Are you, or have you ever been, in a position to make decisions about major league team personnel? Do you like trading? Have you ever held a dime and wished it were two nickels, or vice versa? If so, stay where you are, remain calm, and Jerry Dipoto will be calling you soon to make some deals. Like this one:

MLB righties Anthony DeSclafani and Justin Topa along with prospects OF Gabriel Gonzalez and RHP Darren Bowen is the four player return for Polanco, per sources. Believe cash is also involved. https://t.co/GQDKtwaogh

— Kiley McDaniel (@kileymcd) January 30, 2024

Prospects! Relievers! Reclamation projects! Everyday regulars! This one has a little bit of everything. But it’s more complicated than that, because it’s not your standard offseason trade, where one team is downgrading to look for the future while the other builds for today. Both of these teams have playoff hopes this year, and they’re each using this trade to improve their chances. It’s a weird one.
Read the rest of this entry »

Edouard Julien had a remarkable rookie season. Called up for good in late May, he knocked 16 home runs and ran a 136 wRC+ over 109 games, finishing seventh in the AL Rookie of the Year voting. Among second basemen with at least 400 plate appearances, that 136 wRC+ ranked third in baseball, behind Mookie Betts and Jose Altuve and ahead of Luis Arraez. That’s pretty good company. Using the same plate appearances threshold, his 17.2% chase rate was the lowest in baseball, which enabled him to run a 15.7% walk rate, good for fifth highest. John Foley recently wrote an excellent breakdown of Julien’s patience over at Twinkie Town.

There are also plenty of non-baseball reasons to enjoy Julien. He’s the bearer of the fanciest name in MLB, and so far as I can tell he’s just the second player in big-league history whose name includes the vowels O, U, and A all in a row. The first was also an Edouard: Joseph Albert Rolland Édouard, better known as Roland Gladu. A French-Canadian like Julien, Gladu played all over the world, homering in the professional leagues of five different countries: Canada, the United States, Mexico, Cuba, and Great Britain. Julien’s name also flows off the tongue in a pleasing way. Because of the scansion of Edouard Julien, whenever I think about him for an extended period of time, this song gets stuck in my head:

I even wrote a Julien-inspired version of the song — mostly because I couldn’t not write one — which you can listen to at the bottom of this piece.

Back to baseball, there was a bit of helium in Julien’s 2023 numbers. His wOBA outpaced his xwOBA by 18 points, and his .371 BABIP ranked fifth in all of baseball. Understandably, the projection systems see him stepping back to a wRC+ around 115 next year. There are still some holes in Julien’s game. He doesn’t make enough contact, especially on pitches in the zone. Combined with his preternatural patience, that leads to a big, scary strikeout rate of 31.4%. While that did help him fit in with the rest of Minnesota’s roster, it’s not exactly ideal.

Today we’re going to worry about a different part of Julien’s profile: hitting left-handed pitching. To say that it wasn’t a highlight of his rookie campaign would be an understatement. Julien’s splits against righties and lefties were downright historic. In fact, he took home the first annual Scooter Gennett Award for Offensive Asymmetry, which goes to the player with the largest difference between their wRC+ against righties and lefties (minimum 400 PAs). Since 2002, which is as far back as our main leaderboard tracks handedness splits, 4,418 player seasons have met that PA minimum. Gennett became the face of the award thanks to a 2014 season when he put up an excellent 118 wRC+ against righties and a downright depressing -40 against lefties. In 2023, Julien put up a wRC+ of 151 against righties and 22 against lefties, for a difference of 129. Since 2002, only 10 players have had a wider range.

Keep in mind, a lot of this is small sample size theater. There aren’t that many left-handed pitchers, and if your team doesn’t trust you to hit against them, you’re not going to get what few chances are available. This can also create a chicken-and-the-egg situation. You can get fewer PAs against lefties because you can’t hit them, or you can fail to hit lefties because you don’t see them often enough to get comfortable. Julien had just 48 PAs against lefties in 2023. Of the 4,418 seasons in our sample, only 42 of those players faced lefties less often than Julien’s 11.8%. Julien would probably improve against lefties if he ever got regular plate appearances against them, but even if he doesn’t, it would be foolish to assume that a wRC+ of 22 represents his true talent level.

However, this isn’t a new phenomenon. Back in December, Nick Nelson noted Julien’s splits with Double-A Wichita during the 2022 season. Julien slashed .332/.465/.566 against righties and .210/.373/.276 against lefties. If you’re keeping score at home, that works out to OPS splits of 1.031 and 649.

There’s one more important caveat before we dive into the numbers: The splits don’t matter that much. Most pitchers are righties. That means Julien will get to face righties most of the time, and it also means that finding a righty to platoon with him won’t be terribly hard. If his platoon splits were to stay exactly the same, Julien would still be a league-average hitter as long as he didn’t face lefties more than 40% of the time, and that’s not going to happen. Of our 4,418-season sample, only 27 players ever saw lefties that often.

However, none of that made me less curious about what was going on when Julien faced lefties, so I broke down the splits.

His strikeout rate is higher against lefties, but the walk rate is what really jumps out. It’s 13 percentage points higher against righties than against lefties. That’s an enormous difference! All of our small sample size caveats apply, but in terms of walk rate, depending on the handedness of the pitcher, Julien goes from very nearly Juan Soto to literally worse than Javier Báez. Let’s take a look at what’s going on under the hood:

Well that’s simple enough. Julien swings a lot more against lefties, especially outside the zone. He’s still patient by any reasonable standard; a 21.5% chase rate is still in something like the 92nd percentile. However, Julien also whiffs more, and not just outside the zone. His zone contact rate is already the most worrisome part of his profile, and against lefties it’s even worse.

Unfortunately, the problems don’t stop there. When he does put the ball in play against lefties, Julien not only hits the ball a lot softer, but he hits it straight into the ground.

There’s a big difference if you go by Statcast’s hard-hit rate, but take a look at the soft, medium, and hard percentages, which come from Sports Info Solutions. By their reckoning, Julien’s hard-hit rate is more than 30 percentage points lower against lefties. And then there’s the launch angle. Julien hits the ball on the ground more than would be ideal against righties, but against lefties? That’s not a typo; just one of Julien’s 30 batted balls was a fly ball. That’s how you get a 24:1 ratio of groundballs to fly balls. What does that look like in a heat map? It looks like never hitting the ball out of the infield.

This doesn’t seem to be a pitch location issue. When facing Julien, lefties have targeted the bottom of the zone more often than righties have, but only slightly. The same is true of his swing decisions. Julien swung at lower pitches from lefties, but just barely. It doesn’t seem to be a pitch type issue either. Against lefties, 56.7% of his balls in play against came on sinkers, breaking balls, or offspeed pitches, compared to 48.4% against righties. That’s not an insignificant difference, but it’s nowhere near enough to explain an 18.2-degree shift in launch angle. It just seems to be the way he hit the ball against lefties.

This is, I swear, the last time I remind you that everything I’ve just said is based on small samples, but seriously, the samples are very small. I’m hoping that we’ll get some bigger samples in 2024, but so far that doesn’t seem likely. He started just seven of the 38 games the Twins faced a left-handed starter with him on the roster, ceding the keystone to Kyle Farmer and Jorge Polanco. Polanco’s current contract ends after 2024, with a club option for 2025. Even if the trade rumors around Polanco turn out to be true, Farmer and the Twins just agreed on a one-year deal, avoiding arbitration, with a mutual option for 2025. It’s a bit disappointing. I would love to see what Julien could do over a bigger sample. If he does turn out to be passable against lefties, it would be extremely fun to watch and it could propel him to another level. And if it turns out that a 22 wRC+ really does represent his true talent level, that would be pretty interesting, too. More importantly, it would lock up the Scooter Gennett Award for Offensive Asymmetry for years to come.

Mike Redmond has been up close and personal with a lot of high-profile players, some of whom arrived on the scene at a young age. As a big league backstop from 1998-2010, Redmond caught the likes of Josh Beckett, Johan Santana, and Dontrelle Willis, and he played alongside Miguel Cabrera. As the manager of the Miami Marlins from 2013-2015, he helped oversee the blossoming careers of José Fernández, Giancarlo Stanton, and Christian Yelich. With the exception of Santana, who was by then a comparative graybeard at age 26, the septet of stalwarts were barely into their 20s when they began playing with, and for, Redmond.

Now the bench coach of the Colorado Rockies, Redmond looked back at his experiences with the aforementioned All-Stars when the Rockies visited Fenway Park last summer.

——-

David Laurila: Let’s start with José Fernández, who was just 20 years old when he debuted. Just how good was he?

Mike Redmond: “I mean, yeah, he was a phenom. The plan was for him to be in the minor leagues for one more year, but because we were so thin pitching wise we had to bring him to the big leagues. We didn’t have anybody else that year.

“I’d seen José, because I’d managed in the Florida State League when he was there the year before. Christian Yelich and J.T. Realmuto were on that team, as well. I was with Toronto, managing Dunedin, so I got to see all of those guys in the minor leagues. With José, you could just tell. The stuff, the confidence, the mound presence… it was just different. It was different than the other guys in that league, man.

“I got the manager’s job with the Marlins, and I remember being in spring training that first year. [President of Baseball Operations] Larry Beinfest and I were talking about José, and he goes, ‘Hey, don’t get too excited. You’re not going to get him just yet.’ I was like, ‘OK, whatever.’ Sure enough, José ended up breaking camp with us because of injuries. We had him on a pitch count, and he’d always give me a hard time about it, because he wanted to throw more. I would be like, ‘Hey, listen, you have 100 pitches. How you use those 100 pitches is up to you.’ I would say that he used them pretty effectively. He was nasty. Great slider. And again, he was very confident in his abilities. He was a competitor. I mean, he reminded me of some of the great pitchers I’d caught in the big leagues, like Josh Beckett and Johan Santana. Guys who just dominated.” Read the rest of this entry »

For the 20th 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 Minnesota Twins.

Batters

This set of batters probably looks familiar because, well, apart from the Luis Arraez trade to the Marlins, this is pretty much the same collection of hitters the Twins have had available the last several years. Edouard Julien isn’t the exact same type of player as Arraez, but he more or less fulfills Arraez’s role of “interesting offensive talent who the Twins can play at second base, but would prefer not to.”

Can Byron Buxton stay healthy? Just sticking him at DH isn’t a satisfactory answer — one of the reasons a healthy Buxton is so valuable is because he has played a transcendent center field when he’s been able to. Playing DH, he’s basically just Jorge Soler, which has value, but not that star-level sizzle. Read the rest of this entry »

Kala’i Rosario won the Arizona Fall League’s Home Run Derby this past November, and he did so in impressive fashion. Not only did the 21-year-old Minnesota Twins outfield prospect pummel a total of 25 baseballs over the fence at Mesa’s Sloan Park, the longest of them traveled a power hitter-ish 465 feet. By and large, that is what Rosario’s game is all about. As Eric Longenhagen pointed out last summer, the 6-foot, 212-pound Papaikou, Hawaii native had previously won the 2019 Area Code Games Home Run Derby and he “swings with incredible force and has big raw power for his age.”

Rosario’s setup in the box stood out to me as much as his ability to bludgeon baseballs when I watched him capture the AFL’s derby crown. The right-handed hitter not only had his feet spread wide, he had next to no stride. I asked him about that following his finals victory over Toronto Blue Jays infield prospect Damiano Palmegiani.

“Tonight my setup was a little different, but in games I usually do a small stride, so it wasn’t a big difference,” Rosario told me. “I have power already, so I don’t lock into my coil too much. When I get into the box I kind of preset everything, and from there it’s just letting my hands do the work.”

Improving his contact skills is both a goal and a necessity for the slugger. Rosario had a 29.6% strikeout rate to go with his .252/.364/.467 slash line and 21 home runs in 530 plate appearances with High-A Cedar Rapids. As Longenhagen also opined in his midseason writeup, Rosario’s “high-effort swing has zero precision.” Widening out and shortening up have been part of his effort to alleviate that issue. Read the rest of this entry »

Craig Breslow is restructuring the Red Sox pitching program. Hired in October to replace Chaim Bloom as Boston’s Chief Baseball Officer, the 43-year-old erstwhile reliever is doing so in multiple ways, and that includes having effectively cloned himself with a Twin. Earlier this month, Boston’s new top executive lured Justin Willard away from Minnesota to be the team’s Director of Pitching — the same role Breslow held in Chicago when he worked to revamp the Cubs’ pitching development process just a few years ago.

That Breslow’s approach is largely data-driven and comes with an adherence to bat-missing qualities is a big reason why Willard was brought on board. Much like the Yale graduate who hired him, Willard — a former college hurler with an MBA from Radford University — is both well-versed in analytics and an advocate of arsenals rife with plus raw stuff. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 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.

Before Joe Mauer began starring for the Twins, there was Torii Hunter, and before Chase Utley began starring for the Phillies, there was Jimmy Rollins. Hunter, a rangy, acrobatic center fielder who eventually won nine Gold Gloves and made five All-Star teams, debuted with Minnesota in 1997 and emerged as a star in 2001, the same year the Twins chose Mauer with the number one pick of the draft. The pair would play together from 2004 to ’07, making the playoffs twice before Hunter departed via free agency. Rollins, a compact shortstop who carried himself with a swagger, debuted in 2001 and made two All-Star teams by the time he and Utley began an 11-year run (2004–14) as the Phillies’ regular double play combination. The pair helped Philadelphia to five NL East titles, two pennants, and a championship, with Rollins winning NL MVP honors in 2007 and taking home four Gold Gloves.

Hunter and Rollins both enjoyed lengthy and impressive careers, racking up over 2,400 hits apiece with substantial home run and stolen base totals. From a Hall of Fame perspective, both have credentials that appeal more to traditionally-minded voters than to statheads. But in their time on the ballot, they’ve gotten little traction, with Hunter topping out at 9.5% in his 2021 debut and Rollins only breaking into double digits in ’23. Not much has changed regarding their electoral outlooks this time around; both are likely to be far outdistanced by their former teammates, whose advanced statistics are much stronger despite comparatively short careers. Still, these two may persist on the ballot, with enough support for us to keep reliving their careers and discussing their merits on an annual basis. There are far worse fates for Hall of Fame candidates. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 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.

Joe Mauer was one of baseball’s greatest hometown-boy-makes-good stories. A former No. 1 overall pick out of Cretin-Derham Hall High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 2001, he spent the entirety of his 15-year career with the Twins. Despite a listed height of 6-foot-5, he excelled at catching and was also an elite left-handed hitter, with a quick, compact stroke and impeccable judgment of the strike zone. Between his outstanding two-way performances, his handsome good looks, and his wholesome public persona, he was an ideal face-of-the-franchise player. He played a central role in helping the Twins, who were targeted for contraction just five months after he was drafted, to four postseason appearances. Along the way he made six All-Star teams and won three Gold Gloves and three batting titles apiece, not to mention the 2009 AL MVP award.

Alas, the Twins were swept in each of their playoff series, and for all of Mauer’s accomplishments, his career was punctuated by injuries, starting with a meniscus tear in the second game of his rookie season. Post-concussion problems forced him to hang up the tools of ignorance and shift to first base; his power, which had only intermittently shown up even in the best of times, with one season of more than 13 homers, dissipated upon moving to the team’s beautiful new ballpark; and some segment of the fan base blamed his eight-year, $184 million contract extension for the team’s apparent financial limitations. Ultimately, he chose to retire at age 35 due to continued concussion-related complications.

All of that is proof that Mauer’s story wasn’t a fairy tale, but even so, it was a great career. So great, in fact, that Mauer ranks seventh in JAWS among catchers despite its limitations, and that’s without accounting for his above-average pitch framing, a factor that will become increasingly important to grapple with in upcoming Hall of Fame debates. Even without a bonus for his upstanding character (the original intent of the infamous clause in the voting rules), he’s eminently worthy of a spot in the Hall of Fame. Whether he’ll get there on the first try is another question, however, particularly amid a crowded field and an electorate that has not only become much less generous lately but also has rarely treated even the most obvious honorees among catchers with appropriate respect. Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s 40-man roster deadline was less eventful than usual (we only had one trade on deadline day), but as always, a number of young players became big leaguers in a certain sense, and teams had no choice but to indicate what they think of lots of fringe prospects who they either did or did not choose to roster. This day of clerical activity is the culmination of the efforts of the players themselves, the people in player development who have helped turn them into big leaguers, and the scouting and decision-making portions of each org that put their stamp of approval on the prospects. Is any one move here as impactful as signing a Yoshinobu Yamamoto or a Matt Chapman? No, but when your favorite team experiences a rash of injuries in June, whether or not they have the depth to scrap and compete is often dictated by the people and processes that surround this day. I’m more focused on analyzing roster depth, fit and flexibility in this space than on scouting players (especially when they’re star prospects you already know well). I’ll have a separate post on the National League. Read the rest of this entry »

Reese Olson has a chance to be a top-of-the-rotation starter in Detroit, and it is notable that the Tigers acquired him via trade. On July 30, 2021, then-general manager Al Avila dealt Daniel Norris to the Milwaukee Brewers in exchange for the now-24-year-old right-hander, who at the time had a 4.30 ERA in High-A and was flying below most prospect radar. Talented but raw, he ranked seventh in a system that wasn’t particularly well-regarded.

Olson made his MLB debut this past June, and by season’s end he was showing signs that he could emerge as a No. 1 or a No. 2.on a promising young staff. Over his last six starts, the plain-spoken Gainesville, Georgia native allowed just 18 hits and six earned runs in 35-and-two-thirds innings. On the year, he had a 3.99 ERA and a 4.01 FIP to go with a 24.4% strikeout rate and a .214 BAA. He fanned 102 batters in 103-and-two-thirds innings.

Scott Harris doesn’t believe in labels like No. 1 starter or No. 2 starter. He does believe in the fast-rising righty.

“Reese has three distinct secondary pitches that miss bats,” Detroit’s President of Baseball Operations told me at this week’s GM meetings. “That’s really hard to find. He also has two different fastballs that reach the upper 90s. I also think he did some things this summer that reminded me of what other really good pitchers do in their first year in the big leagues. I’m not going to throw those expectations on him, but his ceiling is as high as anyone’s.” Read the rest of this entry »