I returned a few days ago from a three-day trip to the Dominican to see top July 2nd prospects (more on that in the coming weeks) and also a workout that had 18 Cuban players in it. Two of those 18 were big-time prospects, the well-known and hyped 29-year-old 2B Hector Olivera and the brand new name, 18-year-old righty Yadier Alvarez.  Here’s my notes and video on those two, along with some quick updates on the other two notable Cubans on the market, 2B/3B/CF Yoan Moncada and 2B Andy Ibanez.

For reference, in my top 200 prospects list that is coming next week, these Cuban players aren’t included on the list, but Moncada would be 8th, Alvarez would be 57th and Ibanez would be in the 150-200 range, while Olivera is ineligible due to his age and experience.

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Apparently this is the week where I do whatever anyone says. Yesterday I identified some comps for various signature pitches around the league. In the subsequent comments, a request:

Well-Beered Englishman says:
As long as we’re making requests, I say hop in the time machine and compare somebody to Mariano.

So it shall be. Let’s see if we can find a decent comparison for Mariano Rivera’s cutter, which has been the most signature of signature pitches. There’s been no greater example of hitters being unable to do much despite knowing exactly what’s coming. With Rivera, there wasn’t a lot of mystery. Just precise, pinpoint location, in areas that ensured his success.

In terms of style, the best comparison for Rivera is probably Kenley Jansen. Jansen dominates with a cutter and little else, and if that sounds familiar, it’s because that was Rivera’s whole game. But this investigation is a little different: this is looking for cutters most like Rivera’s cutter. Research was performed using the Baseball Prospectus PITCHf/x leaderboards and Brooks Baseball player pages.

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As I reported on twitter moments ago, MLB sent a memo to clubs detailing the new process for Cuban players to go from leaving the country to signing with an MLB team. The short version is that super prospect Yoan Moncada is eligible to sign now, after a maddening long delay.

For those new to this topic or if you just want a refresher, here’s a recap of my coverage of this Moncada saga from the start:

– October 3, 2014: Moncada is confirmed out of Cuba, but no one knows where he is.  We assume his whereabouts will become clear soon as he’s the most hyped prospect to leave the island in years. Here I first quote the common “teenage Puig that can play the infield and switch hit” comp and break down all the implications about who can sign him, who is likely to pony up the big bucks, game theory implications and more.

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After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the New York Yankees. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York NL / Oakland / San Diego / San Francisco / St. Louis / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Washington.

Batters
There are a number of players on this Yankees club projected not to produce wins at a rate commensurate with their salaries. The current market offers something like $6-8 million per win. Per ZiPS, Alex Rodriguez will receive about $18 million per one of those; Mark Teixeira, about the same; Carlos Beltran, about $25 million. In each case, durability is an issue beyond just declining skills. Regard: none is projected to record as many as 500 plate appearances.

A relative bargain within the context of the Yankee lineup is Chase Headley, who signed a four-year, $52 million contract with the team in December but is projected by ZiPS to play like someone roughly twice as good as that. This isn’t particularly surprising. As Dave Cameron noted earlier in the offseason, Headley’s profile — defensively above-average at third base with strong plate discipline but merely average power — hasn’t ever appealed greatly to the market. New York would appear to be the beneficiaries of this.

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The legal controversy surrounding Alex Rodriguez seemingly knows no end. Fresh off a season-long suspension – and a year filled with litigation – Rodriguez is currently preparing to return to the New York Yankees for the 2015 season. In addition to the $61 million the Yankees still owe A-Rod under the 10-year contract he signed back in 2007, Rodriguez can potentially earn another $24 million in bonuses by reaching four different home run milestones in the next three years.

Under the terms of his 2007 contract, the Yankees will pay A-Rod $6 million every time he moves up the all-time home run leaderboard. Rodriguez’s 654 career home runs currently rank fifth all-time, trailing only Willie Mays, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds. If Rodriguez hits six home runs in 2015, he would earn the first $6 million bonus by tying Mays’ career 660 home runs.

According to a recent report in the New York Daily News, however, the Yankees are preparing to contest the bonus provisions in A-Rod’s contract. When the team agreed to the milestone bonus structure back in 2007, it assumed Rodriguez’s march to the all-time home run crown would prove to be quite lucrative. In light of Rodriguez’s subsequent fall from grace, though, the team now understandably thinks A-Rod’s home run milestones will not be nearly as valuable as it initially hoped. As a result, the team is exploring its legal options.

So do the Yankees have any realistic chance of voiding Rodriguez’s bonuses? As is so often the case with the law, the answer is: It depends.

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Earlier today, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the New York Yankees. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not New York’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Yankees system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.

Below are the top-five prospects in the Yankees system by projected WAR. To assemble this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.

Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.

5. Ramon Flores, OF (Profile)

McDaniel notes with regard to Flores that, despite entering just his age-23 season, that he’s nearly a finished product. It’s not surprising, then, to see Flores’ name appear here among the Yankees’ top rookie-eligible players. What it also means is that, unlike with other prospects at the same point on the age curve, it’s probably not correct to assume that Flores will improve considerably over the next three or so years. Defensively, Flores receives a projection of about -3 runs — that is, roughly half way between a league-average center fielder and corner outfielder. This, too, supports McDaniel’s assertion that Flores is capable of playing (if not necessarily excelling at) all three outfield spots.

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Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, D’Backs, Twins, Astros, Cubs, Reds, Phillies, Rays, Mets, Padres, Marlins, Nationals, Red Sox, White Sox, Orioles, Yankees & Braves

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

Amateur Coverage: 2015 Draft Rankings, 2015 July 2 Top Prospects & Latest on Yoan Moncada

This is the longest list by a couple thousand words and the 58 videos (most with clips from multiple years) of current Yankee prospects on the FanGraphs YouTube page is the most of any team. Some of this is due to my history with the organization and proximity to their Spring Training home, but mostly due to the depth this once-maligned system has developed.

The big story with the Yankees farm system is their July 2nd spending spree last summer and the harsh critiques ownership gave the player development and scouting departments the summer before that.  One led to the other and now things look to be in a much better shape. It’s still too early to pass judgment on the July 2nd group, but all of the high bonus guys are listed below either on the list or in the others section.

They’re the only names below that are unlinked, since they haven’t played pro games yet, only instructional league; the videos of these players are from the pre-July 2nd showcases in the Dominican and from fall instructional league in Tampa. July 2nd prospects sign contracts for the following year, so the team gets an extra year of control before having to add them to the 40-man roster, rather than starting their clock a year early for just part of a summer of games.

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The Yankees re-signed Stephen Drew, for one year and a few million dollars. It’s a questionable deal — nothing was available much beyond what Drew signed for, for a reason — but it at least seems like a better deal than the Royals giving Kendrys Morales two years. And the idea is simple: Drew’s a known capable defender, and he’s hit before, and if he totally busts, he can be dumped with little problem. The Yankees paid for a little insurance, and as recently as 2013 Drew was an above-average player.

But, there was the matter of 2014. The most recent year is the most significant year, and for Stephen Drew, the most recent year was an absolute nightmare. Drew was described in last year’s FanGraphs player profile as a “line-drive hitter”, so this is appropriately discouraging:

Everything cratered. In his most recent season, Stephen Drew sucked, and thanks to Joel Sherman, we were provided the following quote from some anonymous baseball executive:

There was never a time in which he looked like a major league hitter.

Pretty harsh, pretty bleak. Pretty true, or pretty hyperbolic? That much, we can try to investigate. Did 2014 Stephen Drew ever actually look like a major-league hitter?

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By their own standards, the Yankees’ offseason has been strangely quiet. Has the team’s offseason to date flown under the radar? They’re simultaneously busy and quiet, signing two reasonably high-profile free agents and engineering two trades for everyday players. They’re both smart, imminently defensible trades but they don’t quite qualify as Yankee-scale blockbusters.

The team improved, but as it currently stands, New York trails the Blue Jays and Red Sox in terms of talent. Steamer Projections rank the Rays and Yankees as equals, forecasting an offense that marginally outscores the runs their defense and pitching allow. The offseason is far from over, but the Yankees are clearly taking their club into another direction.

The Yankees, against all odds, are getting younger. In doing so, they’re adding an element unseen in the Bronx for many years: uncertainty.

For years, fans of rival AL East teams waited on the mighty Yankees to age, decline, and finally collapse like an Old Vegas hotel rigged with dynamite. For the most part, those fans never got their wish. The Yankees had some down years, but they always had the resources to paper over their mistakes, to throw good money after bad and put together a competitive team. The second wild card spot kept the 2013 and 2014 Yankees within shouting distance of the playoffs when the talent on hand suggested they didn’t belong.

But the one thing the Yankees and their core of established talents always have is known commodities. With all their money and ability to spot a salvage job worth undertaking, the Yankees always manage a reasonably high floor for their talent. They traffic in big leaguers with little mystery. The opposite of the 2015 Chicago Cubs, in other words.

The recent veteran-laden Yankees teams came with long resumes and a whole lot of plate appearances to look back on when looking to their future. Especially over the last few seasons, the Yankees bent but never broke. They won 85 and then 84 games in the past two seasons, unable or unwilling to blow up their roster. It was never stars and scrubs as much as stars and plugs – upmarket scrubs preventing the Yankees from wallowing in rebuild seasons and netting higher draft picks.

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There are many different ways to describe the quality of a pitch. We have movement numbers on this site. There are ground-ball rates. There are whiff rates. There are metrics that use a combination of ground-ball and whiff rates. And metrics that use balls in play. There’s a whole spectrum from process to results, and you can focus on any one part of that spectrum if you like.

But there’s something that’s so appealing about the whiff. It’s a result, but it’s an undeniable one. There is no human being trying to decide if the ball went straight or if it went up in the air or if the ball went down. It’s just: did the batter swing and miss? So, as a result, it seems unassailable.

Of course, there are some decisions you still have to make if you want to judge pitches by whiff rates. How many of the pitch does the pitcher have to have thrown to be considered? Gonzalez Germen had a higher whiff rate on his changeup (30.7%) this year than Cole Hamels (23.7%). Cole Hamels threw seven times as many changeups (708 to 101).

So, in judging this year’s best pitches, let’s declare a top pitch among starters and a top pitch among relievers. That’s only fair, considering the difference in number of pitches thrown between the two. It’s way harder to get people to keep missing a pitch they’ve seen seven times as often. And, in order to avoid avoiding R.A. Dickey the R. A. Dickey Knuckler award, we’ll leave knucklers off the list, and include knuckle curves in among the curves.

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