Episode 971

On this week’s show, we welcome a club’s president of baseball operations to talk about his team’s inner workings before we react to the exciting first few weeks of the season.

• At the top of the program, David Laurila welcomes Derek Falvey, president of baseball operations for the Minnesota Twins. Falvey gives us insight into the José Berríos trade, how much autonomy they give manager Rocco Baldelli, and whether it is easier or harder to trade with general managers you count as friends (such as former podcast guest Ross Atkins). We also hear about players like Simeon Woods Richardson, Jhoan Duran, Joe Smith, and Dylan Bundy, as well as the team hiring Kevin Goldstein away from FanGraphs. [2:46]
• In the second half, Ben Clemens and Jason Martinez get together to chat about the young baseball season. The pair discuss the recent Luke Voit/Tommy Pham drama, and talk about the sometimes-double-edged sword of playing with a chip on your shoulder. The duo also discuss some disappointing clubs (the D-backs) and some pleasant surprises (the Rockies), as well as the game’s overall lack of offense. Finally, Ben is cautiously intrigued by the Baltimore Orioles’ pitching strategy and its early dividends, highlighted by Keegan Akin. [25:36]

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Audio after the jump. (Approximate 64 minute play time.)

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Joe Ryan’s name is well-known to FanGraphs readers, particularly those who are into pitching analytics. As Jake Mailhot wrote when profiling him back in January, the 25-year-old Minnesota Twins right-hander succeeds in part because of an extreme vertical approach angle. Thrown from an atypical arm slot, Ryan’s four-seamer — despite averaging a modest 92 mph — is especially effective up in the zone. As Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin wrote last month, “Throughout his time in the minors, Ryan’s strikeout rate has left many scratching their heads.”

His ability to miss bats has thus far translated to the big leagues. Since debuting with the Twins last September, the former Tampa Bay Rays prospect — Ryan came to Minnesota as part of last July’s Nelson Cruz deal — has allowed just 23 hits, with 41 strikeouts, in 36-and-two-thirds big league innings.

Ryan — No. 6 on our 2022 Minnesota Twins Top Prospects list — discussed his approach angle, and the repertoire that goes with it, prior to a recent game at Fenway Park.

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David Laurila: The majority of FanGraphs readers are familiar with your pitching profile. That said, how would you describe it?

Joe Ryan: “I’m not sure. I don’t think about it too big-picture, or try to analyze myself in that way. Simplistically, I’m a strike-thrower that fills up the zone, tries to hit my spots, and pitches to my strengths. I’m also always trying to develop new pitches and make everything else better, and more consistent. I’m not trying to overhaul, but rather I tinker a lot. Maybe not a lot, but I am always wanting a little more.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and once again we’ll be hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features a veteran left-hander, Jake Diekman, and a young right-hander, Griffin Jax, on their signature sliders.

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Jake Diekman, Boston Red Sox

“I learned a slider in my first year of college, or maybe in my senior year of high school. It was my breaking ball. If you’re under 16 years old, you should not throw a curveball or slider. That’s my opinion. You should just develop a heater — maybe a two-seamer — and a changeup.

“When I started [throwing a breaking ball], I threw it from over-the-top. It was curveball/slider-ish. When you’re 18 years old — this was back in 2005 — no one really gave a care if it was… I mean, we just saw it break. It was, ‘Oh yeah, that’s a breaking ball.’ Now they classify [pitches]. And there are sliders that look like curveballs, and sliders that look like cutters.

“My slider two years ago is different from any slider I’ve ever thrown. You just evolve. Sometimes you’ll keep the same slider for three, four years in a row, and then you start throwing it in spring training or in the offseason and you’re like, ‘I don’t know how to throw this thing anymore.’ You have to find a different seam, different thumb placement, a different whatever. Read the rest of this entry »

This season, Eric and Tess Taruskin will each have a minor league roundup post that runs during the week, with the earlier post recapping some of the weekend’s action. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

Jordan Brewer, OF, Houston Astros
Level & Affiliate: High-A Asheville Age: 24 Org Rank: TBD FV: 40
Weekend Line: 7-for-11, 3 HR, 2B, 3B, 2 BB, 1 K, 2 SB

Notes
Brewer has always had big tools (plus-plus speed, above-average raw power, a plus arm) and some late-bloomer qualities. He was draft eligible in 2018 at Lincoln Trail JC in Illinois and went unselected, but emerged after he transferred to Michigan and went in the third round in 2019. Brewer has barely played pro ball due to a combination of the pandemic and injuries, including a knee surgery. Even though he’s already 24, you could reasonably hope things will click for him on a delay because of the atypical amateur path and all the missed reps in pro ball. Brewer’s start to the 2022 season is what it would look like on paper if that was actually happening. He’s halfway to his 2021 home run total after just six games. Read the rest of this entry »

Nick Loftin could get away with covering the entire plate against high school and college hurlers. That’s far harder to do in pro ball, which is why the 23-year-old Kansas City Royals prospect — per the tutelage of the organization’s hitting instructors — is now dialing in on pitches that can he do more damage on. The message he’s been receiving is pretty straightforward: Look for something in a certain zone, and when you get it, don’t miss it.

The dictum is simple; the execution is anything but. Not when you’re facing pitchers who are throwing high-90s heaters and breaking balls that are cutting and diving in either direction.

“It’s easier said than done,” admitted Loftin, whom the Royals drafted 32nd overall in 2020 out of Baylor University. “Hitting a baseball is one of the hardest things to do — besides hitting a golf ball. That’s really hard to do, as well.”

Wait. A golf ball isn’t moving unpredictably at great speed. Rather, it’s just sitting there, motionless, ready to be struck at the swinger’s leisure. For someone with the athleticism to play shortstop and centerfield in professional baseball, squaring up an immobile object should be as easy as pie.

Not necessarily. Read the rest of this entry »

This season, Eric and Tess Taruskin will each have a minor league roundup post run during the week, with the earlier post recapping some of the weekend’s action. Those posts will typically run Monday or Tuesday (since Monday is widely an off day for the minors), though they will occasionally be featured later in the week, as Eric’s notes are here.

Christian Encarnacion-Strand, 3B, Minnesota Twins
Level & Affiliate: High-A Cedar Rapids Age: 22 Org Rank: HM FV: 35
Line: 10-for-14, 3 HR, 2 2B, 1 SB, 15 RBI (!)

Notes
Wow! Encarnacion-Strand ended up at the bottom of our Twins list because we think he’s destined for first base and has more swing-and-miss going on than we’re comfortable with at that position. After transferring from Yavapai to Oklahoma State, he only struck out in about 19% of the plate appearances during his lone Division-I season, which is less than I’d have guessed based on my in-person notes on his contact ability. He certainly has big power, though. The universal DH helps Encarnacion-Strand’s cause since there are more 1B/DH jobs in the majors now, and teams are more open to platooning there and/or carrying a positionless bopper on their bench. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite yearly preseason pieces is also my most dreaded: the breakout list. I’ve been doing this exercise since 2014, and while I’ve had the occasional triumph (hello, Christian Yelich), the low-probability nature of trying to project who will beat expectations means that for every time you look smart, you’re also bound to look dumb for some other reason.

Let’s start things off with a brief look at last year’s breakout hitter list and see how they fared.

• Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: .311/.401/.601, 166 wRC+, 6.7 WAR
• Alex Kirilloff: .251/.299/.423, 93 wRC+, 0.3 WAR
• Kyle Schwarber: .266/.374/.554, 145 wRC+, 3.1 WAR
• Gary Sánchez: .204/.307/.423, 99 wRC+, 1.5 WAR
• J.P. Crawford: .273/.338/.376, 103 wRC+, 3.1 WAR
• Nathaniel Lowe: .264/.357/.415, 115 wRC+, 1.6 WAR
• Ryan McMahon: .254/.331/.449, 95 wRC+, 2.5 WAR
• Luis Urías: .249/.345/.445, 111 wRC+, 2.7 WAR

On the plus side, nobody really embarrassed me. Alex Kirilloff came closest, but in his defense, he was playing with a wrist injury that eventually required surgery. Read the rest of this entry »

With the 2021-22 offseason in the books, it’s clear we’ll remember it, at least in part, for how the Twins of all teams took the reins and strengthened their roster. They flipped Mitch Garver for Isiah Kiner-Falefa, who then went to the Yankees along with Josh Donaldson in exchange for Gio Urshela and Gary Sánchez. It wasn’t much of a downgrade, and the move gave Minnesota the opportunity to sign Carlos Correa, the biggest free agent of the offseason.

And now, here’s the cherry on top. In an attempt to address the fragility of their rotation, the Twins had already traded for Sonny Gray. But one good pitcher can’t lift an entire staff, so they went ahead and acquired another starter. And as we’ll discuss later, there were several other intriguing players involved in the deal. A fairly complex trade on the morning of Opening Day? Don’t mind if I do. Here’s the basic breakdown:

Padres Get

• Taylor Rogers
• Brent Rooker
• Salary Relief ($6.6 million)

Twins Get

• Chris Paddack
• Emilio Pagán
• PTBNL

This started off as a discussion about the Twins, but let’s actually begin with the Padres’ return. Now, the bullpen down in San Diego was never projected to be an issue. If anything, it’s one of the league’s better ones, as evidenced by an 11th-place spot on this year’s positional power rankings. But it did lack a clear ninth inning stalwart after the departure of Mark Melancon, a problem made more obvious by last week’s Opening Day fiasco. With Rogers not yet with the team, Craig Stammen allowed a walk-off three-run bomb to Seth Beer (on National Beer Day, no less). Read the rest of this entry »

It arrived stressfully, chaotically, and slightly late, but the 2022 season is here. And that means it’s time for one last important sabermetric ritual: the final ZiPS projected standings that will surely come back and haunt me multiple times as the season progresses.

The methodology I’m using here isn’t identical to the one we use in our Projected Standings, so there will naturally be some important differences in the results. So how does ZiPS calculate the season? Stored within ZiPS are the first through 99th percentile projections for each player. I start by making a generalized depth chart, using our Depth Charts as an initial starting point. Since these are my curated projections, I make changes based on my personal feelings about who will receive playing time, as filtered by arbitrary whimsy my logic and reasoning. ZiPS then generates a million versions of each team in Monte Carlo fashion — the computational algorithms, that is (no one is dressing up in a tuxedo and playing baccarat like James Bond).

After that is done, ZiPS applies another set of algorithms with a generalized distribution of injury risk, which change the baseline PAs/IPs selected for each player. Of note is that higher-percentile projections already have more playing time than lower-percentile projections before this step. ZiPS then automatically “fills in” playing time from the next players on the list (proportionally) to get to a full slate of plate appearances and innings.

The result is a million different rosters for each team and an associated winning percentage for each of those million teams. After applying the new strength of schedule calculations based on the other 29 teams, I end up with the standings for each of the million seasons. This is actually much less complex than it sounds. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, the Twins got their dessert: they signed the top free agent in the market and installed him in the middle of the lineup. This week, they’re eating their vegetables, in the form of a one-year deal with Chris Archer:

Right-hander Chris Archer and the Minnesota Twins are in agreement on a one-year, $3.5 million contract, sources familiar with the deal tell ESPN. Archer, 33, will join the Twins' rotation and can earn up to $9.5 million this season with performance bonuses.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) March 28, 2022

Those incentives are a modern-day version of a games started bonus. Archer will receive them based on the number of games he either starts or pitches three innings of relief in – basically starting or being the headliner after an opener.

I like the idea of this contract quite a bit, for both Archer and the Twins. From Archer’s perspective, it’s a bet on himself with a financial cushion if things don’t work out. When he signed in Tampa Bay last year, he hadn’t pitched since 2019, and he didn’t even accrue 20 innings. He hurt his forearm in his second start of the year, missed four months, then hurt his hip not long after returning. A starting role in the majors seemed far from a certainty. Read the rest of this entry »