For whatever reason, people enjoy ranking things. A perfectly rational species would be okay with measures of quality, but humans are really into ordering things and arguing about the ordering of things. It explains why we often find ourselves arguing about which pitchers qualify as aces. Definitions vary, but lots of us get caught up in determining the best 10, 15, or 30 pitchers, implicitly suggesting that pitchers 11, 16, and 31 are demonstrably differently than the pitchers above them on the list.

Of course, that’s after you get over the fact that we lack an agreed upon definition of “acehood.” We can all appreciate that it’s some blend of quality and durability, but the exact nature of the definition is fluid. In a basic sense, we want to know how good a pitcher is and of we can count on him to be that good for a significant number of innings. In other words, something like a pitcher’s WAR over the previous three seasons might a good place to start the ace conversation.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I addressed the Cy Young battle in the senior circuit and titled it “The NL Cy Young Showdown.” This time, it’s the AL’s turn — and “discussion” (as opposed to “showdown”) seems to be the proper way to characterize it. It’s been a low-key pitching season, comparatively, in the AL, with no one posting an ERA near Zack Greinke‘s, or pitching no-hitters or engaging in zany second-half shenanigans like Jake Arrieta. In fact, a general consensus seems to be building that the award is David Price’s to lose. Today, let’s have a full discussion, including utilization of batted-ball data, about the AL Cy Young and its three likely frontrunners, Price, Chris Sale and Dallas Keuchel.

Price, who turned 30 in late August, is the only one of the three with a Cy (2012) on his mantle, though he hasn’t finished above sixth in the annual voting since then. Sale has come progressively closer in the voting, checking in at sixth, fifth and third in the last three seasons, while this will be the first time on a ballot for Keuchel, 2015’s foremost pitching breakthrough.

Read the rest of this entry »

Pardon me; I don’t mean to interrupt your afternoon. If you’re here, though, you might well be a bit curious about Adam Eaton. Which is good, because I am, too! To get started, you know those player caps we have on most pages? The profiles and quick opinions, I mean, written by various FanGraphs authors. They’re written during the winter, providing brief player analysis, and here’s a link to Adam Eaton’s page. I’m going to pull a little excerpt. This isn’t intended to pick on Chris Cwik. Anyone would’ve written the following.

Since Eaton isn’t going to add any pop, his performance will likely be based on the guys behind him.

Made total sense at the time. Eaton is a little dude, with an extended track record of hitting groundballs. Last year, as an everyday player, Eaton was literally out-homered by Ben Revere. He went deep just the once, and so he was seemingly easy to project. Speed and contact. Decent number of walks. We all knew what Adam Eaton was, up until we didn’t. This season, Eaton’s already knocked nine dingers. Put another way, he’s tied with Adrian Beltre. Chase Headley and Jason Heyward, too. Adam Eaton wasn’t going to add any pop. Adam Eaton added a lot of pop.

Read the rest of this entry »

This breakdown starts with the Scott Kazmir deal on July 23, but there weren’t any trades from the 16th to the 23rd, so this covers the whole second half of the month, trade-wise, up until now. I count 25 total trades with prospects involved in that span that add together to have 58 prospects on the move. Check out the preseason Top 200 List for more details, but I’ve added the range that each Future Value (FV) group fell in last year’s Top 200 to give you an idea of where they will fall in this winter’s list. Also see the preseason team-specific lists to see where the lower-rated prospects may fall within their new organization.

40 FV is the lowest grade that shows up on these numbered team lists, with 35+ and 35 FV prospects mentioned in the “Others of Note” section, so I’ll give blurbs for the 40 FV or better prospects here. I’ve also linked to the post-trade prospect breakdown for the trades I was able to analyze individually, so click there for more information. Alternately, click on the player’s name to see his player page with all his prior articles listed if I didn’t write up his trade.

I opted to not numerically rank these players now, but I will once I’ve made the dozens and dozens of calls necessary this fall and winter to have that level of precision with this many players. Look for the individual team lists to start rolling out in the next month, with the 2016 Top 200 list coming in early 2016. Lastly, the players are not ranked within their tiers, so these aren’t clues for where they will fall on the Top 200.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brayan Pena is a 33-year-old backup catcher who has amassed 1820 PA across 11 seasons, producing a .259/.299/.352 line and a 75 wRC+. The takeaway point from that first sentence is that Brayan Pena has been among the worst hitters in the league over the last decade, which is probably something you knew about him without any prompting. Pena’s a fun-loving character and he’s passable behind the plate, so he’s made a career for himself in the big leagues despite the very limited offensive production.

Reflecting on Pena is simply a way to put the 2015 White Sox in perspective because the White Sox are essentially hitting like Brayan Pena as a team this year. On the season, they’re hitting .241/.295/.357 (77 wRC+). They’re five percentage points worse than the Phillies (82 wRC+) at the plate without removing the Phillies’ pitchers from the equation. Take pitchers out of the equation and the White Sox’ 78 wRC+ is nine percentage points worse than the 29th place Phillies (87 wRC+). The White Sox offense is historically bad.

Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Mets’ young trio of Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, and Noah Syndergaard have garnered quite a bit of attention of late. Our own Dave Cameron put all three pitchers in the first 30 names in his Trade Value series. The Mets were the only team with three pitchers on the list, and all three are 27 years old or younger. The Mets staff has carried a woeful offense and kept them in contention for a playoff spot. John Smoltz recently called the Mets’ young collection of talent “way better” than the 90s Braves teams that included Hall of Famers Smoltz, Greg Maddux, and Tom Glavine. While the young group is no doubt talented, how do they compare with other young groups around the league?

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the things I find most interesting about baseball is how often players seem to try new things and then how often those changes seem to make little to no difference in their overall productivity. Batters alter their stances and pitchers try new grips and patterns all the time, but it’s actually pretty rare that a player makes a small change and becomes significantly different. A whole lot of effort goes into small changes, but the vast majority of these changes don’t seem to make a big difference, yet everyone is always making them. It seems like a lot of wasted energy.

Except that it’s not wasted energy as much as it’s about context. One reason all of these tweaks don’t have huge impacts is that everyone else gets a chance to respond to the adjustment very quickly and make their own. There’s so much information available to players and they’re generally a perceptive bunch. If Clayton Kershaw suddenly threw Paul Goldschmidt a 50-grade knuckeball, I would wager that Goldschmidt wouldn’t do much damage against that first one. Theoretically, Kershaw spent lots of man hours working on the pitch, but most hitters have faced knuckeballs and they would very quickly figure out that Kershaw has one and when he likes to use it. A pitcher adjusts, and then the hitters adjust to that adjustment. It goes on and on forever. If you don’t constantly tinker, you might be left behind.

At the beginning of 2014, there were a lot of questions about how well Jose Abreu would perform in the major leagues because we didn’t have any information about Abreu in the context of the American professional regime. His raw tools had our attention, but until we saw him face professionals in the American context, our information was rather limittarget=”_blank”. The question at hand was how Abreu would adjust to the major leagues.

Read the rest of this entry »

By striking out 12 St. Louis Cardinals hitters on Tuesday night, Chris Sale of the Chicago White Sox tied Pedro Martinez’s record for striking out at least ten hitters in eight games in a row. The feat is an impressive one, requiring a consistent level of performance for more than a month. Only four pitchers have had such a streak last more than five games, per Baseball Reference’s Play Index (Much of the data throughout this piece comes the Play Index).

During the streak, Sale has an ERA of 1.80 and a 1.27 FIP while striking out 42.5% of hitters. Counting only strikeouts during the streak, Sale’s 97 Ks would be tied for ninth with Sonny Gray for strikeouts for the entire season in the American League. WIthin Sale’s current streak is a five-game span where Sale struck out at least 12 hitters every game which is also tied with Pedro Martinez (as well as Randy Johnson) for the longest streak in history. As it stands, Sale’s 141 strikeouts and 35% K-rate are number one in baseball. Although unlikely, Sale has an outside shot at becoming the first pitcher to achieve 300 strikeouts since 2002 when both Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling achieved that mark for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Read the rest of this entry »

For the last few years, Rick Hahn and Kenny Williams have been steadily rebuilding the White Sox base of talent, and along the way, they’ve acquired a few cornerstone players that are the envy of every other franchise in baseball. Chris Sale continues to get better by the year, and is probably the best pitcher in the American League at this point. Jose Abreu was a monster from the minute he arrived in the big leagues. Jose Quintana went from minor league free agent to rotation stalwart. The team’s struggles allowed them to be in a position to draft Carlos Rodon, who got to the big leagues less than a year after being drafted, and they just selected Carson Fulmer, another polished college pitcher who Kiley McDaniel believes could get to the big leagues very quickly as well. There are the makings of a very good team here.

Unfortunately for the White Sox, having a few star players just isn’t enough, and even with Sale dominating every fifth day, the 2015 season has been a disaster on the south side of Chicago. After pulling within two games of .500 after an early-June sweep of the Astros, the team has now lost nine of their last 11 games, including a 13-2 drubbing at the hand of the Twins yesterday. As they enter play today, they stand at 30-39, the second worst record in the American League, and even that overstates their performance to date; by BaseRuns, their expected record is 24-45.

Six weeks ago, I noted that the White Sox faced a “looming decision”, as the team’s poor start would test their conviction that this really was a roster built to contend in the short-term; since then, the White Sox have played roughly .500 ball by getting some clutch hits and stranding runners, but they haven’t really done anything to show that this is a team capable of running down the legitimate contenders in the American League this year. At this point, it’s pretty clear that the White Sox should probably be sellers in July.

But the more I look at the White Sox roster, the more I think that they probably shouldn’t just stop at moving Jeff Samardzija before he hits free agency. It might really be time for the White Sox to blow up their roster.

Read the rest of this entry »

It seems like a simple question to ask. Which recent home run was the least likely?

You could flippantly answer — the one Erick Aybar hit this year, or the one Melky Cabrera hit this year — and because they’ve got the lowest isolated slugging percentages with at least one homer hit, you would be right. But that doesn’t control for the quality of the pitcher. Aybar hit his off of Rick Porcello, who is having some issues with the home run right now.

A slightly more sophisticated approach might have you scan down the list of the worst isolated powers in the game right now, and then cross-reference those names with the pitchers that allowed those home runs. If you do that, you’ll eventually settle on Alexei Ramirez, who hit his first homer of the year off of Johnny Cueto earlier this year.

Read the rest of this entry »