Reds scored in the first. That means the top of the ninth inning, in which the Royals had a chance to add on a seventh run before the Reds got one last chance at a comeback, was clearly the least consequential of the game. Winning by six isn’t that much different than winning by seven; I hope we can agree on that. So the pitch we’re looking for is in the top of the ninth. And the least consequential pitch of the top of the ninth inning was the one that ended it — a sinker from Jared Hughes to Adalberto Mondesi that changed the outcome of a meaningless game not at all; after all, with two outs, the chances of adding on a meaningless run in a meaningless inning in a meaningless game were very small, and even if such a run had been added, the chances of it then mattering later, when the Reds had said their piece, were smaller still. Here it is:
What I love about this pitch, and why I wanted to write about it today, is how much everyone involved seems to care about it. There is, of course, a good case to be made that it is the least consequential pitch of a season of tens of thousands of pitches. The pitch didn’t matter. The game didn’t matter. The season didn’t matter. And yet there was Adalberto Mondesi, sprinting down to first, trying just as hard as he could to make it to first base in time, and there was Joey Votto, stretching his legs out to beat him. The pitch didn’t matter, when you think about it. But when you don’t think too hard about it, it’s just another opportunity to do well however you can. And that’s something. Life, too, doesn’t really matter one little bit, when held up to even the slightest scrutiny. But of course, it still does.
During the Winter Meetings, there were rumblings that the Dodgers were trying to move some salaries and some outfielders. The Cincinnati Reds were one team named as a potential destination, as Jay Jaffe discussed at the time. Included in that post is the following tweet by Ken Rosenthal.
In one variation of this deal, #Dodgers would take back Homer Bailey from #Reds and his remaining $28M commitment as a way of buying prospects. Bailey’s CBT number (average annual salary in multi-year deal) is $17.5M. Deal complex, still in discussion, not close. https://t.co/y3yVs5Rpsf
A little over a week later, Jeff Passan was the first to report that Yasiel Puig, Alex Wood, and Matt Kemp are headed to Cincinnati, while Homer Bailey and more would be going to Los Angeles. Bob Nightengale is reporting that Reds prospects Jeter Downs and Josiah Gray are bound for the Dodgers. Joel Sherman is reporting that $7 million is going to the Reds. And Jon Heyman has indicatedKyle Farmer is heading to Cincinnati as well. Based on what we know right now, the trade looks like this.
The major-league phase of Thursday’s Rule 5 Draft began with its annual roll call of clubs confirming the number of players currently on their 40-man rosters and ended with a total of 14 players being added to new big-league clubs. Dan Szymborski offered ZiPS projections here for the players taken earlier today. Below are brief scouting reports on the players selected, with some notes provided by Kiley McDaniel.
But, first: Our annual refresher on the Rule 5 Draft’s complex rules. Players who signed their first pro contract at age 18 or younger are eligible for selection after five years of minor-league service if their parent club has not yet added them to the team’s 40-man roster. For players who signed at age 19 or older, the timeline is four years. Teams with the worst win/loss record from the previous season pick first, and those that select a player must not only (a) pay said player’s former club $100,000, but also (b) keep the player on their 25-man active roster throughout the entirety of the following season (with a couple of exceptions, mostly involving the disabled list). If a selected player doesn’t make his new team’s active roster, he is offered back to his former team for half of the initial fee. After the player’s first year on the roster, he can be optioned back to the minor leagues.
These rules typically limit the talent pool to middle-relief prospects or position players with one-dimensional skillsets, though sometimes it involves more talented prospects who aren’t remotely ready for the majors. This creates an environment where selections are made based more on fit and team need than just talent, but teams find solid big-league role players in the Rule 5 every year and occasionally scoop up an eventual star. Let’s dive into the scouting reports on this year’s group.
First Round
1. Baltimore Orioles Richie Martin, SS (from A’s) – Martin was a 2015 first rounder out of the University of Florida, drafted as an athletic shortstop with some pop who was still raw as a baseball player. Martin had really struggled to hit in pro ball until 2018, when he repeated Double-A and slashed .300/.368/.439.
He has average raw power but hits the ball on the ground too often to get to any of it in games. Houston has been adept at altering their players’ swings, so perhaps the new Orioles regime can coax more in-game pop from Martin, who is a perfectly fine defensive shortstop. He should compete with incumbent Orioles Breyvic Valera and Jonathan Villar, as well as fellow Rule 5 acquisition Drew Jackson, for middle infield playing time. But unless there’s a significant swing change here, Martin really only projects as a middle infield utility man.
2. Kansas City Royals Sam McWilliams, RHP (from Rays) – McWilliams was an overslot eighth rounder in 2014 and was traded from Philadelphia to Arizona for Jeremy Hellickson in the fall of 2015. He was then sent from Arizona to Tampa Bay as one of the players to be named later in the three-team trade that sent Steven Souza to Arizona. McWilliams is pretty raw for a 23-year-old. He spent two years in the Midwest League and posted a 5.02 ERA at Double-A when the Rays pushed him there after the trade.
He has a big fastball, sitting mostly 93-94 but topping out at 97. He’ll flash an occasional plus slider but it’s a rather inconsistent pitch. The industry thought McWilliams had a chance to grow into a backend rotation arm because his stuff is quite good, but he has a much better chance of sticking as a reliever right now.
3. Chicago White Sox (Traded to Rangers) Jordan Romano, RHP (from Blue Jays) – Romano is a 25-year-old righty who spent 2018 at Double-A. He’s a strike-throwing righty with a fastball in the 91-93 range and he has an average slider and changeup, both of which reside in the 80-84 range. His command is advanced enough that both of his secondaries play up a little bit. He likely profiles as a fifth starter or rotation depth, but the Rangers current pitching situation is quite precarious and Romano may just end up sticking around to eat innings with the hope that he sticks as a backend starter or swingman when they’re competitive once again.
4. Miami Marlins Riley Ferrell, RHP (from Astros)- Ferrell was a dominant college closer at TCU and was consistently 93-97 with a plus slider there. He continued to pitch well in pro ball until a shoulder aneurysm derailed his 2016 season. Ferrell needed surgery that transplanted a vein from his groin into his shoulder in order to repair it, and the industry worried at the time that the injury threatened his career. His stuff is back and Ferrell is at least a big league ready middle reliever with a chance to be a set-up man.
5. Detroit Tigers Reed Garrett, RHP (from Rangers)
Garrett’s velo spiked when he moved to the bullpen in 2017 and he now sits in the mid-90s, touches 99 and has two good breaking balls, including a curveball that has a plus-plus spin rate. He also has an average changeup. He’s a fair bet to carve out a bullpen role on a rebuilding Tigers team.
6. San Diego Padres
No Pick (full 40-man)
7. Cincinnati Reds Connor Joe, 3B (from Dodgers) – The Reds will be Joe’s fourth team in two years as he has been shuttled around from Pittsburgh (which drafted him) to Atlanta (for Sean Rodriguez) to the Dodgers (for cash) during that time. Now 26, Joe spent 2018 split between Double and Triple-A. He’s a swing changer who began lifting the ball more once he joined Los Angeles. Joe is limited on defense to first and third base, and he’s not very good at third. He has seen a little bit of time in the outfield corners and realistically projects as a four-corners bench bat who provides patience and newfound in-game pop.
8. Texas Rangers (Traded to Royals) Chris Ellis, RHP (from Cardinals)- Ellis, 26, spent 2018 split between Double and Triple-A. One could argue he has simply been lost amid St. Louis’ surfeit of upper-level pitching but his stuff — a low-90s sinker up to 94 and an average slider — did not compel us to include him in our Cardinals farm system write up. The Royals took Brad Keller, who has a similar kind of repertoire but better pure stuff, and got more out of him than I anticipated, so perhaps that will happen with Ellis.
9. San Francisco Giants Travis Bergen, LHP (from Blue Jays)- Bergen looked like a lefty specialist in college but the Blue Jays have normalized the way he strides toward home, and his delivery has become more platoon-neutral in pro ball. He has a fringy, low-90s fastball but has two good secondaries in his upper-70s curveball and tumbling mid-80s change. So long as he pitches heavily off of those two offerings, he could lock down a bullpen role.
10. Toronto Blue Jays Elvis Luciano, RHP (from Royals)- Luciano turns 19 in February and was the youngest player selected in the Rule 5 by a pretty wide margin. He was acquired by Kansas City in the trade that sent Jon Jay to Arizona. Though he’ll touch 96, Luciano’s fastball sits in the 90-94 range and he has scattershot command of it, especially late in starts. His frame is less projectable than the typical teenager so there may not be much more velo coming as he ages, but he has arm strength and an above-average breaking ball, so there’s a chance he makes the Jays roster in a relief role. He has no. 4 starter upside if his below-average changeup and command progress. If he makes the opening day roster, he’ll be the first player born in the 2000s to play in the big leagues.
11. New York Mets Kyle Dowdy, RHP (from Indians)
Dowdy’s nomadic college career took him from Hawaii to Orange Coast College and finally to Houston, where he redshirted for a year due to injury. He was drafted by Detroit and then included as a throw-in in the Leonys Martin trade to Cleveland. He’s a reliever with a four-pitch mix headlined by an above-average curveball that pairs pretty well with a fastball that lives in the top part of the strike zone but doesn’t really spin. He also has a mid-80s slider and changeup that are fringy and exist to give hitters a little different look. He could stick in the Mets bullpen.
12. Minnesota Twins
No Pick (full 40-man)
13. Philadelphia Phillies (Traded to Orioles) Drew Jackson, SS (from Dodgers)- Jackson is a plus runner with a plus-plus arm and average defensive hands and actions at shortstop. He’s not a great hitter but the Dodgers were at least able to cleanse Jackson of the Stanford swing and incorporate more lift into his cut. He had a 55% ground ball rate with Seattle in 2016 but that mark was 40% with Los Angeles last year. He also started seeing reps in center field last season. He projects as a multi-positional utility man.
14. Los Angeles Angels
No Pick (team passed)
15. Arizona Diamondbacks Nick Green, RHP (from Yankees)- Green has the highest present ranking on The Board as a 45 FV, and we think he’s a near-ready backend starter. Arizona lacks pitching depth, so Green has a pretty solid chance to make the club out of spring training. He induces a lot of ground balls (65% GB% in 2018) with a low-90s sinker and also has a plus curveball.
16. Washington Nationals
No Pick (team passed)
17. Pittsburgh Pirates
No Pick (team passed)
18. St. Louis Cardinals
No Pick (full 40-man)
19. Seattle Mariners Brandon Brennan, RHP (from Rockies)- Brennan is a 27-year-old reliever with a mid-90s sinker that will touch 97. He has an average slider that relies heavily on it’s velocity more than movement to be effective. The real bat-misser here is the changeup, which has more than 10 mph of separation from Brennan’s fastball and dying fade.
20. Atlanta Braves
No Pick (team passed)
21. Tampa Bay Rays
No Pick (full 40-man)
22. Colorado Rockies
No Pick (team passed)
23. Cleveland Indians
No Pick (team passed)
24. Los Angeles Dodgers
No Pick (full 40-man)
25. Chicago Cubs
No Pick (team passed)
26. Milwaukee Brewers
No Pick (team passed)
27. Oakland Athletics
No Pick (team passed)
28. New York Yankees
No Pick (full 40-man)
29. Houston Astros
No Pick (team passed)
30. Boston Red Sox
No Pick (team passed)
Second Round
San Francisco Giants Drew Ferguson, OF- Ferguson is a hitterish tweener outfielder with a good combination of bat-to-ball skills and plate discipline. He has a very short, compact stroke that enables him to punch lines drives to his pull side and he’s tough to beat with velocity. Ferguson doesn’t really run well enough to play center field and lacks the power for a corner, so his likely ceiling is that of a bench outfielder.
The Cincinnati Reds have a strong collection of position players, but have remained near the bottom of the NL Central standings as they’ve struggled to develop pitching from within. It seemed likely that they’d add pitching either via trade or free agency this winter in an effort to compete before their core group of hitters begins to decline. After already adding a few minor pieces (Matt Bowman, Robby Scott), the Reds made their biggest splash of the winter so far by acquiring Tanner Roark from the Washington Nationals in exchange for 25-year-old relief prospect Tanner Rainey.
Roark has been a durable part of Washington’s rotation for six years and has thrown 180 or more innings in four of the last five seasons, only failing to do so in 2015 because he was relegated to the bullpen after Max Scherzer’s acquisition and because he was briefly on paternity leave. That quantity of innings drove mid-rotation WAR production during his tenure in D.C., though he has been declining in that regard (3.3 WAR in ’16, 2.5 in ’17, 1.9 in ’18) despite showing very little decline in stuff. Steamer and Depth Charts both project a continued gradual decline (1.5 WAR) in 2019, Roark’s final arbitration year before hitting free agency. Those projection systems assume Roark’s workload will scale back in his age-32 season, and they have him projected to make just 26 starts. Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections expect similar production.
2019 ZiPS Projection – Tanner Roark
W
L
ERA
G
GS
IP
H
ER
HR
BB
SO
WAR
BABIP
ERA+
FIP
10
10
4.60
27
26
154.7
155
79
24
52
131
1.3
.290
92
4.63
For now, Roark probably slots into the no. 2 spot in the Reds rotation behind Luis Castillo. The Nationals should be able to back fill for Roark with some combination of Joe Ross, Erick Fedde, or perhaps a quick-moving Wil Crowe, to say nothing of what Washington may add via free agency.
For one year of Roark, the Reds sent relief prospect Tanner Rainey to Washington. Rainey has good stuff, with his fastball sitting in the 95-99 range and touching 100, and his upper-80s slider spinning in at an average of 2600 rpm, which is rare for a pitch of that velocity.
Each of those impact pitches theoretically give Rainey a shot to be a late-inning, high-leverage reliever, but his command, which is not great, might force him into a middle-relief role instead. The chance that one of Rainey or Jimmy Cordero — who is similarly talented and similarly flawed — figure things out and become a real late-inning option are pretty fair, and the Nationals have several years to polish Rainey’s talent. That Rainey is leaving a place that has struggled to develop pitching probably helps his chances of getting there.
Rainey was a 40 FV player on our recent Reds prospect list, ranking 18th. He was one of several hard-throwing Reds relief prospects in their mid-20s who are approaching the Majors. They’ve traded from a position of depth to acquire a player of great need, and the short window of team control over Roark would seem to indicate that they’re going to add more pitching in attempt to field a competitive team.
Alex Kirilloff grew up hitting baseballs. A lot of baseballs. His father owns an indoor hitting facility, and having been home-schooled for much of his life, the top prospect in the Minnesota Twins system not named Royce Lewis would often accompany dad to work. He didn’t sit around reading comic books while he was there.
“I was blessed to have access to a cage, and I took advantage of that,” Kirilloff told me prior to suiting up for this summer’s Futures Game. “We had these big Iron Mike machines that would hold something like 600 balls in the hopper and I would hit two or three of those a day.”
This past season, he banged out a steady stream of hits against Florida State League and Midwest League pitching. Playing 65 games each in Fort Myers and Cedar Rapids, the left-handed-hitting outfielder stroked 107 singles, 49 doubles, seven triples, and 20 home runs. His slash line was a scary .348/.392/.578.
In terms of hands-on molding, Kirilloff isn’t Frankenstein’s monster. His hitting-instructor father didn’t skimp on pointers, but he also understood that a swing has to come naturally. Read the rest of this entry »
Cincinnati’s 2018 Minor League Hitter of the Year isn’t a slugger, nor is he among the club’s higher-profile prospects. That’s not to say TJ Friedl won’t be roaming the Reds’ outfield in the not-too-distant future. Blessed with a smooth left-handed stroke and plus-plus wheels, he is — according to our own Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel — “almost a lock to hang around the big leagues for at least a few years in some role.”
His background is unlike that of most players who reach the doorstep, let alone get invited inside. Friedl entered pro ball in 2016 as a non-drafted free agent out of the University of Nevada. More on that in moment.
At 5-foot-10 and 170 pounds, the 23-year-old Friedl looks the part of a table-setter, and the numbers match the image. In a 2018 season split evenly between Hi-A Daytona and Double-A Pensacola, the speedster slashed .284/.381/.384 with five home runs and 30 stolen bases.
His top-of-the-order-friendly OBP was fueled by a change that occurred shortly before his 2017 campaign ended prematurely due to injury. Wanting to recognize pitches earlier, he tweaked his timing mechanism. Read the rest of this entry »
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