Yankees second baseman Starlin Castro has landed on the DL after straining his hamstring last night. In a parallel universe, a parallel me is writing this article about Gleyber Torres, whom KATOH+ regarded as the No. 2 prospect in baseball behind Vlad Guerrero Jr. But since Torres’ season recently came to an end, the call-up goes to Tyler Wade, who is an interesting prospect in his own right.

A fifth-round pick out of high school in 2013, Wade put himself on the prospect map when he slashed .280/.343/.353 as a 20-year-old shortstop in High-A. He built upon that with a solid campaign in 2016 and hit an excellent .313/.390/.445 this year. He’s been especially hot of late, slashing .366/.455/.505 with 11 steals over his last 25 games. Wade hasn’t hit for a ton of power in the minors — his career ISO is just .085, though it ticked up to .132 this year — but he does just about everything else offensively, including making contact, drawing walks and stealing bases.

Wade has played shortstop, second base, third base and all three outfield spots this year. However, most of his reps have come at short. He hasn’t graded out well at the position by Clay Davenport’s numbers, but given how the defensive spectrum works, it stands to reason that he’d be fine at second base. The fact that he’s remained at shortstop all the way through Triple-A is telling.

Read the rest of this entry »

There, atop the home-run leaderboard for the year, are two young stars on great teams in big media markets: Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger. That’s a match made in heaven, at least for barside arguments around the country. Which one would you rather have?

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Jacob Scavuzzo, OF, Los Angeles NL (Profile)
Level: Double-A  Age: 23   Org Rank: HM   Top 100: NR
Line: 3-for-5, 3 HR
Notes
Scavuzzo has above-average raw power, but he often expands the zone; has a stubborn, pull-only approach to contact; and has long levers. That’s a potent swing-and-miss cocktail, but hitters with Scavuzzo’s body type sometimes put it together a bit later than their peers. He’s 23.

Read the rest of this entry »

When Jordan Montgomery was an unknown quantity as a prospect hurler in the Yankees’ organization, we wondered if his new slider was good enough to make him a back-end starter. Then he showed us the slider, and we wondered how good he could be going forward. But then the league scouted the pitch, and something changed. The good news is that Montgomery has adjusted again, and it all has to do with the batter’s decision to swing.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Pedro Gonzalez, CF, Colorado (Profile)
Level: Short Season  Age: 19   Org Rank: 7   Top 100: NR
Line: 4-for-5, 2B, BB, SB, CS
Notes
Gonzalez spent much of extended spring training in the Dominican Republic. Colorado doesn’t have an AZL team, so Gonzalez went directly from the DR to Grand Junction, his second year at that affiliate. Because of this, it has been hard for clubs, even those who place a heavier priority on complex-level scouting, to get eyes on Gonzalez. He remains physically projectable at a lean, broad-shoulder 6-foot-5, 190, and he’s a plus runner under way.

His defensive instincts draw mixed reviews, but he has the speed to stay there and try to polish his routes over time. If he fills out, slows down, and has to move to a corner it probably means he’s grown into enough power to profile there, at which point it will become imperative that he quell his desire to chase breaking balls off the plate.

Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of things have gone right for the Yankees this year. This is not one of those things.

Yankees announce Gleyber Torres needs Tommy John surgery on his left elbow

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) June 19, 2017

The Yankees top prospect was running a 144 wRC+ as a 20-year-old in Triple-A, and was being groomed to replace Chase Headley as the team’s third baseman (who has an 86 wRc+) in the not-too-distant future. He also would have provided depth at the middle infield spots, and given the team another dynamic young player for the stretch run.

The UCL isn’t as important for hitters as it is for pitchers, but even while this injury is to his non-throwing arm, this will still knock Torres out for the remainder of the 2017 season. The Yankees press release notes that he’s expected to be ready for the start of spring training next year.

With Torres out of the picture, the Yankees are probably going to have to turn to the trade market now if they want to upgrade over Headley for the second half. Which is particularly interesting, because the Red Sox might also be looking for a third baseman over the next six weeks, and with J.J. Hardy on the shelf, it’s possible the Orioles could look for a 3B, with Manny Machado shifting over to shortstop. That would leave three A.L. East teams potentially trying to outbid each other for the same crop of mediocre veteran options.

Regardless of what the Yankees do at third base, this is bad news for Torres, who was on the verge of being a big leaguer. Hopefully he recovers in full and this doesn’t have a detrimental effect on his career, which still looks quite promising.

In the earliest days of spring training, Jeff Sullivan was moved by a mammoth home run to pen (type?) a piece on how difficult it is to exaggerate Aaron Judge’s power. Here’s the video of his inspiration:

Well, as the solstice approaches, the season nears its halfway point and Aaron Judge has continued to distinguish himself in his first full year in the Bigs. He currently dominates the Statcast Leaderboard, leading the majors in maximum exit velocity, average fly-ball/line-drive exit velocity, and barrel percentage. He’s second in average exit velocity.

Read the rest of this entry »

Writers have a tendency to fall all over themselves in their haste to identify the newest breakouts. I do it, myself, because that’s the kind of stuff that’s most exciting, and you always want to be first. So this is why, every April, you’ll see enthusiastic articles about players who seem to be over-achieving. Once April is in the books, then only April is in the books, and surprisingly strong numbers stand out. Potential breakouts make themselves known, and few writers have the willpower to resist.

What’s less common is the eventual follow-up. Absolutely, some of those potential breakouts turn into actual breakouts. Far more often than not, the potential breakouts end up having been just regular players on hot streaks. This specific article — this is a follow-up. The Yankees are in first place in large part because the Aaron Judge breakout seems to be real. And yet Judge isn’t alone in being a major contributor, because there’s also increasing reason to believe in Aaron Hicks. Hicks right now is tied for sixth among position players in WAR, and he started as one of the Yankees’ backups. He is a backup no longer.

Read the rest of this entry »

With the weekend now officially in the books, Aaron Judge is the new owner of the longest home run of the season. He’s also the new owner of the fastest-hit home run of the season, which is additionally the fastest-hit home run of the admittedly brief Statcast era. Allow me to note that these were two different home runs.

Aaron Judge is not the result of some kind of hype train gone off the rails. He’s not just some hot hitter who’s got number-types overexcited. Sure, he could cool off. Sure, further adjustments will be made. But Judge, in April, was baseball’s sixth-best hitter. In May, he was baseball’s fourth-best hitter. In June, he’s been baseball’s second-best hitter. Aaron Judge is a candidate to win both the Rookie of the Year and the MVP awards at the same time, and he’s doing things other players don’t do. At least, other players not named Giancarlo Stanton. Pre-Statcast, we would’ve assumed that Judge is a freak. With Statcast, we know that Judge is a freak, someone pushing the limits of on-field human capability. If you’re not in love with Aaron Judge, it’s not some noble rebellion against the media’s east-coast bias. It’s about you closing off your own heart.

Judge is amazing. He’s why every big-power type with a strikeout problem gets chance after chance. Judge is the embodiment of so many dreams come true. Here’s what’s just as nuts: Judge isn’t solely responsible for carrying the Yankees’ offense. Judge is but one soldier in the Yankees’ push for home-run supremacy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brilliance in small samples can be intoxicating. Case in point: in a poll conducted by ESPN this preseason, 41% of respondents predicted Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez would slug between 31-40 homers this year. Another 10% called for more than 40. For reference, of the 38 hitters who reached the 30-homer threshold in 2016, only one of them (Evan Gattis) did work as a catcher.

On the one hand, it’s not difficult to understand the reason for that sort of enthusiasm. Sanchez was excellent in 200-plus plate appearances for the Yankees last year, hitting 20 homers and recording just over three wins in a wonderful late-season burst. On the other hand, expecting a player to continue that kind of pace — especially a young catcher with limited exposure to major-league pitching — is probably unreasonable.

I attempted to warn everyone about the pitfalls of such expectations back in March. From that post:

In the fantasy baseball world, only Buster Posey is being drafted earlier at catcher. Generally conservative projection systems forecast that Sanchez will be a star this season. ZiPS pegs Sanchez for 27 homers, a 112 wRC+, and a 3.4 WAR season. PECOTA’s 70th percentile outlook has Sanchez recording 33 homers, a .504 slugging mark, and 4.8 wins. And the Fans’ average crowdsourced projection for Sanchez is a .274/.344/.488 slash line and 5.4 WAR season. The Fans believe, in other words, that Sanchez and Bryce Harper are going to produce similar value this season. …

Even in Yankee Stadium II, Sanchez wasn’t a good bet to repeat his 40% home-run rate on fly balls (HR/FB). In fact, his current mark, just shy of 27%, is still well above average. And while Sanchez could go on to produce a monster second half, the first third of the 2017 season has been a reminder not to draw too much from a small sample.

It’s not that Sanchez has been a poor player to date; quite the contrary, in fact. He’s been an above-average hitter (121 wRC+) at a position where we rarely see such offensive production. He’s having a really good year so far. He’s just not the superstar many expected him to be in his first full season. He’s still one of the more valuable young players in the game, and we know all about his potential. But his .256/.343/.471 slash line better resembles a career minor-league line (.275/.339/.461) produced over nearly 2,500 at-bats than his briefer showing last season.

Read the rest of this entry »