The Detroit Tigers are a rebuilding team with a plethora of promising pitching prospects. As of a few weeks ago, they also have a director of pitching development and strategies, and a coordinator of player development analytics. Each is a new position within the organization, and both are a step in the right direction. Dan Hubbs was hired to fill the first of those roles, Jordan Wergiles the last.

Who are Hubbs and Wergiles, and what will be their primary responsibilities? I asked those questions to Al Avila during the recently completed GM Meetings.

“Dan came from the University of Southern California, where he was the head baseball coach,” answered Avila. “Before that he was the pitching coach there for 12 years. He comes with a good knowledge of the technology that’s being used now. He understands the analytics that can help a pitcher get better. Basically, his challenge is to set up our pitching system.”

Addressing Wergiles — a recent Wake Forest University graduate who’d been interning for the Tigers — Avila spoke of the organization’s attempts to keep up with an ever-changing game.

“There are obviously some things that your average instructor, or pitching coach… those guys aren’t analysts,” said the GM. “Those guys don’t work with numbers. They work with human beings, so it’s more of, ‘Hey, here is what the numbers are telling us about this pitcher.’ [Wergiles] can be deciphering that to the coaches, so that they can make those adjustments with the pitchers.”

Requests to speak to Wergiles and Hubbs about their new roles were declined by the Tigers. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research, and was expanded for inclusion in The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

A three-time batting champion, five-time All-Star, and seven-time Gold Glove winner — not to mention an excellent base runner — Larry Walker could do it all on the diamond. Had he done it for longer, there’s little question that he’d already have a plaque in the Hall of Fame, but his 17 seasons in the majors were marred by numerous injuries as well as the 1994–95 players’ strike, all of which cut into his career totals.

Yet another great outfielder developed by the late, lamented Montreal Expos — Hall of Famers Andre Dawson, Vladimir Guerrero, and Tim Raines being the most notable — Walker was the only one of that group actually born and raised in Canada, though he spent less time playing for the Montreal faithful than any of them. He starred on the Expos’ memorable 1994 team that compiled the best record in baseball before the strike hit, curtailing their championship dreams, then took up residence with the Rockies, putting up eye-popping numbers at high altitude — numbers that hold up well even once they’re brought back to earth.

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This is the last of a six-part series — the AL East, AL Central, AL West, NL East, and NL Central pieces have been published — in which I’m highlighting each team’s most notable free agents and how it could fill the resulting void on the roster. A player’s rank on our recently released Top 50 Free Agents list, along with Kiley McDaniel’s contract estimates from that exercise, are listed where relevant. In some cases, the team already has a capable replacement ready to step in. In others, it’s clear the team will either attempt to re-sign their player or look to the trade or free agent markets for help. The remaining cases are somewhere in between, with in-house candidates who might be the answer, but aren’t such obvious everyday players to keep the team from shopping around for better options.

Here’s a look at the National League West.

Arizona Diamondbacks | Depth Chart | Payroll

Wilmer Flores, INF

Flores could still fit on the Diamondbacks’ roster in 2020, but in what capacity depends on how the team plans on using Ketel Marte, who made 89 starts in center field and 45 starts at second base last season.

If Marte moves to the outfield full-time, Flores would have more value to the team as a semi-regular at second base while filling in occasionally at either corner infield spot. There are several other middle infield options, however, including Domingo Leyba, Josh Rojas, Ildemaro Vargas, and Andy Young, which could be why the team declined Flores’ $6 million club option despite his career-high 120 wRC+ in 285 plate appearances. Read the rest of this entry »

“If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.” – Yogi Berra

In 2017 and ’18, for the first time in franchise history, the Colorado Rockies made the playoffs in consecutive seasons. The team didn’t play deep into October in either season, but for an organization that hadn’t even had back-to-back winning seasons since the mid-90s, it was a wonderful result. Problem is, the team gave little thought as to how they got there or the weaknesses that could prevent them from doing so again in the future. The strengths Colorado rode in 2017 and 2018 were absent in 2019, and left the team high-and-dry with no real Plan B.

The Setup

The Rockies clearly believed that 2019 would be another year of contendership. But I’m not sure they realized how dependent they had been on the production of a few stars every season. 91 wins are nothing to scoff at, but to get to the point of barely making the playoffs, the Rockies had to have two legitimate MVP contenders and two legitimate Cy Young candidates. All told, Colorado received 19 WAR from their top four players in 2018, an identical sum as in 2017. In both years, that figure represented more than half the team’s value, a ratio far worse than every other postseason team from 2017, 2018, and now 2019.

In 2017, the Rockies made the playoffs despite an offense that ranked 26th in the league in wRC+. To fix this lack of run-scoring — the team ranked third in baseball in runs scored, but a good offense in Colorado should be crushing the league in runs, even given the most generous application of the Coors Field Hangover — the Rockies did, well, not much. They signed a 35-year-old catcher and given the opportunity to upgrade from fading veteran Carlos González, he of an 85 wRC+ and 0 WAR, decided to upgrade to…Carlos González. Read the rest of this entry »

The last time I wrote about Trevor Story, this was the lede:

Don’t make any Trevor Story puns, Devan. Don’t do it.

Too late. The Rockies’ rookie shortstop has been a mammoth story this season, as he continues to break record after record.

I’m not proud of this, just as I’m not proud of the pun in the headline above. But when you can make a pun, you make the pun. There’s not much more to it than that.

That’s why I’m here to talk about Trevor Story. He has always been an offense-first shortstop. During his rookie season in 2016, Story became the fifth player in baseball history to homer in each of his team’s first four games of the season. He also became the fastest player to six career home runs. Today, I’m here to change the conversation regarding Story’s bat-first reputation.

This season, Story’s offense has still been the best part of his game. In 585 plate appearances, Story has slashed .296/.356/.548 with 30 home runs and a 116 wRC+. He’s produced 17.4 runs above-average of offensive value, a slight step back from 2018 (+23.9), but it’s still a figure that ranks seventh among all shortstops this season. (Alex Bregman is listed first on the leaderboard, but he’s been primarily a third baseman.)

That’s not bad, but the dropoff becomes even less of a concern when one realizes that Story’s defensive value has been quite high this season. Among primary shortstops, Story’s +12.9 defensive runs are the third-most in baseball, and among all players, they are the 12th-most. His eight-run increase in year-over-year defensive value is the 17th-highest in baseball among players who received ample playing time in both 2018 and 2019. Story is evolving from an offense-first shortstop to an all-around great one. 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 that will have real impact on the playoff race, some that are interesting for the purposes of player evaluation, such your usual spare lefty reliever and catcher (by far the most common types of September additions), and some teams with no new names at all. Below I’ve compiled notes on every player brought up by National League teams since the start of the month, no matter how inconsequential, and I slip some rehabbers and August 31st acquisitions in here, too. It’s a primer for you to get (re)acquainted with players who might impact the playoff race or seasons to come.

Contenders’ Reinforcements

Atlanta Braves — INF Johan Camargo, RHP Chad Sobotka, RHP Jeremy Walker, LHP A.J. Minter, RHP Bryse Wilson

Camargo didn’t hit with the big club at all this year, not even in late July or all of August when he was handed pretty regular at-bats filling in for an injured Dansby Swanson. But he hit .483 over the few weeks he was down in Gwinnett after Swanson returned and Camargo was optioned. He’ll be a versatile, switch-hitting bench piece for the stretch run, and he projects as that sort of premium bench player long-term.

Sobotka and Walker were optioned to make room for the multiple relievers Atlanta acquired at the deadline. Sobotka, who sits 94-98 with life and has a plus, 2900-rpm slider, posted a 16-to-2 strikeout to walk ratio at Triple-A since being sent down. You may see him pitching big innings this month. Walker has been throwing 25-pitch, 2-inning outings with three days of rest in between. He may be on mop-up or long relief duty. 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 »

Every year, hapless hitters with premium arm strength get moved to minor league mounds. With the help of Sean Dolinar, who combed the last few years of stats to scrounge up a more comprehensive list of converts than I was otherwise able to remember off the top of my head, I assembled the list below of former position players who are now prospects of note as hurlers. This is not a comprehensive survey of every recent conversion arm in the minors. Instead, these are the pitchers I think are interesting enough to include on an offseason list in some capacity.

Conversion arms who pan out typically put it together quickly. For example, it only took Kenley Jansen about a year after he first toed an affiliate’s rubber to reach Dodger Stadium. He likely threw during 2009 Extended Spring Training, then spent the back half of the summer at Hi-A before making a Fall League appearance. He breezed through Hi- and Double-A the following year, and was in Los Angeles by late July of 2010. Jason Motte started his conversion in 2006 and got his first big league cup of coffee in September of 2008. Joe Nathan’s first pro innings came in 1997; he was first called up to the majors early in 1999. Sean Doolittle threw just 26 minor league innings before the A’s brought him up. (Conversely, Alexi Ogando and Carlos Marmol each took about three years after moving moundward to become big leaguers.)

Who in the minors might be next to have impact, big or small, on a big league pitching staff? Here are some candidates. All of the 35+ FV and above players are now on THE BOARD, if they weren’t already.
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For a losing team, the Cincinnati Reds have been busy. It’s not just trading players either, as Cincinnati made one of the biggest deadline moves while many contenders slumbered in near-stasis, picking up Trevor Bauer with an eye towards retooling for the 2020 season. Only three of the eight players in Wednesday’s lineup were also in the lineup on Opening Day: Tucker Barnhart, Eugenio Suárez, and José Iglesias. Chief among the new additions is the recently called-up Aristides Aquino, a big slugger lurking far back from the head of the team prospect lists coming into the season. After a fairly unimpressive minor league career, Aquino has feasted on the major league bouncy ball in 2019, slugging 28 homers in 294 AB in the formerly pitcher-friendly International League and then a shocking 11 homers in just 20 major league games.

Aquino was not some elite prospect finally being called up. The Reds have only received the benefit of getting a look at Aquino because they decided to use their ABs in a now-lost season in a productive way. If the team hadn’t dropped Matt Kemp or traded Yasiel Puig, choosing to go with the known quantity in a mistaken attempt to goose attendance (there’s no evidence this actually works), there wouldn’t have been as many opportunities to assess Aquino or Josh VanMeter or Phil Ervin in the majors. They now have more information on these players — how they’ve played at the big league level — and that information can have a positive effect on the decisions they make on how to win the NL Central or a wild card spot in 2020. Even picking up veteran Freddy Galvis, a 2.0 WAR player, for free has a value to a team like the Reds given his one-year, $5-million option for 2020. Scooter Gennett was always likely to be gone, but Galvis may not be, and now the Reds have another player who they can choose to start in 2020 or trade over the winter.

The Reds have been fortunate in these decisions, but I would have been in favor of this calculus even if Aquino/VanMeter/Ervin had been terrible. My fundamental belief is that among hitters and pitchers, teams have roughly a combined 12,000 plate appearances/batters faced to work with every year, and as many of them should be devoted to trying to win games as possible. Maybe they’re not 2019 wins — maybe they’re wins in 2020 or 2023 or 2026. But even players not working out gives you information; if Aquino came to the majors and hit like Lewis Brinson, it would still give the Reds data they didn’t have before. You don’t acquire that kind of knowledge when you’re a 90-loss team still penciling Billy Hamilton or Chris Davis into the lineup on a daily basis. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2019 trade deadline has passed and, with it, dozens of prospects have begun a new journey toward the major leagues with a different organization. We have all of the prospects who have been traded since the Nick Solak/Peter Fairbanks deal ranked below, with brief scouting snippets for each of them. Most of the deals these prospects were a part of were analyzed at length on this site. Those pieces can be found here, or by clicking the hyperlink in the “From” column below. We’ve moved all of the players below to their new orgs over on THE BOARD, so you can see where they rank among their new teammates; our farm rankings, which now update live, also reflect these changes, so you can see where teams’ systems stack up post-deadline. Thanks to the scouts, analysts, and executives who helped us compile notes on players we didn’t know about.
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