Catching is the most taxing position in baseball. Day in and day out, it grinds on the players who attempt it. Catchers almost never play a full season, because it’s just plain harder to catch two days in a row than play the field on those days. Mathematically, that means fewer stars, because catchers have fewer plate appearances to excel in. That warps the market for free-agent catchers; in a given year, there might be only one or two full-time starters available at the position.
If you’re a team looking for a catcher, that puts you in a bind. This year’s market is a great example; I can name plenty of teams that “needed a catcher” coming into this offseason, but there were only two at the top of the market, and that’s if you count Sean Murphy, whom the A’s traded to Atlanta on Monday. Short of that, Willson Contreras was at the top by himself, and the Cardinals signed him earlier this month. That means the other teams who “needed a catcher” had to look a tier down. Speaking of which: the Twins signed Christian Vázquez to a three-year deal worth $30 million. Not long after, the Guardians signed Mike Zunino to a one-year deal for $6 million. 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 today’s team is the Minnesota Twins.
Batters
Even with Carlos Correa unsigned, Minnesota’s offense looks solid, though there’s a larger-than-normal dropoff if injuries happen to hit hard. And unfortunately, there are lots of places for injuries to hit the Twins hard; it seems unlikely that Byron Buxton is ever going to play 140 games again, and Royce Lewis‘ exact return from a torn ACL is speculative. Left field appears to be a problem at present time, and though ZiPS was at one time fairly high on Alex Kirilloff, injuries and some mediocre cups-of-coffee during his healthy interregnums have caused his projection to deteriorate considerably in the last couple of years. It’s a moot point now that the Mets have brought back Brandon Nimmo, but given the outfield options, I’m not necessarily sure that Correa is that much more desirable than Nimmo would have been, something I probably wouldn’t say for almost every other team.
I’m sad to see a rather bland Luis Arraez projection; he’s one of my favorite players to watch hit, since he plays more like someone from 1922. But in the end, while he’s a fun throwback to a different time in style, he plays in 2022, and his lack of power puts a fairly hard ceiling on his value as a first baseman. If he had been a better middle infielder, he might be one of baseball’s best young bets to join the 3,000 hit club, though he’d probably be the worst player to collect 3,000 hits overall! If he’s truly limited to first base, Arraez probably fades out of the league fairly quickly; a .280/.340/.370 first baseman isn’t really a starter unless he plays defense like a futuristic cyborg Keith Hernandez. 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 »
While the top of the celebrated free agent shortstop market has yet to roll into motion, the end of last week saw a flurry of action a little lower on the positional power rankings. The Yankees agreed to a one-year, $6 million deal with Isiah Kiner-Falefa, locking up his final season of team control. And as Friday afternoon progressed, four other teams linked up for an exchange of shortstops. A shortswap, if you will.
When he was first featured at FanGraphs in October of last year, Edouard Julien was described as having a unique profile and a potentially bright future. A native of Quebec City whom the Minnesota Twins had taken in the 18th round of the 2019 draft out of Auburn University, the left-handed-hitting second baseman was coming off a season in which he led the minors with 110 walks while logging a .434 OBP. Augmenting his patient approach with promising power, he’d homered 18 times between the two A-ball levels.
An adjustment was nonetheless needed. Julien’s batting average had been a middling .267, and his 144 strikeouts and 28% K-rate were suggestive of a hitter who’d been guilty of taking too many hittable pitches. Eric Longenhagen addressed the issue this past March. Describing the now-23-year-old, our lead prospect analyst wrote: “Patient bordering on passive, Julien’s bat is what will carry him to the big leagues.” Read the rest of this entry »
This is Davy’s first piece as a FanGraphs contributor. Davy is a writer and musician who lives in Brooklyn. He has previously written for Baseball Prospectus, where he contributed to the Too Far From Town series about the contraction of the minors. He bakes fancy cakes and plays guitar for The Subway Ghosts, a punk rock band whose other members are also baseball writers. Davy grew up in Falls Church, Virginia, and his earliest ballpark memory is of boos raining down on Glenn Davis at Memorial Stadium.
Carlos Correa picked a great time to turn things around. The 28-year-old is widely expected to opt out of his three-year contract with the Twins this winter, and he’s primed to hit the free agent market on an absolute tear. Correa is slashing .377/.438/.663 in September, good for a 216 wRC+. That’s the sixth-best mark in all of baseball and second among shortstops, behind only the red hot Bo Bichette.
Like Bichette, Correa faced a rough time earlier in the season. Where did things go wrong for the future former Twin? It’s time for some fun with 15-day rolling averages! Read the rest of this entry »
What does it mean that a team is 55% likely to make the playoffs, or 45% likely? It sounds like it means it’ll be right on the cusp of the playoffs at year’s end — the kind of team that spends the last week of the year either sighing in relief at a narrow escape or ruing a few one-run losses that did it in.
Sure, that’s definitely true sometimes. Often, though, the numbers don’t work out quite so suspensefully. Sometimes, your 50% chance decays to zero or climbs to a near certainty far before any dramatic ending. For proof of this, look no further than the race for the AL Central, which went from toss-up to fait accompli over the first half of September.
On September 4, the Guardians had just finished getting their clocks cleaned by fellow AL playoff hopefuls. Over a ten-game span — seven against Seattle, three against Baltimore — they went 2–8, dropping their record to 68–64. In that same span, the Twins had gone 6–3, raising their record to an identical 68–64. Our playoff odds gave the Guardians the better chance at winning the AL Central, but it was close: 43% for Cleveland, 39% for Minnesota. Read the rest of this entry »
Every year, a huge throng of pitchers changes teams at the trade deadline. It happens for obvious reasons: teams with postseason aspirations and second-division pitching staffs try to augment their squad, juggernauts shore up their bullpen, or any of several variations on those themes. For the most part, it’s a simple re-allocation of good pitching: teams that don’t need it this year trade pitchers to teams that do, and reap prospects or otherwise interesting players in return.
Sometimes, though, teams make trades for a slightly different reason. Pitchers aren’t static; you can’t call someone up on the phone and trade for a 3.40 ERA, or 2.4 WAR per 200 innings pitched, or anything of the sort. You trade for a pitcher, and as we detail frequently in the electronic pages of FanGraphs, pitchers change the way they approach their craft all the time. They might take a new approach, or learn a new pitch, or switch roles. Learning a new pitch isn’t practical in the heat of a playoff chase, but changing the allocation of existing pitches is far easier. Let’s take a look at two starting pitchers who have changed their pitch mix significantly since being traded at the deadline, as well as two others who have made smaller changes. Read the rest of this entry »
With Justin Verlander landing on the injured list due to a mild right calf injury, the AL Cy Young race has taken a turn. On Saturday, Dylan Cease did his best to capitalize on the opportunity. Facing the Twins in Chicago, the 26-year-old White Sox righty came within one out of throwing the season’s fourth no-hitter, losing it only when Luis Arraez singled with two outs in the ninth.
Cease had twice taken no-hit bids into the sixth inning this year, on April 27 against the Royals and June 21 against the Blue Jays, and had made a total of three appearances in which he allowed just one hit and no runs (May 2 against the Angels, the aforementioned June 21 start, and July 17 against the Twins). He was even better than all of those on Saturday, and particularly efficient. He breezed through the first five frames in just 50 pitches, with a leadoff walk to Jake Cave in the third inning not just the only blemish, but also the only time to that point that he even went to a three-ball count. At the same time, he didn’t record his first strikeout until Gio Urshela fanned on a slider to end the fifth.
Cease labored a bit in the sixth, throwing 21 pitches and issuing a two-out walk to Gilberto Celestino, the second and last time he’d go to a three-ball count all night. But he escaped that by catching Arraez looking at a high curveball on a generous call:
Cease needed just 20 pitches to get through the seventh and eighth combined, running his total to 91. He’d done a great job of pitching efficiently and maintaining his velocity:
Before he could take the mound in the ninth, however, Cease had to wait out a six-run rally. The White Sox, already leading 7–0, pounced on position player Nick Gordon via a pair of walks, three singles, and a grand slam by Elvis Andrus to run the score to 13–0. Fortunately, all of that took only about 15 minutes due to Gordon’s limited repertoire (Statcast credits him with throwing 30 fastballs varying in speed from 49.2 mph to 86 mph). Despite the delay, Cease made quick work of the first two Twins, striking out Caleb Hamilton on four pitches and getting Celestino to hit a first-pitch fly out.
Up came Arraez, the AL leader in batting average at that point (.318). After taking a low slider for ball one and fouling off a 97-mph fastball for strike one, he hit a slider in the middle of the zone 100.7 mph into the right-center field gap — no man’s land, a clean single. Cease remained composed enough to strike out Kyle Garlick to complete the one-hit shutout, but it still constituted a tough near-miss.
If not for Arraez’s single, Cease would have joined the Angels’ Reid Detmers, who blanked the Rays on May 10, as the only pitchers to throw complete-game no-hitters this season. Additionally, a quintet of Mets led by Tylor Megill threw a combined no-hitter against the Phillies on April 29, and likewise for a trio of Astros led by Cristian Javier against the Yankees on June 25.
Instead, Cease became the fourth pitcher to have a no-hitter broken up in the ninth this season, after the Cardinals’ Miles Mikolas (with two outs on June 14 against the Pirates), the Dodgers’ Tyler Anderson (with one out on June 15 against the Angels) and the Rays’ Drew Rasmussen (with no outs against the Orioles on August 14), who actually had a perfect game in progress before his bid ended. Anderson’s effort was retroactively obscured by a reversal of a seventh-inning ruling, where the pitcher fielded a dribbler down the first base line and made a poor throw; initially ruled a two-base error, it was changed to a single and an error. Read the rest of this entry »
The top prospect in the Los Angeles Dodgers system lost one of his baseball “brothers” a month ago. Not literally — Alex De Jesus is alive and well — but rather by dint of a trade-deadline deal. A 20-year-old infielder who’d been playing with the High-A Great Lakes Loons, De Jesus went to the Toronto Blue Jays organization, along with Mitch White, in exchange for Moises Brito and Nick Frasso.
Shortly after the trade, I asked Diego Cartaya what it’s like to have a teammate who is also a close friend leave the organization.
“It’s not easy, but I’m kind of happy for him,” replied Cartaya, who along with being L.A.’s top prospect is No. 31 in our MLB prospect rankings. “He’s going to get a better opportunity with Toronto, so we’re pretty excited for him. But it’s hard. As teammates, we spend more time together than we do with our families. He’s just like my brother.”
Cartaya’s real family is in Venezuela, and it was his father who initially taught him how to hit. The tutoring he’s received since entering pro ball at age 16 has resulted in occasional tweaks, both to his stance and his swing. Cartaya told me that he used to be “more of a big launch-angle guy,” but now has a flatter swing. Upon hearing that, I noted that the home run I’d seen him hit the previous night was more of a line drive than a moonshot. Read the rest of this entry »
