Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of Twins Trade Talk. I’m your host, Ben Clemens, ostensibly a writer at FanGraphs but now an exclusive chronicler of Twin City swaps. Last week, Minnesota traded AL batting champion Luis Arraez in a deal I absolutely loved. If that’s the main course, Monday’s move was dessert:
The Twins are acquiring OF Michael A. Taylor from the Royals for LHP Evan Sisk and RHP Steven Cruz, per source.
Let’s start here: I love this trade for both sides. Michael A. Taylor has been a quality contributor when healthy for much of his career, and his last two seasons in Kansas City encapsulate his career well. In a sentence: very good outfield defense is valuable. Taylor hit a paltry .249/.304/.357 in blue and gold, but he was still worth 3.5 WAR (by our calculation, 5.7 per Baseball Reference) over roughly 1,000 plate appearances because he’s one of the best outfield defenders around. Depending on which defensive metric you’re most fond of, he’s either first (DRS), first (UZR), or second by one run (OAA) among all outfielders over the past two years. Read the rest of this entry »
For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Kansas City Royals.
Batters
Coming into the 2021 season, there were reasons to be optimistic about the future of Kansas City’s offense, with Bobby Witt Jr., MJ Melendez, Nick Pratto, and Vinnie Pasquantino. Three of these four played well in the majors, but only one — and probably the one the Royals were themselves least high on, Pasquantino — really wowed offensively. Witt was solid, but far from amazing, and Melendez’s bat was mainly good because he plays a position that he may not be playing for very long. I guess what it comes down to is a simple question: outside of Pasquantino, who do you feel better about now than a year ago? The problem with the Royals is that I’m hard-pressed to give many names in response to that question.
KC’s minor league hitters didn’t come roaring out of the gate, which makes the challenges steeper for the next front office/manager. It’d be easy if Melendez had pushed Salvador Perez to permanent DH status or if Pratto blew everyone away at first, but neither really happened, so decisions have to be made. Except for Michael A. Taylor, the legacy veterans are pretty much gone, and while Taylor is frequently named as a possible trade candidate, if he were a car, he’s in a situation similar to that of a 1999 Ford Taurus: you’ll probably find a new home for him, but not someone who is going to offer much in return.
Can Pratto hit at the major league level? After all, he didn’t really hit at the minor league level in 2022. Can Melendez play catcher successfully? Is Witt a shortstop? The Royals have to answer these questions, and if they don’t make great strides into doing that in 2023, the season is probably a failure overall. At least they’ve moved on from Ryan O’Hearn. They’ll need to; of hitters yet to make their major league debut, ZiPS only sees Maikel Garcia as having a strong chance at a 10-WAR career. Read the rest of this entry »
This month I had the honor of filling out a Hall of Fame ballot for the third time, and once again I put checkmarks next to 10 names. As I wrote in last year’s explanatory column, I am both “a Big-Hall guy” and willing (albeit begrudgingly) to look past steroid implications. As I see it, the story of baseball in this era can’t be told without Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, each of whom got my vote.
That the story could reasonably be told without some of the names I’ve chosen to checkmark is, admittedly, a valid argument against exercising the full allotment. This is something I’ve chewed on, but ultimately decided isn’t the way I want to approach my ballot. The Hall includes a plethora of players who weren’t the best of the best — Bruce Sutter was no Warren Spahn; Rick Ferrell no Johnny Bench — and while “X is in, so should Y” is imperfect logic, so too is “Y wasn’t a Bench or a Spahn, so isn’t worthy.” Determining who merits a plaque in Cooperstown is anything but an exact science.
In order to understand Jordan Lyles’ two-year, $17 million contract with the Kansas City Royals, you need to understand this: Baseball, unlike other sports, is not governed by a clock.
A rosy, romantic articulation of this fact has been a cliché within the sport for generations. Other, newer, cruder sports are bound by the oppressive temporal strictures that make our lives into a brutal struggle, but not baseball. Baseball proceeds at whatever pace the game requires, aloof from the petty concerns of time. This distance allows grown men to revert to gleeful childhood. The crack of the bat, the smell of fresh-cut grass, and so on.
The truth is somewhat more sinister. Because baseball operates outside the bounds of time, there is no escape unless the game is completed. Mere desultory attendance will not suffice — progress must be made or the game will not allow you to leave. You cannot take a knee, or rag the puck, or kick the ball really high to kill the clock. There is no clock. Baseball is like Jumanji. Complete the objective or you will be trapped within the game until you die. Read the rest of this entry »
The Royals may have gotten a steal when they acquired Jacob Wallace from the Red Sox last week in exchange for Wyatt Mills. The “may have” comes with a sizable caveat, as the 24-year-old right-hander has big-time stuff, but also command issues. Pitching for the Double-A Portland Sea Dogs this year, he walked 49 batters in 56.2 innings.
Wallace is overpowering when he’s in the strike zone, though. The 100th overall pick in 2019 — he was drafted by the Rockies out of the University of Connecticut, then swapped to Boston a year later in exchange for Kevin Pillar — fanned 76 batters and allowed just 35 hits. As Tess Taruskin and Kevin Goldstein wrote last spring, “It’s not too complicated: If he can throw more strikes, he has a path to the big leagues.”
Wallace, who prior to the trade was No. 23 in our Red Sox prospect rankings with a 40 FV, discussed his overpowering arsenal and his mother-influenced interest in pitching analytics late in the season.
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David Laurila: Before we talk about your repertoire, you told me that your mother is big into analytics?
Jacob Wallace: “She reads and absorbs everything. She would tell me, ‘Oh, your FIP is this’ — all these numbers — and I’d be like, ‘Well, I have no idea what you’re talking about, I’m just out there playing.’ I’d know my ERA and the other basic stuff, but not the more advanced-stats. This was back in high school. Once I got to college and started learning more… I mean, it was really cool to realize how much she had already learned.”
Laurila: I’m guessing that your mother reads FanGraphs?
Wallace: “Yeah, I would say she does. She is a director of plant operations for [Proctor & Gamble], so numbers and learning are definitely things she definitely loves.” Read the rest of this entry »
The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. 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.
Carlos Beltrán was the quintessential five-tool player, a switch-hitting center fielder who harnessed his physical talents and became a superstar. Aided by a high baseball IQ that was essentially his sixth tool, he spent 20 seasons in the majors, making nine All-Star teams, winning three Gold Gloves, helping five different franchises reach the playoffs, and putting together some of the most dominant stretches in postseason history once he got there. At the end of his career, he helped the Astros win a championship.
Drafted out of Puerto Rico by the Royals, Beltrán didn’t truly thrive until he was traded away. He spent the heart of his career in New York, first with the Mets — on what was at the time the largest free-agent contract in team history — and later the Yankees. He endured his ups and downs in the Big Apple and elsewhere, including his share of injuries. Had he not missed substantial portions of three seasons, he might well have reached 3,000 hits, but even as it is, he put up impressive, Cooperstown-caliber career numbers. Not only is he one of just eight players with 300 homers and 300 stolen bases, but he also owns the highest stolen base success rate (86.4%) of any player with at least 200 attempts.
Alas, two years after Beltrán’s career ended, he was identified as the player at the center of the biggest baseball scandal in a generation: the Astros’ illegal use of video replay to steal opponents’ signs in 2017 and ’18. He was “the godfather of the whole program” in the words of Tom Koch-Weser, the team’s director of advance information, and the only player identified in commissioner Rob Manfred’s January 2020 report. But between that report and additional reporting by the Wall Street Journal, it seems apparent that the whole team, including manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow, was well aware of the system and didn’t stop him or his co-conspirators. In that light, it’s worth wondering about the easy narrative that has left Beltrán holding the bag; Hinch hardly had to break stride in getting another managerial job once his suspension ended. While Beltrán was not disciplined by the league, the fallout cost him his job as manager of the Mets before he could even oversee a game, and he has yet to get another opportunity.
Will Beltrán’s involvement in sign stealing cost him a berth in Cooperstown, the way allegations concerning performance-enhancing drugs have for a handful of players with otherwise Hallworthy numbers? At the very least it appears likely to keep him from getting elected this year. What remains to be seen is whether voters treat him like Rafael Palmeiro and banish him for a big mistake (a positive PED test) in the final season of an otherwise impressive career, or like Roberto Alomar and withhold the honor of first-ballot induction for an out-of-character incident (spitting at an umpire) before giving him his due. Read the rest of this entry »
The Kansas City Royals have made forward-thinking changes in recent months, most notably in the managerial chair and at the highest level of their front office. The latter preceded the former, with J.J. Picollo taking over from Dayton Moore as the team’s top decision-maker in late September. Six weeks later, Picollo hired Matt Quatraro, who had been the bench coach for the Tampa Bay Rays, to replace Mike Matheny as manager.
Another impactful decision was announced this week. In want of a more-analytically-minded pitching coach, Picollo brought on board Brian Sweeney to fill the role that had been held by Cal Eldred. Previously the bullpen coach for the Cleveland Guardians, a team with a well-earned reputation as a pitcher development machine, Sweeney is seemingly a perfect fit for a Kansas City club looking to move away from a reputation of its own. Long seen as an old school organization, the Royals are, by all appearances, becoming more progressive.
Picollo, who now holds the title Executive Vice President and General Manager, talked about the team’s new direction during last month’s GM Meetings.
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David Laurila: You’ve addressed this previously, but it’s nonetheless the best way for us to start: Given that you worked alongside Dayton Moore for many years, what will differ philosophically with you in charge?
J.J. Picollo: “Culturally and fundamentally, there will be a lot of similarities, because it’s just baseball and how you run an organization. That said, we want to be a little more open-minded to different ways of improving our roster, and utilizing our roster. Player acquisition… a lot has been made about being transactional, but I think that can be overstated. When you’re transactional, you’re just trying to make your team better. If it makes our team better, then we’ll be transactional.
“More than anything, hiring Matt Quatraro, with the way he thinks… he’ll be creative. I think that will be developmentally healthy, especially for our younger players.”
Laurila: How does he think? Actually, let me phrase the question this way: What did he say during the interview process that sold you on hiring him?
Picollo: “A lot, but more than anything, he was able to communicate what his thoughts were. You could just see, in some of the exercises we went through… for instance, how he would put lineups together. Obviously, a lot of that is based on matchups and how you want to use matchups. Also, the idea of using our bench was very clear; it’s something he’s not going to be afraid to do. Another was putting pitchers in situations where they can succeed yet develop at the same time. He was able to explain his processes really well.” Read the rest of this entry »
Last Tuesday’s 40-man roster deadline led to the usual squall of transaction activity, with teams turning over portions of their rosters in an effort to make room for the incoming crop of young rookies. Often, teams with an overflow of viable big leaguers will try to get back what they can for some of those players via trade, but because we’re talking about guys straddling the line between major league viability and Triple-A, those trades tend not to be big enough to warrant an entire post. Over the next few days, we’ll endeavor to cover and analyze the moves made by each team, division by division. Readers can view this as the start of list season, as the players covered in this miniseries tend to be prospects who will get big league time in the next year. We’ll spend more time discussing players who we think need scouting updates or who we haven’t written about in the past. If you want additional detail on some of the more famous names you find below, pop over to The Board for a more thorough report.
The Future Value grades littered throughout these posts may be different than those on the 2022 in-season prospect lists on The Board to reflect our updated opinions, and may be subject to change during the offseason. New to our thinking on this subject and wondering what the FVs mean? Here’s a quick rundown. Note that because we’re talking about close-to-the-majors prospects across this entire exercise, the time and risk component is less present here and these FVs are what we think the players are right now. Read the rest of this entry »
Nolan Jones might be ready to break out in Colorado, and turning 4 o’clock into 7 o’clock is how he would go about doing it. His time in Cleveland over — the Rockies acquired the rangy 6-foot-4 outfielder from the Guardians earlier this week in exchange for Juan Brito — Jones heads west with a swing that is, by his own admission, compact in the cage and too long in the batter’s box. Striking an effective balance between the two is an ongoing goal and a key to his future success.
“I’ve got really long levers, so I’m trying to simplify my moves and make them more efficient,” Jones told me earlier this summer. “Like anybody else, my moves become bigger in the game, and when your limbs are long, a two-inch move in the cage can become a six-inch move. My swings in the cage are those toned-down moves. I’m trying to be shorter to where, when they get bigger in the game, they’re right where I want them to be.”
Reaching his potential has been a frustrating endeavor for the 24-year-old. Selected in the second round of the 2016 draft out of Philadelphia’s Holy Ghost Preparatory School, Jones has ranked as Cleveland’s top prospect multiple times, and he was No. 51 in our Top 100 as recently as the spring of 2021. What has largely held him back is a penchant to swing-and-miss, a trait that accompanied him to the big leagues this season. Along with a .244/.309/.372 slash line over 94 plate appearances, the rookie had a 33% strikeout rate and a worst-on-the-club 71.6% Z-contact rate. Given the Guardians’ preference for hitters who can consistently put the ball in play, Jones no longer fitting into their plans comes as no surprise. Read the rest of this entry »
Hot Stove season is upon us and we are ready to start picking apart transactions, but not before we talk about the Kansas City Royals.
To kick things off, David Laurila welcomes Joel Goldberg, broadcaster and reporter for the Royals. David didn’t put Bobby Witt Jr. on his AL Rookie of the Year ballot this year, but he and Joel discuss how the best is certainly yet to come for the young phenom. The pair also talk about the underrated Scott Barlow, top prospect Maikel Garcia, the promise of a new ballpark, and how Kansas City was Salvador Perez’s town before it belonged to Patrick Mahomes. We also get insight into Dayton Moore’s legacy now that he has left the organization and J.J. Picollo has become the new president of baseball ops. [3:53]
In the second half, Ben Clemens is joined by Eric Longenhagen to talk about the early roster moving and shaking. The duo discuss glove-first center fielders who can’t hit enough for the majors, the Marlins struggling to develop players with a good approach at the plate, and Ben’s recent article about what would happen if pitching were a carnival game. Eric and Ben also banter about backstops, wonder how catchers who are good at framing will be valued going forward, framing vs. blocking, and if pop time is more important than accuracy when throwing to second base. [37:56]
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