In early June of 2012, my friend Ryan and I drove south on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to Wilmington, Delaware for the first half of a Carolina League doubleheader, because Dylan Bundy was matched up against Yordano Ventura. The two were so dominant that the seven-inning game was over in an hour and a half, and we had time to hightail it back to the Lehigh Valley for the second game of a doubleheader there (Mark Prior pitched in relief for Pawtucket). Afterward, a scout who now works for a team in a national capacity told me he thought Bundy, who was 19 at the time, could have pitched in the big leagues right then.

Bundy would reach the majors later that year, however briefly, before a rash of injuries would prevent him from pitching in Baltimore again until 2016. It was an ironic twist in what is perhaps this decade’s greatest baseball “what if?” career, because when the Orioles drafted Bundy in 2011, they asked him to scrap his dominant cutter in order to keep him healthy. This was the equivalent of baseball pseudoscience, an old wives’ tale. We were still in the dark ages of player development, and perhaps no dungeon was more medieval than Baltimore’s.

I’m not here to assign blame to anyone, nor would I call Bundy’s career to this point — 7.2 WAR over four full seasons, basically a No. 4/5 starter — a failure, but in high school, Bundy was throwing 100 mph and had a 70- or 80-grade cutter and curveball which, if you classify his pitches a certain way, is basically what Gerrit Cole works with right now. Through some combination of incompetent player development and sheer bad luck, Bundy went from a dominant, polished high schooler with three elite pitches to an oft-injured, low-90s righty who, for a while, used his changeup most often among secondaries. Read the rest of this entry »

Monday evening during a squall of non-tender news, the San Diego Padres continued to sculpt their 40-man roster during what is likely to be a very active offseason, this time swapping power-hitting “catching” prospect Austin Allen and a player to be named for famous non-tender candidate Jurickson Profar in a deal with Oakland.

From a roster construction standpoint, the deal makes an awful lot of sense for both teams. The Padres had four catchers on their 40-man and were suddenly shallow in the middle infield after they traded Luis Urias to Milwaukee last week. Profar wasn’t as productive as he had been the season before, and Oakland has a tight budget imposed by ownership as well as two young and enigmatic-but-talented infielders coming up in Jorge Mateo and Franklin Barreto. The club also needed catching reinforcement behind oft-injured prodigy Sean Murphy.

Profar, who agreed to a one-year, $5.7-million deal with San Diego after the trade, is now the favorite to be the Padres’ everyday second baseman next year. While his surface-level 2019 production (.218/.301/.410) was down from the previous year (.254/.335/.458), his peripherals (9% walk rate, 14% strikeout rate) were identical, he golfed out 20 homers again (mostly left-handed, though Profar is a better hitter from the right side), and he offers some amount of defensive versatility (2B/LF last year, all over the place the year before), though he’s not a great glove anywhere. As Craig Edwards noted on Twitter, Profar had a horrendous April before he righted the ship and was a slightly above-average offensive performer for the rest of the year. Read the rest of this entry »

Wednesday’s four-player Brewers/Padres swap was largely about two teams recognizing that they could trade puzzle pieces with each other to better complete themselves, and probably also revealed San Diego’s long-term pessimism regarding Luis Urías. Here’s the deal:

Padres get:

OF Trent Grisham
RHP Zach Davies

Brewers get:

INF Luis Urías
LHP Eric Lauer

With Lauer, the Brewers get an inning-eating lefty whose 2019 innings total is a big reason he generated 2.3 WAR despite his pedestrian 4.77 xFIP. He gives the Brewers yet another unique mechanical look, and chucks in a lot of varied breaking stuff, working heavily off of a cutter, curveball, and a slider that Lauer doesn’t use very much overall, but that he throws at a higher rate when opposing hitters have two strikes. That slider and cutter usage flipped last year (20% sliders and 6% cutters in 2018, with the inverse last year) and Lauer’s glove-side command of the cutter seemed to enable him to jam righties, as right-handed batter wOBA against him dropped from .341 in 2018 to .300 last year.

Lauer was still a little fly ball/homer prone last year, but PETCO has a fairly short porch to straightaway left field (334 feet down the line, 357 feed to left), and six of the 14 dingers he surrendered to righties last season were wall-scrapers, so Miller Park’s dimensions (344 feet, 371 feet) might prove helpful in that regard. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, the Yankees traded utility lefty Nestor Cortes Jr. to the Mariners for international bonus pool money. A source indicated to Eric and me that the deal was for $30,000 of pool space (we’re told it’s all Seattle had left in their pool), while others characterized it as being in that range, if not that number exactly.

This move may seem insignificant, but it hints at the motivations and strategies of both clubs. Back in July, the Yankees were one of a couple teams we spotlighted as having a 40-man crunch on their hands (we had Cortes as the last guy to make the roster), so being able to get something in return for him rather than throwing him on waivers because they needed to clear roster spots makes for an easy decision. The price of claiming a player on waivers is $50,000, while we’ve found the return on investment of an international bonus dollar, including operational expenses, is about 300%. Most teams think of bonus pool money as being worth at least double its nominal value, but the Yankees — who consistently trade for extra pool money, with GM Brian Cashman emboldened by their quick returns on high-variance prospects in the international market — likely see it as much more valuable than that. Factor in that given Seattle’s interest, the odds of Cortes passing through waivers was zero, and this makes a ton of sense for New York.

Meanwhile, Seattle is ramping up to compete in 2021 and has open spots on its 40-man roster, so adding an accomplished depth piece with major league experience and remaining minor league options for just a bit over the waiver price, while shifting a little international money into their 40-man roster, fits their competitive posture. Cortes is a 5-foot-11 lefty who sits 88-91 mph and relies mostly on his fastball and slider, but also mixes in a changeup. He’s likely never going to be a role 5, 50 FV or a reliable bulk innings rotation piece, so the Yankees probably figured that one of the prospects recently added to the roster, or a veteran on a minor league deal who won’t need to be added to the 40-man until next season, can fill the same role. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, the Toronto Blue Jays added former Milwaukee Brewers starting pitcher Chase Anderson to their pitching rotation in exchange for first base prospect Chad Spanberger. Anderson, who had an $8.5 million dollar club option for 2020, was not a compelling choice for the Brewers given how steeply his performance dropped off after his standout 2017 campaign.

The Blue Jays get a middle-to-back of the rotation pitcher who started at least 25 games and pitched more than 141 innings through four seasons in Milwaukee, and struck out at least 105 batters in each of his six seasons in the majors. Despite not being able to replicate his performance from two seasons ago, Anderson was able to triple his pedestrian 0.3 WAR in 2018, posting 1.2 WAR in 2019 with an ERA and FIP in the fours. While the National League Central is no slouch, the American League East will produce a much stiffer level of competition for Anderson, who will need one of his best pitches from 2019 if he wishes to improve in 2020.

Last season, Anderson used his cutter more than he had in his previous five, throwing it harder than he ever had. It was his most improved pitch in 2019 and a very handy one at that. He cut his wOBA on the cutter by 100 points while drawing more swings out of the zone. Anderson also saw an increase in his cutter swinging-strike rate, and his contact in the zone went down:

Anderson’s cutter is more of a complementary pitch, meaning it’s not an out pitch and he doesn’t necessarily throw it when he needs strikes. He mixes it well with his four-seam fastball to left-handed hitters in almost every count, with two-strike counts the exception, while to righties, Anderson typically goes four-seamer heavy (at least 50% across all counts) with his cutter usage is divvied up with the changeup and curve.

Of pitchers who threw a cutter at least 14% of the time (minimum 110 IP), Anderson’s was rated second-best in 2019:

Pitch Info valued the pitch at -1.1 in 2018 and he was able to increase its effectiveness to a 1.7 last season.

Here’s a glance at Anderson’s cutter metrics and pitch action:

So what’s behind the significant improvement this year? Anderson made no adjustments to the cutter’s spin axis, his grip, or arm slot. The extra velocity with a slightly elevated spin rate, from 2340 in 2018 to 2382 in 2019, helped add an additional two inches of ‘rise’ to the pitch.

The two pitches Anderson paired with his cutter the most were the changeup to left-handed hitters and his four-seamer to righties. The changeup to cutter sequence creates a pretty decent tunnel, as seen in the GIF below.

Given that the velocity spread between the four-seamer and cutter was only around 4 mph, it wasn’t an ideal combination and likely didn’t do much to boost the cutter’s effectiveness.

Anderson’s cutter isn’t dominant but it’s a valuable asset in his arsenal. It helps pick up the slack on his changeup and curveball, and can create a nice pitch-shape change when subbed in for his fastball. Anderson is moving to a division that hit the cutter with essentially the same success (.313 wOBA) as the NL Central (.319 wOBA) did in 2019, so it’s reasonable to think the pitch can still be effective so long as he uses it the same way next season as he did in Milwaukee.

The 2019 trade deadline has passed and, with it, dozens of prospects have begun a new journey toward the major leagues with a different organization. We have all of the prospects who have been traded since the Nick Solak/Peter Fairbanks deal ranked below, with brief scouting snippets for each of them. Most of the deals these prospects were a part of were analyzed at length on this site. Those pieces can be found here, or by clicking the hyperlink in the “From” column below. We’ve moved all of the players below to their new orgs over on THE BOARD, so you can see where they rank among their new teammates; our farm rankings, which now update live, also reflect these changes, so you can see where teams’ systems stack up post-deadline. Thanks to the scouts, analysts, and executives who helped us compile notes on players we didn’t know about.
Read the rest of this entry »

As soon as I finish this piece, I’m going to get ice cream. There’s a soft serve frozen yogurt place owned by a surprisingly fastidious stoner about a mile from my house, and I go there once or twice a week. If I told you there are 10 rotating flavors, with chocolate and vanilla as constants, how long do you think it would take you to learn what I like by watching me fill my bowl (there are all sorts of bowl-packing jokes on the store’s signage)? How many times would I need to go in there and pull that soft serve lever before you’d know that vanilla is actually pretty high on my pref list, and that only a few things, like coconut or coffee, will pull me away from it? Or that I avoid all of the fruit flavors?

How long before we can start to identify team regime patterns in player acquisition, and start talking about team preferences with confidence, the way we do when we say that progressive clubs look for common arm slots and hand positions, or fastballs that spin? The current Marlins regime has basically now been in place since the fall of 2017, when Gary Denbo was brought in as Vice President of Scouting and Development. Miami has made a lot of seller’s trades during that year and a half, and they clearly have a type, especially when you look at their amateur acquisitions. Yesterday, that type came further into focus after a deadline deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks. Here’s the trade:

Marlins get:
SS Jazz Chisholm

Diamondbacks get:
RHP Zac Gallen

Read the rest of this entry »

In one of the lower profile deals of the day, the Dodgers added a new top lefty to their pen at a low cost, while the Rays continued their concerted effort to clear out 40-man space, with a gamble on a power bat who doesn’t need to be protected for two years.

Adam Kolarek is a lefty reliever who throws sinkers 82% of the time at 88-91 mph from a near-sidearm slot. Over the last two seasons, he’s eighth in groundball rate among relievers with at least 70 IP. Lefty relievers at that level come in velo models of hard (Zack Britton and Aaron Bummer average 95 mph), medium (Scott Alexander averages 93 mph), and soft (Kolarek and T.J. McFarland averages 89 mph). Aside from Bummer, they all have xFIPs between 3.60 and 4.00, so while Kolarek doesn’t seem overwhelming, his regular season peripherals aren’t that different from Britton’s, even though Britton’s higher-octane stuff figures to play better in October. As you might guess, Kolarek has a 101-point platoon split in his wOBA allowed. He may be fine in the short-term, and he’s still pre-arb with options remaining, but he’s also a 30-year-old late-bloomer with no margin for error, so this likely won’t last forever.

Niko Hulsizer was a 35 FV in the Others of Note Section of the offseason Dodgers’ list, and he’s still there for now, having not been added to THE BOARD just yet. He hit 27 homers as a sophomore at Morehead State, but that came with 74 strikeouts. A broken hamate bone in his draft year pushed him to the 18th round. He’s struck a better balance between power and strikeouts in pro ball, and is 22-years-old in High-A, continuing to hit for enough thump to make it all worth it. There’s some stiffness to the strength-based power, so he’s likely a platoon piece or bench power bat if it all clicks, with our expectations being that he’s more of a Triple-A slugger who gets a cup of coffee, at least until we see a little more performance. Read the rest of this entry »

The Atlanta Braves continued their deadline bullpen upgrades by acquiring relief pitcher Mark Melancon from the San Francisco Giants for pitchers Tristan Beck and Dan Winkler.

Coming into today, the ZiPS rest-of-season projections for the Braves, when combined with the FanGraphs depth charts, had the Braves with the No. 19 bullpen in baseball, ahead of only the Phillies, Nationals, and Angels among the plausible contenders. ZiPS is also the more optimistic of the two systems; when you combine ZiPS and Steamer on the FanGraphs Depth Charts, the Braves drop to 22nd.

There’s a misconception that Atlanta’s relief woes are because of Luke Jackson, the team’s closer for most of the season. It’s true that Jackson has only saved 17-of-24 games for the Braves, but save percentage is actually a rather poor predictor of future save percentage, especially when other metrics exist (ERA, FIP, batter OPS, pretty much anything else). Melancon and Jackson are in roughly the same tier performance-wise, along with Shane Greene; the reason the trade improves the team is because it improves the depth of the bullpen, which was a significantly larger problem than the closer himself.

San Francisco trading Melancon (and Ray Black, Sam Dyson, and Drew Pomeranz) does not represent the Giants throwing in the towel on the 2019 season. Prior to these trades, the ZiPS/Steamer combined projections had San Francisco with eight relief pitchers projected to have a FIP below four over the rest of the season. The Giants still retain five of them (Pomeranz was not on the list), more than enough pitching to cover high-leverage relief innings. The team has an improving farm system, but that’s largely due to the first-tier talent at the top of their prospect list: Joey Bart, Marco Luciano, Heliot Ramos, and Hunter Bishop. Much like the Braves’ bullpen prior to today, what the Giants’ system still lacks is depth. Read the rest of this entry »

After adding David Phelps and Derek Holland to bolster their relief corps earlier this week, the Cubs traded right-handed reliever Carl Edwards Jr. to the Padres as the trade deadline closed. For Edwards, a change of scenery seemed like the best course of action after struggling this season. The trade was first reported by Jesse Rogers and the Padres return was reported by Mark Gonzales.

Padres receive:

• RHP Carl Edwards Jr.
• International bonus money

Cubs receive:

• LHP Brad Wieck

Just a few years ago, Edwards was one of the key relief arms who helped the Cubs end their 108-year World Series drought. From 2016 through last year, he was an excellent setup man, posting a 3.03 ERA and a 3.12 FIP across more than 150 innings. Among all 189 qualified relievers during those three years, his strikeout rate ranked 11th and his park- and league-adjusted FIP ranked 29th.

Edwards’ success came in spite of extremely poor command. His walk rate was the third-highest in the majors during that period. He managed to keep his FIP so low by maintaining a ridiculously high strikeout rate and keeping the ball in the park with a very low home run rate. This year, his strikeout rate has fallen to just 26.6% and his home run rate has spiked. That’s led to a 5.87 ERA and a 5.51 FIP. His struggles have forced the Cubs to option him to Triple-A twice this season. He’s also spent some time on the injured list for a strained back.

But his problems might have started way back during spring training. In an effort to solve the command issues that have plagued him throughout his career, he worked on a new delivery all spring, which included a pause and a toe tap to help him gain consistency. But during his first appearance in the regular season, umpire Bill Miller informed him that his new delivery was illegal.

After swapping back to his old mechanics on the fly, Edwards was quickly demoted to Triple-A to continue working on his delivery. After returning to the majors in May, he looked much better, allowing just four walks and a single home run in 13.2 innings. In many ways, he looked like he had made the necessary adjustments to his mechanics to try and solve his command woes, even if his strikeout numbers weren’t nearly as gaudy.

In his one major league appearance after returning from his back injury, Edwards’ fastball velocity was down to 92.7 mph. It’s possible the Cubs activated him a little too early. They optioned him back to Triple-A after that single inning on July 21. Now he is off to San Diego to strengthen the Padres’ bullpen. The 27-year-old is arbitration eligible for the first time next year and controlled through 2022, and if he is healthy, the Padres should get a nice piece for the back of their bullpen — especially if he’s figured out his mechanical problems. For Edwards, too, the change of scenery might be beneficial. His time with the Cubs was certainly memorable, but his relationship with the fans might have soured after receiving racist messages via social media during his rough patch at the start of the season.

In return, the Cubs get a left-handed reliever who is physically the opposite of the slender Edwards. Brad Wieck is listed at 6’9”/255 lbs — a very large human. After making the transition to relief work in 2016, he’s posted a 37.3% minor league strikeout rate across three levels. He made his major league debut last year but has struggled with the long ball this season. He’s allowed 12 home runs in 42.3 combined innings in Triple-A and the majors. Here’s Eric Longenhagen’s scouting report:

Wieck sits 93-94 and touches 95, vertical arm slot creates weird angle on the pitch, he’s a plus-plus extension guy who adds about two ticks of perceived velo because of it, and he gets a lot of swinging strikes with the fastball. Fills the zone up with the heater and just throws a lot of fastballs, generally. He’s a good lefty relief piece.

The 27-year-old did have surgery for testicular cancer over the offseason, but his minor league track record could make him an interesting piece for the Cubs.