Despite being a near lock to make the playoffs, the Twins are facing plenty of challenges on their way to October. Over the weekend, Michael Pineda was hit with a 60-game suspension for violating the MLB’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. That seriously hurts the Twins starting rotation considering he’s been their best starter since June. But that’s not the only problem the Twins are facing now. Yesterday, news broke that center fielder Byron Buxton had labrum surgery, knocking him out for the rest of the season.

Buxton had been on the injured list since early August, but before that, he was putting together the best season of his career. In addition to his elite defense in center field, his bat had finally risen to meet the high expectations his prospect pedigree placed on him. He had cut his strikeout rate to 23.1% and pushed his isolated power up to .251, helping him post a 111 wRC+ in just under 300 plate appearances. If given a full year on the field, he was on pace to post a five-win season.

Buxton had been making progress rehabbing his shoulder with the hope of a late-September activation with an eye towards helping the team in the postseason. His return was never guaranteed, but now that he’s entirely out of the picture, it pushes the Twins outfield depth to its limit. Three other outfielders on the Twins roster have battled nagging injuries recently, leaving them critically short-handed despite the expanded rosters in September. Read the rest of this entry »

After frittering away what was once an 11 1/2-game lead over the Indians, the Twins have reestablished firm control of the AL Central race, but this weekend, their hopes to play deep into October took a hit when Michael Pineda was suspended for 60 games for violating MLB’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. Pineda tested positive for hydrochlorothiazide, a diuretic on the league’s banned substances list, and while his suspension was reduced from the standard 80 games upon appeal, he won’t be available for the playoffs, making this one of the most impactful recent Joint Drug suspensions.

Pineda’s suspension was announced amid a three-game series between the division rivals. On Friday night, he held the Indians to one run over six innings while striking out a season-high 10; he left the game carrying a 2-1 lead, but the Indians tied the game in the eighth and won 6-2 in 11 innings. The next day, MLB announced the suspension, and while a fired-up Twins team rallied late to win 5-3 and cut the team’s magic number to clinch the division to 14, they lost the rubber match on Sunday, 5-2.

In a statement released by the Major League Baseball Players Association, 30-year-old Pineda said in part:

“I mistakenly took a medication that was given to me by a close acquaintance, who obtained it over-the-counter and assured me it would safely help me manage my weight. I ingested a few of these pills without the consent of the Twins’ training staff. Testing revealed trace elements of a substance called Hydrochlorothiazide, which is a banned diuretic under baseball’s testing program.”

Hydrochlorothiazide is a medication used to treat high blood pressure and fluid retention (edema) by producing more urine, which helps the body get rid of excess sodium and water. It’s on the list of banned substances because it is often abused as a masking agent, which helps to to conceal the use of anabolic steroids by reducing their concentration in urine due to the increase in volume. Read the rest of this entry »

In terms of notoriety, Nestor Cortes Jr. barely registers a blip on the national radar. That’s not meant as a slight to the 24-year-old lefty. It’s just that when you play for a star-studded team — in baseball’s largest market, no less — it’s hard to make a name for yourself as a rookie reliever. More specifically, a soft-tossing rookie reliever who lasted until the 36th round of the 2013 draft.

He’s probably the most unique member of the 2019 New York Yankees. Born in Surgidero de Batabano, Cuba, and raised in Hialeah, Florida, Cortes has a little Luis Tiant in his windup — Oliver Perez would be a contemporary comp — and his lack of giddy-up is more of a wrinkle than a scar. He’s averaging better than a strikeout per inning with a heater that lives south of 90.

“I’m more of a deception pitcher,” said Cortes, whose 5.13 ERA is accompanied by an unblemished 5-0 record. “The cliche is that everybody throws 95 now, but what I do is try to mess up timing. The multiple windups I use, the spin rate on my fastball, hiding the ball well before I go to home plate… I try to abide by all of that. I cherish that I can use those things to my advantage.”

Those attributes are on display in The Bronx because the Orioles opted not to keep him. Cortes was a Rule 5 pick by Baltimore in December 2017, but after appearing in just four games last April he was returned to his original club. He spent the remainder of the season in Triple-A with the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RoughRiders. 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 who will have real impact on the playoff race and some who are interesting for the purposes of player evaluation, like your usual spare lefty reliever and catcher (by far the most common types of September additions). Some teams with no new names at all. Below I’ve compiled notes on every player brought up by an American League team since the start of the month, no matter how inconsequential; I’ve slipped some rehabbers and August 31 acquisitions in here, too. It’s a primer for you to get (re)acquainted with players who might impact the playoff race or the seasons to come. (The National League’s complement can be found here.)

Contenders’ Reinforcements

Houston Astros– OF Kyle Tucker, C Garrett Stubbs, RHP Josh James, RHP Jose Urquidy

Kiley and I have Tucker projected as an above-average regular, ranked 15th overall among prospects in baseball. I have no idea what kind of playing time he might get this month. Stubbs (24th in the org) has begun playing a little bit of second base and outfield. A part time, multi-positional role might help keep his tiny frame from breaking down, and enable Houston to get his long-performing bat in the lineup, as well as create flexibility on other parts of the roster.

James was 94-97 in rehab outings before he returned, then reached 99 on Monday. Urquidy projects as a strike-throwing fifth starter.

New York Yankees– OF Clint Frazier, RHP Jonathan Loaisiga, RHP Ryan Dull, RHP Chance Adams, LHP Tyler Lyons, INF Brenny Escanio (prospect)

I think it’s likely Frazier, who many scouts/teams continue to think has everyday ability, gets traded this offseason, both because he’s part of a crowded outfield/DH mix and because he and the org don’t seem to be a great fit. Read the rest of this entry »

Lost somewhat amid the holiday weekend, the Twins set a new major league record on Saturday. Granted, the mark they surpassed was no long-standing, hallowed standard — in fact, it stood for less than a full year. Nonetheless, with Mitch Garver’s ninth-inning solo shot off the Tigers’ Joe Jiménez, the Twins overtook the 2018 Yankees with their 268th home run, the most by any team in one season. That they left themselves with four full weeks to pad the mark is just one more sign of how over-the-top this this year’s home run totals — fueled primarily by more aerodynamic baseballs, with smoother leather and seams so low that the balls are nearly round — are. The feat deserves a closer look, as well as some perspective.

Here’s Garver’s home run, his second of the day and 26th of the season — in just his 76th game:

Garver’s homers were two of six the Twins hit in their 10-7 loss (a subject to which I’ll return momentarily). His total ranks fifth on the team behind Max Kepler (36), Nelson Cruz (35, in just 101 games), Eddie Rosario (28), and Miguel Sanó (27, in just 87 games). Counting C.J. Cron (24), Jonathan Schoop (21) and Jorge Polanco (20), the Twins are the first team with eight players to reach 20 homers in a season, and they’re the 14th team to have five players reach 25 homers, with multiple candidates to make them the second team to have six:

Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Larry Andersen, Durbin Feltman, and Trevor May— on how they learned and developed their sliders.

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Larry Andersen, Philadelphia Phillies (broadcaster)

“I was a sophomore in high school, and we had a senior pitcher named Don Beckwith who had a slider. At the time, I just had a fastball and a curveball. He showed me his grip and I was like, ‘Let me try this.’ From there I implemented it into my repertoire. It was a pitch I picked up right away. It felt comfortable. It’s almost like holding a fastball off-center a little bit.

“Of course, then there was the pressure on my fingertips and how far back I held it in my hand. That type of thing. I played with those over the years to the point where I felt I had three different pitches with essentially the same grip Don Beckwith showed me in high school.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Twins are undeniably one of the most exciting stories of the year. They’ve hit, and I’m approximating here, eighteen million home runs on their charge to the top of the AL Central, holding off the Indians with burst after burst of offense. Their starters are deep and talented — Martín Pérez, whose resurgence has been a fun story, is their fifth-best starter by WAR, with 1.8. José Berríos keys the unit, but Jake Odorizzi, Kyle Gibson, and Michael Pineda are all having excellent seasons.

While all the sluggers and starters have top billing on the team this year, their bullpen has been quietly excellent. They’ve been the second-best group in baseball by WAR this year, the best by FIP-, and have walked batters less frequently than any other relief corps. If win probability added is more your speed, they’re eighth in the league. A year after being below average across the board, their sterling last 30 days (3.24 ERA, 3.30 FIP, 1.6 WAR) has helped the Twins remain atop the AL Central after a brief swoon.

But calling it a group effort is misleading. They’re a group, to be sure — seven relievers with at least 20 innings pitched have posted park-adjusted FIPs and ERAs better than league average. They’re more Derek and the Dominos or the White Stripes than a true group, though. Taylor Rogers is the rock of the group, a bona fide stopper putting up his second straight dominant year of relief. He’s still best known for having a twin brother in the majors, but maybe it’s time he’s known more for his pitching than his family. 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 »

Once upon a time, it was not uncommon to see a batter’s walk rate sitting higher than his strikeout rate. In the early 90s, more than a quarter of qualified batters had a walk rate higher than their strikeout rate. That number has slowly dwindled as strikeout rates have skyrocketed. This season, just two qualified batters have taken a stroll to first more often than a stroll back to the dugout: Alex Bregman and Carlos Santana. If we lower the plate appearance threshold, another batter joins this interesting group of players: Luis Arraez.

Arráez doesn’t hit for power like Bregman and Santana, he simply makes a ton of contact. His 91.9% contact rate leads the majors, just ahead of contact maestro David Fletcher. There’s nothing inherently more valuable about running a walk rate higher than your strikeout rate — there are plenty of players who thrive with a walk-to-strikeout ratio much lower than one — but Arráez’s batting style is a rare sight in today’s era of three true outcomes. His ability to draw a walk does make him stand out against some of the other batters with an aggressive, high-contact approach like Fletcher or Willians Astudillo. The combination of elite bat control with a discerning eye has helped him post the fifth-highest OBP among all batters with at least 200 plate appearances.

Arráez was signed out of Venezuela as a 16-year-old international free agent back in 2013. His ability to consistently put wood on the ball helped him rise quickly through the Twins organization. He peaked as the No. 12 prospect in their system this past offseason, but his lack of power limited his potential ceiling. Still, that didn’t hold him back from posting a minor league slash line of .331/.385/.414. His hit tool is equal parts natural ability and dedication to his craft. Back in June, he spoke with Mariana Guzman of Twins Daily about his pre-game routine: Read the rest of this entry »

We have a sizable collection of players to talk about this week because the two of us have been busy wrapping up our summer looks at the 2020 Draft class over the last couple weeks. This equates to every prospect added to or moved on THE BOARD since the Trade Deadline.

Top 100 Changes
We had two players enter the 50 FV tier in Diamondbacks SS Geraldo Perdomo and Padres C Luis Campusano. Perdomo is in the “Advanced Baseball Skills” player bucket with players like Vidal Brujan, Brayan Rocchio and Xavier Edwards. He’s added visible power since first arriving in the States and had as many walks as strikeouts at Low-A before he was promoted to the Cal League, which has been Campusano’s stomping ground all summer. He’s still not a great catcher but he does have an impact arm, big power, and he’s a good enough athlete that we’re optimistic he’ll both catch and make the necessary adjustments to get to his power in games down the line.

We also moved a D-back and a Padre down in RHP Taylor Widener and 1B Tirso Ornelas. Widener has been very homer prone at Triple-A a year after leading the minors in K’s. His fastball has natural cut rather than ride and while we still like him as a rotation piece, there’s a chance he continues to be very susceptible to the long ball. Ornelas has dealt with injury and swing issues.

On Aristides Aquino
Aristides Aquino was a 50 FV on the 2017 Reds list; at the time, he was a traditional right field profile with big power undermined by the strikeout issues that would eventually cause his performance to tank so badly that he became a minor league free agent. A swing change visually similar to the one Justin Turner made before his breakout (Reds hitting coach Turner Ward comes from the Dodgers) is evident here, so we’re cautiously optimistic Aquino will be a productive role player, but we don’t think he’ll keep up a star’s pace. Read the rest of this entry »