How would you adjust your pre-draft evaluation of a high school pitcher if you knew he couldn’t pass a physical? That is what teams needed to decide about White Sox righty Dylan Cease, who after a surgery, a year of rehab, and four years of development, will make his first big league start today.

Some version of this scenario occurs almost annually: High school pitcher throws hard during his showcase summer, becomes very famous, comes out the following spring throwing even harder, then breaks. In Cease’s case, he was 93-96 and touching 98 during showcases, then touching 100 early the following spring before he was shut down with an elbow injury that would, as teams knew ahead of the draft, eventually require surgery.

For some teams, the injury shut the door on Cease as an option entirely. He was a Vanderbilt commit whose long arm action some teams had already feared increased his risk of injury, or at least might impede his ability to develop command and a changeup, and funnel him toward a bullpen role.

But Cease also had among the 2014 draft’s best velocity and breaking ball combination. The Cubs properly assessed his signability, and after cutting an underslot deal with Kyle Schwarber for $1.5 million at pick No. 4, they suddenly had a bunch of extra bonus pool money to play with. They ended up signing three high school pitchers to overslot bonuses — Cease, Justin Steele and Carson Sands — and cutting underslot deals of varying amounts at every other pick in the first 10 rounds.

Cease signed for $1.5 million, which was the slot value of that draft’s 38th pick and is around where high school pitchers with this kind of stuff, albeit healthy ones, typically come off the board these days. It took a fortuitous intersection of several variables: Cease’s talent, the Cubs optimistic evaluation of it and his signability, the opportunity created by the underslot deal with Schwarber, and a level of comfort in taking an injured player aided by risk diversification in the other overslot high schoolers. The high school pitching crop in 2014 was wild, and a few of those players probably contributed to the current reticence to pick a similar guy very early. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Carson Fulmer, Lucas Giolito, and Clayton Richard — on how they learned and developed their changeups.

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Carson Fulmer, Chicago White Sox

“I’ve always thrown a four-seam fastball, so early on I wanted to throw a four-seam changeup. I could never get enough velocity off of it, so I needed to come up with something else. What I came up with was kind of a fosh. This was about two years ago. But I couldn’t find enough consistency in the zone — it would throw me into bad counts — so I kind of got away from it. Read the rest of this entry »

A number of years ago, Boston sports-TV anchor Bob Lobel used to say of former Red Sox players excelling for other teams, “Why can’t we get players like that?” Similar words are currently being uttered in Detroit, in regard to James McCann. In his first season with the Chicago White Sox, the 29-year-old catcher is slashing a robust .320/.378/.519, and he’s already gone deep nine times.

McCann wasn’t nearly that good with the stick in his four-plus years with the Tigers. When he signed with the ChiSox in December — a bargain-basement one-year deal for $2.5M, no less — he was a .240/.288/.366 career hitter. How did he suddenly morph into an offensive force?

“Honestly, the biggest thing for me this year is that I’m trying to be the best James McCann,” is how the Tigers castoff explained it prior to a recent game at Fenway Park. “I’m staying within myself and not trying to do too much. I’m taking my base hits the other way — I’m taking my singles — and not trying to hit the impossible six-run homer.”

The breaking-out backstop trained with Rangers infielder Logan Forsythe over the offseason — both live just south of Nashville — and as McCann pointed out, each has played with some great hitters over the course of their careers. Not that attempting to emulate one’s more-talented peers is always the best idea. Read the rest of this entry »

Please note, this posting contains two positions.

Position: Baseball Operations Software Engineer

Location: Chicago, IL

Description:
The Chicago White Sox seek an experienced Software Engineer to join their baseball operations group. The engineer will be responsible for building and maintaining data driven systems with a focus on Baseball Analytics, however there will be additional exposure to all facets of baseball operations. This position will report to the Director of Baseball Analytics.

Responsibilities:

• Develop data-driven web applications and reports to assist the White Sox front office with player evaluation, arbitration, scouting, and player development.
• Manage the integration of new and existing data sources.
• Provide operational support.

Requirements:

• Degree in computer science, engineering, or similar field.
• Technical proficiency in web development and scripting technologies such as HTML, PHP, AJAX, and JavaScript.
• Object oriented development experience with Visual Studio and C#.
• Strong UI design fundamentals, with examples of intuitive and flexible interfaces.
• Knowledge of SQL Server or MySQL with the ability to write and optimize complex queries and stored procedures.
• Experience working with large datasets.
• Familiarity with advanced baseball metrics and research.
• Strong communication and presentation skills.
• Demonstrated high degree of integrity, professionalism, accountability, and discretion.
• Ability to work flexible hours.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with ETL methodologies.
• Experience presenting data with Tableau.
• Experience performing advanced statistical analysis with analytical tools such as R, MatLab, or Python.
• Advanced quantitative degree or published research.
• Prior baseball playing or operations experience.

To Apply:
Please review the requirements above and send a resume/cover letter to ApplyAnalytics@chisox.com. Due to the large number of applicants, you may not receive a response.

Position: Baseball Analyst

Description:
The Chicago White Sox seek a passionate, knowledgeable, and dedicated individual with a desire to work in Baseball Operations. The position will focus primarily on the numerical methods that drive Baseball Analytics, however there will be additional exposure to all facets of baseball operations. This position will report to the Director of Baseball Analytics.

Responsibilities:

• Create proprietary performance metrics and predictive models using regression and machine learning.
• Develop data-driven applications and reports to assist the White Sox front office with player evaluation, arbitration, scouting, and player development.
• Provide operational support.

Requirements:

• Degree in computer science, mathematics, engineering, or similar field.
• Experience performing advanced statistical analysis (regression, mixed models, machine learning) with analytical tools such as R, MatLab, or Python.
• Knowledge of SQL Server or MySQL with the ability to write and optimize complex queries and stored procedures.
• Experience working with large datasets.
• Familiarity with advanced baseball metrics and research.
• Strong communication and presentation skills.
• Demonstrated high degree of integrity, professionalism, accountability, and discretion.
• Ability to work flexible hours.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Technical proficiency in web development and scripting technologies such as HTML, PHP, AJAX, JavaScript, Node.js, and Vue-js.
• Object oriented development experience with Visual Studio and C#.
• Knowledge and practice with ETL solutions and best practices.
• Experience creating computer vision models with OpenCV or TensorFlow.
• Experience presenting data with Tableau.
• Advanced quantitative degree or published research.
• Prior baseball playing or operations experience.

To Apply:
Please review the requirements above and send a resume/cover letter to ApplyAnalytics@chisox.com. Due to the large number of applicants, you may not receive a response.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Chicago White Sox.

Baseball teams continue to search for whatever edge they can find when it comes to bringing cheap, talented players into their organizations. The draft is one of the easiest ways for teams to accumulate talent, as clubs take turns picking the best amateur players in the country, and the Commissioner’s office, as authorized by the CBA between the players and owners, tells teams how much they are allowed to spend. Most amateur players have very little leverage, and generally sign for the recommended slot amount. Because individual draft picks receive a slotted amount, but teams are allowed to spend their entire draft pool in whatever manner they choose, money often gets moved around pick-to-pick, with those players with less leverage receiving much less than the slot amount for their pick while those players with some leverage getting quite a bit more. This year, the Reds, Mets, White Sox, and Marlins all appear to be moving significant money around in an effort to manipulate the draft system to their benefit. Is it worth it though?

While every team moves money around in the draft, these four clubs stood out for drafting hard-to-sign prep players in the early rounds, then taking college seniors with multiple picks later in the first 10 rounds. Presumably, the college senior picks will sign for amounts significantly under their slot value (you can find all the slot values here), meaning the savings can be used to sign the prep players who threatened to go to college if their bonus demands are not met. Here are the teams, players, slot amounts, and the number of senior signs for each team.

All four players are likely to require more than their draft slot provides in order to sign a contract with their drafting teams. Tyler Callihan has reportedly agreed to a deal for $1.5 million. Allan is rumored to have an asking price of about $3 million, which might be why the Mets selected seniors with seven picks in the first 10 rounds. The slot for Evan Fitterer is pretty low, requiring the Marlins to make sacrifices with many of their subsequent picks. We don’t yet know exactly what it will take to sign all of the players listed, but we do have an idea of how much value teams gave up in later rounds, as well as the expected value of the players who were picked. Read the rest of this entry »

It was rainy, it was short, and yet, it was the first time in 382 games that a Chicago White Sox pitcher had recorded a complete game.

On Saturday, in an effort that required just 78 pitches, Lucas Giolito became the first White Sox pitcher to throw a complete game since Chris Sale on September 16, 2016. He allowed just one run on three hits and struck out four.

The catch? Let Giolito explain it himself. As he told NBC Sports Chicago after the game, “I don’t consider it a complete game until I get nine.” Indeed, Giolito’s effort to snap a long stretch of bullpen usage was only five innings long. The game only lasted an hour and 31 minutes, if you choose to exclude the three-hour delay. A rain-soaked Chicago took care of the rest.

What’s lost in this whole story is that Giolito was solid on Saturday yet again. He’s had an up-and-down career so far, from being the Nationals’ prized pitching prospect to struggling in his first taste of the majors in 2016 to being the centerpiece in the Adam Eaton trade to posting the worst K-BB% among starters last year. But in Saturday’s start, never mind its length, Giolito lowered his ERA to 3.35. His 3.00 FIP is sterling. His 1.3 WAR in just 43 innings represents a 1.7-win improvement over his career total entering this season.

In sum, Giolito went from being league-worst to pretty, pretty good. The next step — the excellence — still comes in flashes, as it often has over his young career. Since the start of May, Giolito has posted a 1.85 ERA with 27 strikeouts to just eight walks over 24.1 innings. By WAR, he’s been the eighth-best starter this month. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday, the White Sox announced that Carlos Rodón will undergo Tommy John surgery, prematurely ending his 2019 season. With a 12-to-16 month rehabilitation period generally the norm for pitchers undergoing TJ, even a sunny scenario for Rodón would put a serious dent in his 2020 season; a cloudier one makes it unlikely he returns to Chicago until his 2021 season.

For Rodón, it’s obviously a disaster, another setback in a career that had already been largely derailed by injuries in 2017 and 2018. Rodón was drafted third in the 2014 draft out of NC State. At the time, one of the things about Rodón that interested the White Sox was that he was quite polished, even for a top college pitcher, and as a result, was likely to get to the majors very quickly.

The White Sox were correct in this analysis. Rodón’s major league debut, a relief appearance against the Cleveland Indians early in 2015, was only his 12th game as a professional. Three relief appearances later — including two rather lengthy ones at 60 and 63 pitches — Rodón entered the rotation. He acquitted himself quite well as a rookie, with a 3.87 FIP in 139.1 innings, good enough for 1.8 WAR, even as he was a little lucky in his homers allowed. He showed continued progression in 2016, dropping over a walk a game, and ended up with a 4.04 ERA, a 4.01 FIP, and 2.8 WAR.

Since mid-2016, Rodón has racked up an unfortunate injury history. First, he missed a month in 2016 slipping on the dugout steps, spraining his wrist. Sadly, this is a story I know all too well, having been forced to wear a wrist brace about a decade ago after a similar fall on my stairs; there was feline involvement. Read the rest of this entry »

There are varying tactics when it comes to approaches at the plate. Getting ahead and waiting for the right pitch is one. Swinging at the first good pitch you see because you might not get another is a second. Protecting the plate when behind in the count comes up often. Hitters use some or all of that when they step up to bat, but Yoan Moncada’s patience last season ended up hurting what could have been a much better season. A more aggressive approach thus far has shown much better results this year as Moncada attempts to take the next step in his development.

Last season, Moncada has a walk rate of 10.3%, which is good, and a strikeout rate of 33.4%, which is bad. The only players at 23 years of age or younger to put up double-digit walk rates and a strikeout rate above 30% (which is going to limit how far back we go given the massive rise in strikeouts) are Kris Bryant (2015) and Joey Gallo (2017). Gallo hit 41 homers to make himself an offensively valuable player. Bryant was constantly making great contact when he did put the ball in play on his way to a Rookie of the Year campaign. Moncada hit the ball hard when he made contact, but not at the same level as Bryant, and ended with a 97 wRC+ on the year. Changes are necessary to improve on that mark, and it looks like Moncada may indeed be making them.

Last week at MLB.com, Mike Petriello also wrote about Moncada, noting just how terrible he was on two-strike pitches, notably pitches on the edge, which caused an absurdly high number of called third strikes.

That made the problem easy to diagnose, if not easy to solve. Don’t get to two strikes. But also, don’t get to two strikes being so desperate that you start expanding your zone and flailing at bad pitches.

We know this, because Moncada and the Sox spent a lot of time talking about it.

“As long as he maintains an aggressive approach within the strike zone, which he has been increasing,” Chicago manager Rick Renteria said to MLB.com in July, “he has a chance of having really good success obviously.”

“We made a plan,” Moncada said to MLB.com in December, referring to extensive offseason work with White Sox coaches. “Right now, I am in a better position to succeed and to be a better player next season. It was a very good experience, overall.”

“We ended up attacking the topic of his strike-zone approach,” Renteria said. “He has great ability to take pitches. That’s something that’s innate in him.”

Petriello noted that Moncada was being a bit more aggressive, particularly with the zone, and he was hitting the ball harder and striking out less, all good outcomes. Moncada has lowered his strikeout rate to 24% on the season, and while that might not necessarily represent a new skill level, even after 66 plate appearances it is enough to change our expectations considering last year’s 33% mark. Moncada’s walks have gone down to about 6%, but he is tearing the cover off the ball with a .242 ISO and a .395 BABIP, which has helped lead to a 152 wRC+. The decrease in walks isn’t great for Moncada, but the lowered strikeouts more than make up for that. Consider that when Moncada put the ball in play last season, he put up a 175 wRC+, one of the top 30 marks in the game. This year, he’s putting up a 227 wRC+ when he puts the ball in play, but he doesn’t need that to keep up to make a different to his overall line as we know that BABIP is going to come down some even if we reasonably expect him to post a high value. Read the rest of this entry »

T.S. Eliot once mused that April is the cruelest month, but for me, it’s the most curmudgeonly one. While baseball returning is always a good thing, a good portion of my April job is to (partially) crush the hopes and dreams of fans excited about hot starts from their favorite players. While stats don’t literally lie, April numbers, thanks to our old friend and scapegoat small sample size, only tell a little bit of the story of 2019. But as cautious as I try to be about jumping to conclusions in baseball’s first month, at least some of those torrid beginnings will contain more than the customary grain of truth. So let’s go out on that proverbial limb and try to guess which scorching Aprils represent something real.

Yoan Moncada

I’ve been burned before touching this hot stove, but there’s something so compelling about Moncada’s early-season performances as to once again disarm the skeptic in me. In 2018’s version of this piece, Moncada’s high exit velocity and his .267/.353/.524 April line had me believing that he had finally turned the corner, the one long-expected from a young, talented player with impressive physical tools.

As the narrator meme goes, he had not turned that corner. Moncada spent the next two months with an OPS that didn’t touch .600, and his final 2018 line represented no real improvement over his 2017.

Moncada is hitting the ball just as hard as he did last year, with his average exit velocity ranking sixth in baseball. But this time around, his performance is also coming with some significant progress in his contact statistics. Moncada’s profile has always been a bit weird in that he doesn’t seem to have a serious problem chasing bad pitches, certainly not as you would expect from a player who just led the league in strikeouts with the fourth-highest total in baseball history. But Moncada was in the top 20 in not swinging at pitches outside the zone.

In 2019, he’s been more aggressive, swinging at more bad and good pitches, but there hasn’t been a corresponding contact tradeoff, and he’s in fact making more contact overall, especially against good pitches. Given that one of the purposes of plate discipline is for hitters to actually hit the good pitch they eke out of the dude on the mound, I once again return to the ranks of the believers. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Luis Robert, CF, Chicago White Sox
Level: Hi-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: 4   FV: 55
Line: 2-for-4, HR, 2 HBP

Notes
Off to hot start, Robert has multi-hit efforts in each of his first four games and has already stolen three bases and homered three times. After watching LouBob a lot last year (first while he rehabbed multiple injuries, then in the Fall League), I grew concerned about how his bat path might limit the quality of his contact (he sometimes struggled to pull pitches he should have) or his rate of contact, which we don’t have a large-enough sample to properly assess because of his injuries. So far, the pull-side stuff hasn’t been founded, as all but two of Robert’s balls in play so far this year have been to the right side of the field, and those were both pop-ups to the second baseman. He’s one of the more physically-gifted players in pro baseball.

Darwinzon Hernandez, LHP, Boston Red Sox
Level: Double-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 2   FV: 45
Line: 5 IP, 2 H, 4 BB, 0 R, 10 K

Notes
We do not think Hernandez is a long-term starter and instead think he’ll be an elite bullpen arm. His fastball often sits in the upper-90s when he’s starting so it should at least stay there if he’s moved to relief and, though his feel for it comes and goes, his curveball can be untouchable at times. Maybe the strong early-season performances of Matt Barnes, Brandon Workman, and Ryan Brasier has stifled some of the disquiet about the Red Sox bullpen, but in the event that they need an impact arm, I think it’s more likely to be Hernandez than a piece outside the org. Some of this is due to the quality of the farm system, but Hernandez might also just be better than a lot of the options that will eventually be on the trade market. Read the rest of this entry »