I saw Dylan Cease’s start on Monday night and wanted to pass along some notes and video of him following his trade to the Padres. I also wanted to share fresh spring notes on the new White Sox prospects acquired yesterday. Let’s start with Cease. Here is my video from his unbroadcast start:
You truly cannot make this stuff up. Back in December, the Padres were involved in the biggest trade of the offseason, sending Juan Soto to the Yankees in return for a heaping helping of pitching prospects. It’s the kind of trade you make when you’ve missed out on your goal, a classic attempt to turn a bad situation into an OK one. When you trade one of the best handful of players in baseball for some dudes most people outside of New York have never heard of, it’s fairly easy to guess your team’s trajectory.
But, uh, don’t tell A.J. Preller that. On Wednesday, the Padres made their second blockbuster of the winter, this one headed in the opposite direction: They acquired Dylan Cease from the Chicago White Sox in exchange for Drew Thorpe, Jairo Iriarte, Samuel Zavala, and Steven Wilson, as Mark Feinsand first reported.
This is wild stuff. It’s so hard to get a player like Soto on your team; if you have him, and you’re trying to make the playoffs, there’s almost never a good reason to move him. If you do move him, you’re probably rebuilding, though, not turning around and using one of those same prospects you got in the first deal to add a new star. The Padres, man.
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The White Sox rebuild marched on over the weekend, as the team signed a veteran non-roster invitee and made two trades that brought three prospects and a draft pick into the system. Most significantly, 24-year-old reliever Gregory Santos was traded to the Mariners for 23-year-old righty Prelander Berroa, 25-year-old outfielder Zach DeLoach and a “Comp B” draft pick, the 69th choice in the 2024 draft. The White Sox also traded 21-year-old righty Cristian Mena to Arizona for 26-year-old outfielder Dominic Fletcher. Read the rest of this entry »
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Chicago White Sox. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the fourth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »
There’s a mean-spirited but persistent thread in American pop culture, in which the Midwest is depicted as a cultural backwater, populated by sleepy, gormless, unattractive rubes and devoid of meaningful art or culture. For example, this sidesplitting musical interlude from 30 Rock. As an East Coast snob who lived for many years among the Great Lakes, I find this line of comedy offensive. Midwesterners are friendly, vigorous, beautiful people, and they live in a land of marvels. (If you’re wondering why I’ve chosen to open with this confusing and risky metaphor: We just got a new assistant editor, Matt Martell, and I’m hazing him by handing him a grenade on his second day.)
But when it comes to pitching, the coastal elites might have a point: Standards have slipped a little in the heartland. For the Chicago White Sox and Pittsburgh Pirates, John Brebbia and Aroldis Chapman, respectively, are marquee signings. (Now I’ve thrown all that goodwill away by puncturing Pittsburghers’ delusion that they’re from the East Coast. How foolish of me.) Read the rest of this entry »
Let’s be honest: Dylan Cease is in the general baseball consciousness to such an extent right now because it’s all we have. The free agent class of 2023-24 was weak to begin with, and Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto have already signed. Juan Soto is now a Yankee. Tyler Glasnow got traded. Cease is such a focus because the shiniest free agents are gone and because if your team isn’t going to spend any money – Hi there, O’s! – he’s the best imaginable improvement.
Cease is a good pitcher with flaws. He’s a strikeout machine thanks to his glorious slider, and he’s made every start available to him for four straight years. He also walks far too many batters – partially thanks to his glorious slider – and despite sitting 95-97 mph, his fastball is remarkably hittable. Add that all up, and his aggregate numbers over that four-year span – 3.58 ERA, 3.70 FIP, 12.3 WAR in 585 innings – are excellent. But he always feels one bad start away from regression, one batter realizing that slider is unhittable away from a six-walk outing.
All that is to say that Cease probably isn’t the no-doubt ace that his 2022 season portended, but he’s a very good pitcher nonetheless. Steamer thinks he’s somewhere between the 21st and 40th best pitcher in baseball, which isn’t as good as his results, but I’m willing to take the over on that projection because a lot of it seems to rely on his home run prevention declining meaningfully. If your team has Cease as their second-best pitcher in 2024, they’re probably ecstatic about the top of their rotation. If they have him penciled in as their best pitcher, they might still be okay! He’s good, is my point. 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 final team is the Chicago White Sox.
In a certain way, this team is a bit more depressing than the Oakland Athletics. No, they’re not trying to peace out of Chicago, but I think the A’s front office is probably more realistic about the team’s immediate chances of winning than the Southsiders are. It’s always hard to gauge exactly what a team truly thinks of their outlook, but I get the impression that the White Sox think they will be at least halfway competitive in 2024. Realistically, though, a lot of things would have to go their way, even in a weak division like the AL Central.
The Pale Hose have a one-dude offense in a sport where that isn’t a thing. Luis Robert Jr. is in his prime right now, probably at his peak form. If the White Sox were actually rebuilding, he’s the guy they could trade to start meaningfully restocking the farm system. Instead, he’ll be a key cog in their quest to win 70 games. 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.
| Pitcher | Career WAR | Peak WAR Adj. | S-JAWS | W-L | SO | ERA | ERA+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bartolo Colon | 46.2 | 35.5 | 40.9 | 247-188 | 2535 | 4.12 | 106 |
Bartolo Colon could throw strikes. At the outset of his 21-year major league career, Colon blew 100-mph fastballs by hitters, and within a couple years showed off top-of-the-rotation form. Over a decade and more than half a dozen teams later, following a controversial arm surgery, Colon’s ability to locate his sinker to both sides of the plate with precision gained him greater renown. In one 2012 start, he threw 38 consecutive strikes.
Indeed, it was the second act of his career — or was it the third, or even the fourth? — during which Colon became an unlikely cult favorite. The Dominican-born righty had listed at 5-foot-10, 185 pounds while in the minors, but his biggest contract extension had a weight clause centered at 225 pounds. After suffering a torn rotator cuff at the tail end of his Cy Young Award-winning 2005 season, he spent nearly half a decade knocking around before undergoing experimental injections of fat and stem cells into his shoulder and elbow, and by the time he reemerged in his late 30s, he was officially listed at 285 pounds. His everyman build made him more relatable, but it camouflaged an exceptional athleticism. “Big Sexy” — the nickname given to him by teammate Noah Syndergaard, and later the title of his 2020 autobiography — could field his position with enough flair to execute a behind-the-back throw. He could high-kick like a Rockette, and do splits like a ballerina. “One of the stereotypes of Bartolo is because he has an atypical body type for a pitcher, he is not in shape,” said Cleveland GM Mark Shapiro in 2004. “But this guy is amazingly strong. He’s like [former Houston Oiler running back] Earl Campbell from the waist down. He is a strong, strong man, and that core strength is what it’s all about.” 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.
The fourth and final multi-candidate pairing of this series is by far the heaviest, covering two candidates who have both been connected to multiple incidents of domestic violence. 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 »