We’ve reached the point in the Arizona Fall League calendar when the weather has officially shifted toward autumn, which makes being at the ballpark during the day about as close to heaven as one can get. The return of great weather also means the return of the Valley’s snowbirds, the (usually retired) folks who only live here during the pleasant time of year. The highways are suddenly very full again, and I’ve become a crabby baby about driving all the way to the West Valley for day games that then force me to drive home in rush hour traffic made more harrowing by the uptick in people. Opportunities to double up at East Valley stadiums are now golden, and I’ll be at Salt River and then Mesa each of the next couple of days.

We’re now deep enough into the AFL schedule that I’m starting to shift my in-person scouting focus toward hitters, especially when pitchers I’ve already seen a couple of times are in the game. It means spending more time down the baselines rather than behind home plate and (probably) more hitter-focused pieces like this for the next couple of weeks. But for now… Read the rest of this entry »

While Shohei Ohtani hasn’t pitched this year after undergoing UCL reconstruction surgery last fall, he has found another area of the game in which he could excel while terrorizing opposing pitchers. The 30-year-old superstar blew past his previous career high in stolen bases in late July, and on Friday night against the Rays he swiped his 40th bag of the year. Five innings later, he collected his 40th home run to join the 40-40 club in spectacular style, when he clobbered a first-pitch, walk-off grand slam. Unfortunately, Ronald Acuña Jr.’s torn ACL deprived him of a chance to follow up last year’s unprecedented combination of 41 homers and 73 steals, but it’s not out of the question we could have another 40-40 player this season, namely José Ramírez, and at least a couple more 30-30 ones.

I’ll get to those, but first, it’s Sho time. Prior to this year, Ohtani had reached 40 homers twice (46 in 2021 and a league-leading 44 last year) but had stolen just 20 bases or more twice (26 in 2021 and 20 last year). Unburdened by the demands of pitching this year, and playing for a new team with much higher aspirations than the Angels, he’s been able to withstand more wear and tear on his legs, has had more time to study opposing pitchers, and has come to appreciate the extra dimension he can add to his new team.

“I think he has bought into stealing bases, understands the value of the stolen base, getting 90 feet,” manager Dave Roberts told The Athletic earlier this month. “He’s in a pennant race now. And I don’t think he’s been in a pennant race in his big-league career. So his enhanced focus is not a surprise to me.” Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

Last week, I explained how players can still change teams even as trades are no longer allowed. Now that we’re a week-plus into August, I’d like to run down the list of players who could be placed on irrevocable waivers before the month ends, which is the latest that a team can claim them and still have them be eligible for the playoffs. Players placed on waivers are first offered to the worst team in the league, then to the other clubs in ascending order all the way up to the one with the best record at the time of the waiver placement.

I’ll be focusing on teams with playoff odds below 5%, though contending teams teams could see if a rival wants to bite on an onerous contract. (Spoiler alert: they will not.) As a reminder, when a player is claimed off waivers, it’s a straight claim. The team that loses the player gets nothing more than salary relief, as the new team is responsible for the remainder of the contract. Read the rest of this entry »

The Pirates have made three trade in the last two days. Yesterday, they swapped post-hype prospects with the Red Sox — struggling right-handed pitcher Quinn Priester for Triple-A 2B/LF Nick Yorke — and added veteran southpaw Jalen Beeks from the Rockies in exchange for minor league lefty Luis Peralta. Then, earlier today, Pittsburgh acquired 29-year-old lefty Josh Walker from the Mets for DSL pitcher Nicolas Carreno. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re barreling toward the trade deadline, which means it’s time for teams to decide if they’re in, out, or Tampa Bay. After picking which of those categories they fit into, the next move is obvious. In? Trade for a reliever. Out? Trade away your relievers. Tampa Bay? Make 10 moves, with more moving parts than you can possibly imagine. All of those types were on display this weekend, so let’s round up some reliever trades.

The Brewers and Rockies got the party started with a simple swap: Nick Mears to the Brewers, Bradley Blalock and Yujanyer Herrera to the Rockies. This one is basically what you’d expect from a deadline deal. The Brewers need relief help; they have nine pitchers on the IL, and while they just got Devin Williams back, they lost Bryan Hudson to injury earlier this week. It’s been an uphill battle to fill innings in Milwaukee this year. Mears slots right into the middle of the bullpen, helping to lengthen the number of innings the Brewers can cover with high octane arms. The Brewers have the fewest innings pitched by starters this year, so that depth really matters.
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I updated the Top 100 Prospects list today. This post goes through the pitchers and why they stack the way they do. Here’s a link directly to the list, and here’s a link to the post with a little more detail regarding farm system and prospect stuff and the trade deadline. It might be best for you to open a second tab and follow along, so here are the Top 100 pitchers isolated away from the bats. Let’s get to it.
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FanGraphs was at the Futures Game in Arlington on Saturday. In total, 16 pitchers appeared in the seven-inning game. The following are some quick notes on every pitcher who toed the rubber during All-Star weekend’s premier prospect event. Obviously one game isn’t enough on its own to move the needle significantly for any of these guys — they all have a large body of work that can better inform our evaluations — but it’s useful to see whose stuff ticks up when they’re in an environment like the Futures Game and get to let it eat in a shorter burst than they’re accustomed to. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

While “15 hits, 11 extra-base hits, six home runs, six walks and one stolen base in an eight-game span” is about as arbitrary and specific as a baseball feat gets, it’s nonetheless extremely impressive that Brenton Doyle finds himself in a group with five Hall of Famers.

Brenton Doyle is the sixth player to record at least 15 hits, 11 extra-base hits, six home runs, six walks and one stolen base in an eight-game span.

The other five are Larry Walker, Reggie Jackson, Willie Mays, Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. pic.twitter.com/ZMGG6I6z1d

— Rockies Club Information (@RockiesClubInfo) July 10, 2024

Doyle proved useful last season as a rookie, but only on one side of the ball. His brilliant center field defense (19 DRS, 15 OAA) was almost completely undercut by his awful 43 wRC+, which limited his value to 0.5 WAR.

But some mechanical adjustments geared at increasing his swing efficiency and cutting down on its moving parts have worked wonders in his sophomore season. His wRC+ has climbed all the way up to an above-average 112, and he’s already popped 13 homers after hitting just 10 in 2023. Additionally, because he is getting on base more — his on-base percentage has jumped from .250 last year to .346 — he is swiping more bags, too. He ranks ninth in the majors with 20 steals, and he’s just two shy of his stolen base total from last year.

In Doyle, the Rockies have a potential all-around star; he’s 26th in WAR among all hitters and third among primary center fielders, after Aaron Judge and Jarren Duran. That’s encouraging for Colorado, and his breakout presents a few options for the organization, chief among them: Should the Rockies build around Doyle or use him as a trade chip?

The Rockies are well on their way to a sixth straight losing season, and their playoff odds have hit 0.0%, so they are clearly in a position to sell before the July 30 trade deadline. That said, if history has any indication on how Colorado will approach this year’s deadline, the organization won’t blow up the whole squad to embark on a complete rebuild. That means players on expiring contracts, such as catching tandem Elias Díaz and Jacob Stallings, and lefty reliever Jalen Beeks could all be wearing new uniforms come August, as could players with another year before free agency, like starting pitchers Cal Quantrill and Austin Gomber.

Otherwise, though, the Rockies are likely to stay the course with the guys under club control long term, such as Doyle. Sure, it might be prudent for them to get rid of anyone of value and start over, but that’s just not how they operate. Some of the most notable examples of this include Troy Tulowitzki’s bitter end in Colorado and the organization’s underwhelming return for Nolan Arenado when he essentially forced the team to trade him. (Gomber is the only player from that trade still on the Rockies’ 40-man roster.)

Then again, maybe the Rockies shouldn’t cut ties with their guys just yet, especially not young, affordable players like Doyle (pre-arbitration, under club control through 2029), shortstop Ezequiel Tovar, who before the season signed a very team-friendly extension (seven years, $63.5 million), and third baseman Ryan McMahon, who has three years and $44 million left on his contract after this year. You don’t have to squint too hard to see a world in which the Rockies build around this trio and find a way to contend while they’re on the roster for fairly cheap.

Think of it this way: Kris Bryant’s disastrous contract finally ends after the 2028 season, and long-term deals with pitchers Kyle Freeland, Antonio Senzatela, and Germán Márquez all will have expired by then as well. Additionally, Colorado has some more talented youngsters coming up through the pipeline, among them are pitcher Chase Dollander, second baseman Adael Amador, and whichever player the team selects with the third overall pick in Sunday’s draft. The Rockies could have a solid core over the second half of this decade, especially when you consider that owner Dick Monfort is not opposed to spending money in free agency, though he doesn’t always (read: usually) spend wisely.

That’s not to say teams wouldn’t love to have Doyle if he were made available or if they could get into Monfort or GM Bill Schmidt’s ear with a huge offer, and Doyle could absolutely return players of intrigue and impact to join Colorado’s pipeline. I asked our Ben Clemens, whose Trade Value series will come out later this month, what he thinks of Doyle; while the center fielder won’t make the top 50, he’ll be included as an honorable mention, implying at least some value. That actually bodes well for the Rockies if they were interested in trading him; his value wouldn’t be too high that other teams would balk at Colorado’s asking price, but he’s also good enough that he’d net a decent return package. It would make a lot of sense for the Phillies or another contending club that needs a solid everyday center fielder to see if they can make a match without having to give up too much.

But would it really worth it for the Rockies to trade Doyle? I came into researching this piece thinking that the answer would be “yes, of course, because he’s a good player and they’re a bad team!” But I have now convinced myself otherwise. The prospects Colorado would get for Doyle would come with six years of club control, and Doyle himself has five. Even in a deal for multiple prospects, one extra year of control isn’t enough to trade away a player who has already reached the majors and had success there. It’s pretty risky to gamble that even one of the prospects in the return package would be as impactful on the field in the future as Doyle has been this season.

Another important thing to consider, Doyle’s all-around breakout has spanned just half a season. His lack of track record surely creates a disconnect in how teams currently value him. If the Rockies doubt their ability to contend while Doyle is on their roster, and therefore are willing to trade him, they might be better off holding on to him for another year or two so he can prove that his performance this season isn’t a fluke. It’s possible that he could regress between now and then, but as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the return Colorado would likely get for him this summer wouldn’t be all that valuable to the organization.

Whatever the Rockies decide to do with Doyle, he is going to be an important part of their future — even if he never again gets to enjoy the company of that same quintet of Hall of Famers.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Ryan McMahon’s first stolen base of the season. McMahon, whose sprint speed was recently downgraded from the 19th percentile to the 18th, managed that first bag by way of a delayed steal. By completely dismissing McMahon as a threat, the Pirates presented him with a perfect storm of opportunity. He took an enormous lead off third base because no one bothered to hold him on, and he waited until catcher Yasmani Grandal unleashed a lollipop back to the pitcher, then waltzed home.

Where did McMahon, who had been caught stealing four times to that point in the season, get the idea for such a brazen daylight robbery? Probably from Garrett Stubbs, who had executed the same move just a few weeks prior, stealing third base right from under McMahon’s nose. Stubbs didn’t get the same gargantuan lead that McMahon did, nor did he get to take advantage of a catcher’s big, slow rainbow tosses back to the pitcher. He simply went because he saw that catcher Jacob Stallings was paying him no attention whatsoever.

On Monday, the Rockies were involved in yet another delayed steal. After walking in the bottom of the second inning, major league stolen base leader Elly De La Cruz somehow waited two whole pitches before taking off for second as Elias Díaz tossed the ball back to Ryan Feltner.

This latest delayed steal was very different from the first two. McMahon is extremely slow — and Stubbs, while not slow, is a catcher — but everyone in the ballpark was aware that De La Cruz would likely try to take second. Both broadcast crews were talking about the threat of a steal and both feeds made sure to cut to shots of De La Cruz’s lead. While Díaz has one of the quicker arms in the league, Feltner is extremely slow to the plate. He has allowed 20 stolen bases this season, second only to Corbin Burnes with 24. Díaz stared De La Cruz down before returning the ball to Feltner after the first pitch, and Feltner attempted a pickoff before delivering the second pitch. None of that mattered against a threat like De La Cruz, but I still found it surprising that he opted for a delayed steal considering that with a pitcher like Feltner on the mound, a conventional stolen base attempt was more or less a sure thing.

De La Cruz, being De La Cruz, stole third base four pitches later; then one pitch after that, he was caught stealing home on a first-and-third steal attempt because Díaz (legally) blocked home plate. Sam Miller wrote about the rise of first-and-third steals back in February and then again this weekend. “As long as I’ve been baseballing,” he wrote, “the first-and-third situation has been what separated the pros from the amateurs.” That’s no longer the case. Sam calculated that in May and June, the runner on first took off roughly 14% of the time, compared to 10.1% in 2023 and 6.6% in the 2010s. After watching all of those plays, he concluded that defenses still aren’t really sure how to handle that situation.

Much like first-and-third steals, delayed stealing has historically been reserved for amateur ball. Because it’s a difficult thing to search for, I’m not sure whether they’ve been happening more often too or whether I just happen to have noticed a cluster. Either way, this cluster made me wonder whether baserunners should be pulling this move more often. After all, the three that we’ve seen could not have been any easier. Only one of them even drew a throw, and that was a play when everyone knew a stolen base attempt was likely. It’s true that McMahon’s steal of home came when nobody was paying him the slightest attention and the catcher returned the ball to the pitcher like a grandfather pitching horseshoes, but Stubbs isn’t exactly a burner either, and his came on a normal throw from the catcher, following a pitch where both the pitcher and the shortstop were making a real effort to keep him from getting too big a lead. Maybe this is easier than we realize. Read the rest of this entry »

Dylan Cease was one of my interview targets when the San Diego Padres visited Fenway Park last weekend, and as part of my preparation I looked back at what I’d previously written about him here at FanGraphs. What I found were three articles partially derived from conversations I had with the right-hander when he was in the Chicago White Sox organization. One, from 2020, was on how he was trying to remove unwanted cut from his fastball. A second, from 2019, was on how he’d learned and developed his curveball. The third, from 2018, included Cease’s citing “body awareness and putting your hand and arm in the right spot” as keys to his executing pitches consistently.

And then there was something from November 2017 that didn’t include quotes from the hurler himself. Rather, it featured plaudits for his performances down on the farm. In a piece titled Broadcaster’s View: Who Were the Top Players in the Midwest League, Cease was mentioned several times. Chris Vosters, who was then calling games for the Great Lakes Loons and more recently was the voice of the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks, described a high-90s fastball, a quality curveball, and an ability to mix his pitches well. Jesse Goldberg-Strassler (Lansing Lugnuts) and Dan Hasty (West Michigan Whitecaps) were others impressed by the then-promising prospect’s potential.

With that article in mind, I went off the beaten path and asked Cease about something that flies well under the radar of most fans: What is the relationship between players and broadcasters, particularly in the minor leagues? Read the rest of this entry »