With Zack Wheeler joining the Mets’ small army of pitchers on the disabled list, the team will turn to 23-year-old Chris Flexen tonight against the Padres. Unless you’re a Mets fan with a deep interest in prospects, there’s a good chance this is your first time hearing Flexen’s name. I’ll admit that I was unaware of him until a couple of days ago when I came across his name while formatting KATOH’s most recent top-100 list.

But despite his obscurity, Flexen has undeniably earned this opportunity with the way he’s pitched this season. He started the year on the DL after having a bone chip removed from his right knee, but has been utterly dominant since returning. In three High-A starts, he pitched to a 2.81 xFIP with a 25% strikeout rate. He was even better in Double-A, spinning a 2.43 xFIP thanks to a 29% strikeout rate.

It’s been a long slog for Flexen, who was originally drafted by the Mets in the 12th round way back in 2012. After a couple of lackluster seasons in the lower levels, he underwent Tommy John Surgery in 2014. He pitched decently in 2016, his first full year after the surgery, but did so with a sub-17% strikeout rate. There was little reason to suspect he was on the verge of a breakout in 2017.

Eric Longenhagen included Flexen in his preseason Mets list, but only in the “Honorable Mention” section. He saw him as being worse than a 40 FV — the equivalent of a spot starter or middle reliever.

He sits 91-94, touching 96, with an average curveball and fringe change. He has a big, sturdy, inning-eating frame but has already had a surgery, and there are scouts who’d like to see if the fastball plays consistently at 96 out of the ‘pen . Others think he’s more of an up-and-down starter.

Eric provided an updated scouting snippet last month.

He has been 92-96, flashing an above-average slider and throwing all four of his pitches for strikes.

Because of scouts’ pessimism, there’s a sizable gap between Flexen’s stats-only KATOH forecast and KATOH+, which incorporates his (lack of) preseason prospect rank. The stats-only version projects him for 5.6 WAR over his first six years, which is good for 66th overall and 13th among pitchers. But that forecast drops to a meager 2.8 WAR once the scouting data is layered in. KATOH+ sees him as a near-certain fringe-player.

And since it looks noticeably different, I also made a stats-only graph. This one gives him a much more realistic chance of racking up more than 4 WAR.

To put some faces to Flexen’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps. I calculated a Mahalanobis distance between Flexen’s 2017 numbers and every historical season since 1991. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues. Please note that the Mahalanobis analysis is separate from KATOH. KATOH relies on macro-level trends, rather than comps. The fates of a few statistically similar players shouldn’t be used to draw sweeping conclusions about a prospect’s future. For this reason, I recommend using a player’s KATOH forecast to assess his future potential. The comps give us some interesting names that sometimes feel spot-on, but they’re mostly just there for fun.

It’s tough to know what to make of Flexen. While his small-sample 2017 numbers have been exceptional, he’s never pitched anywhere near this well before, nor was he ever seen as much of a prospect. But then again, this might simply be an instance of Flexen finally being healthy for the first time in at least three years. I look forward to watching tonight to see how he fares against big-league hitters.

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

Luis Ortiz, RHP, Milwaukee (Profile)
Level: Double-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: 3   Top 100: 57
Line: 7 IP, 4 H, 0 BB, 1 R, 7 K

Notes
After walking five hitters on July 13, Ortiz hasn’t issues a free pass in two starts since then. He has good glove-side command of his fastball and has kept his body, which drew Rich Garces comparisons when Ortiz was 19, in check. Reports of his slider’s effectiveness, especially within the strike zone, have become mixed but Ortiz is purposefully working with his changeup more often, even against righties, and not getting as many reps with the slider. His curveball remains about average. Ortiz has had hamstring issues this season and various ailments throughout his career, but he’s still just 21, pitching pretty well at Double-A and projects as an above-average big-league starter.

Read the rest of this entry »

With Dexter Fowler out of commission after suffering a wrist strain, the Cardinals have promoted top prospect Harrison Bader to take over center-field duties. Bader had been crushing Triple-A pitching to the tune of .297/.354/.517, though those numbers are inflated by the run environment of PCL. In his big-league debut last night, Bader doubled and scored the winning run.

Even after accounting for the effects of the PCL, Bader has hit for a healthy amount of power this year, belting 19 homers in 97 games. There’s more to Bader than his power, however. Eric Longenhagen rated him as a 60 runner, which parlays into good baserunning and center-field defense — Clay Davenport’s numbers consistently have him above average in center.

Bader profile isn’t all roses and sunshine, as his strikeout and walk rates both leave much to be desired. These metrics suggest he may have issues getting on base in the majors. Eric also voiced concerns about the prospect of Baders’ swing working against major-league pitching.

Bader has plus bat speed and some raw power, but it’s hard for him to utilize it in games because his swing is so flat and linear. He has to really adjust his lower half to move his barrel up and down in the hitting zone and, while this worked at Double-A, not everyone thinks it’s sustainable in the big leagues. Additionally, Bader has trouble seeing the ball against right-handed pitching, especially breaking balls, over the top of which he often swings. It’s more of a 40/45 hit/power profile which doesn’t play everyday in a corner, but Bader was an above-average runner for me in the Fall League and plus during the season for some scouts with whom I spoke, so some orgs think he can moonlight in center field.

No outlet has ranked Bader in their top 100, presumably for the reasons Eric laid out in his write-up. But my KATOH system disagrees with this assessment. My system pegs Bader for 5.7 WAR over his first six seasons by the stats-only method and 4.5 WAR by KATOH+, which incorporates his prospect ranking. Those marks place him 61st and 73rd, respectively, among prospects.

To put some faces to Bader’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps. I calculated a Mahalanobis distance between Bader’s 2017 performance and every season since 1991. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues.

Please note that the Mahalanobis analysis is separate from KATOH. KATOH relies on macro-level trends, rather than comps. The fates of a few statistically similar players shouldn’t be used to draw sweeping conclusions about a prospect’s future. For this reason, I recommend using a player’s KATOH forecast to assess his future potential. The comps give us some interesting names that sometimes feel spot-on, but they’re mostly just there for fun.

Bader his flaws, but he also has a lot going for him. Most notably, he’s a 23-year-old who’s now succeeded at the highest level of the minor leagues. Sure, his numbers were helped by the PCL. But even if this year’s numbers are largely smoke and mirrors, Bader remains a speedy center fielder with power and passable defense. Those can be quite valuable.

Monday’s six-player swap between San Diego and Kansas City only saw one prospect moved, AZL infielder Esteury Ruiz, but left-hander Matt Strahm had only just exhausted his rookie eligibility before succumbing to a knee injury and is divisive enough in the scouting community to merit some discussion here. A reminder of the players involved:

Padres get

• LHP Travis Wood
• LHP Matt Strahm
• 2B Esteury Ruiz

Royals get

• RHP Travor Cahill
• RHP Brandon Maurer
• RHP Ryan Buchter

Let’s first touch on Strahm, who ranked 72nd overall on my top-100 list entering the season. A misdiagnosis of an injury that ultimately required Tommy John caused Strahm, who was drafted out of a junior college and wielding relatively newfound velocity at the time, to miss two years of pitching. That background caused some (including me) to forgive some of Strahm’s issues — chiefly his inconsistent command — in anticipation of late-coming progress due to a previous lack of reps. Strahm turns 26 in November and has continued to have issues throwing strikes, largely because his mechanics are very inconsistent. Additionally, Strahm’s stuff hasn’t always been crisp this year. At times he’ll touch 96 with his fastball and sit 93-94; he’s been 89-92, touching 94 at others, though. He works with multiple breaking balls — a mid-80s slider and a more vertically oriented curveball that sits 77-81 — generating in excess of 3000 rpms at times, and they’re both lethal when Strahm is locating them.

Read the rest of this entry »

A few days after trade conversation between Minnesota and Atlanta regarding Jaime Garcia became public, the two clubs reached a deal that sent Garcia and Catasauqua High School graduate, C Anthony Recker, to the Twins in exchange for 19-year-old Dominican righty, Huascar Ynoa.

Twins get

• LHP Jaime Garcia
• C Anthony Recker
• Cash Considerations

Braves get

• RHP Huascar Ynoa

Ynoa ranked 22nd on the Twins list over the offseason. I saw him last fall during instructional league, during which he sat 89-94 with a sinking fastball while flashing an above-average curveball. This year, Ynoa’s arm slot has been raised a bit and he’s throwing harder, sitting more comfortably in the 90s and touching 95 or 96. A person from an org not involved with the deal told me they had Ynoa averaging close to 94 mph with his fastball during a start with Elizabethton this year.

Ynoa has displayed some feel for creating movement on his changeup, as well, though at times he shows clear arm deceleration. The curveball is much more likely to drive Ynoa’s ascent through the minor leagues, but I like his chances of developing a viable cambio. I also saw what looked like some bad, low-80s sliders last fall, though they might have just been curveballs Ynoa couldn’t get on top of, something pitchers with lower arm slots often struggle to do.

While an inherently risky prospect because of his proximity to the majors (Ynoa had made a half-dozen Appalachian League starts before the trade, and is still a 40 FV for me based on his distance from the majors), he has the makings of two above-average pitches, an average third, and enough strike-throwing ability to remain a starter. He’s not one of the sexier prospects in a loaded Braves farm system but a nice, low-level flier with a chance to max out as a league-average starter.

Happy Rafael Devers Day!

The highly-touted 20-year-old is slated to make his big-league debut tonight, and will almost certainly provide Boston with a sizable upgrade at the hot corner. Devers slashed .300/.369/.575 at Double-A before hitting a cool .400/.447/.600 in a nine-game stint at Triple-A.

Devers’ biggest strength is his power. After putting up middling power numbers in years past, he smacked 20 homers and 20 doubles in the minors this year. Unlike many power hitters, Devers doesn’t strike out a ton — he’s kept his strikeout rate below 20% throughout his time in the minors.

Devers has quite an exceptional offensive profile, but it’s even more impressive when you consider he’s much more than his hitting. Not only does Devers play one of the more premium defensive positions, but he plays it quite well. He’s been three runs above average at third base this year by Clay Davenport’s numbers, and checked in at +19 (!) runs last year in High-A. Devers’ high-minors performance has been excellent across the board, which is all sorts of encouraging coming from a 20-year-old.

My KATOH system pegs him Devers 11.7 WAR over his first six seasons by the stats-only method and 15.3 WAR by KATOH+, which incorporates his Baseball America ranking. Those marks place him sixth and fourth, respectively, among prospects.

To put some faces to Devers’ statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps. I calculated a Mahalanobis distance between Devers’ 2017 performance and every season since 1991. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues. 

Please note that the Mahalanobis analysis is separate from KATOH. KATOH relies on macro-level trends, rather than comps. The fates of a few statistically similar players shouldn’t be used to draw sweeping conclusions about a prospect’s future. For this reason, I recommend using a player’s KATOH forecast to assess his future potential. The comps give us some interesting names that sometimes feel spot-on, but they’re mostly just there for fun.

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

Enyel De Los Santos, RHP, San Diego (Profile)
Level: Double-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: 24   Top 100: NR
Line: 7 IP, 3 H, 0 BB, 0 R, 8 K

Notes
The good-bodied De Los Santos, acquired from Seattle for Joaquin Benoit in November of 2015, missed bats with all three of his pitches last night, garnering swings and misses on his 92-95 mph fastball both within the strike zone and above it and with his fading changeup. De Los Santos also has a solid-average curveball that he can bend into the zone for cheap, early-count strikes the third time through the lineup, but he’s becoming more adept at burying it in the dirt when he’s ahead. He generally lives in the strike zone and is a good bet to start; the only knock I’ve heard from scouts is that the stuff plays down due to poor extension, which might explain the modest strikeout rate despite good reports on the stuff.

Read the rest of this entry »

Khris Davis has elements of being a very good player. No matter what his reputation might be, he’s perfectly good at tracking down fly balls. He runs fairly well, all things considered, and he’s swinging at a career-low rate of pitches out of the zone. What’s most important, as you already know, is that Davis has power. Major power, big-time power, the kind of power that plays in any park. Davis swats a bunch of home runs. He does so while rarely popping up. He has a career wRC+ of 122, which ties him with Carlos Santana and Yoenis Cespedes.

The A’s are happy to have Davis. Any lineup would be happy to have Davis in it. There’s just — look, it’s not like I take extra pleasure in this. I’ve got nothing against Khris Davis. I just feel obligated to point out some numbers. A short while ago, I wrote about Bradley Zimmer’s outstanding throwing arm. It’s no secret that Davis doesn’t have an outstanding throwing arm, himself. It’s a known weakness, but this year has still been exceptional. In the Zimmer post, I combined DRS and UZR arm-value measures into one. I showed you the current top-10 arms. Here are the current bottom-10 arms.

Just as in the Zimmer post, here’s how 2017 left fielders have done defensively, in terms of holding baserunners, and throwing them out. Davis is the point in yellow.

Davis has recorded one assist. There are 40 left fielders with more than that. And when Davis has had a chance, he’s prevented a baserunner from advancing 52% of the time. The league average for left fielders is a hair over 63%. Obviously, when the surface numbers are bad, the underlying numbers must also be bad. These are bad numbers.

Davis is already at -8.5 runs. That’s the number from the earlier table, and while all these arm-value numbers are estimates, they’re the best we’ve got. That’s the third-worst arm-value rating since 2003, which is as far back as we have both DRS and UZR available. And I’m writing this on July 24. The two players with worse outfield arm seasons played nearly twice as many innings in the outfield as Davis has to date. And their arm values were worse by tenths of one run. To put everything on a consistent scale, why not establish a denominator of 1000 innings?

That’s what I’ve done. I looked at every player-season since 2003 in which someone played at least 500 innings in the outfield. I calculated UZR arm per 1000 innings, and I calculated DRS arm per 1000 innings. I figured I should show them both, since they’re somewhat different. Davis, one more time, is shown here, highlighted.

By UZR arm, no one’s been worse. By DRS arm, no one’s been worse. Combine the two, and 2017 Khris Davis is at -13.3 arm runs per 1000 innings. That would be easily the worst in the sample, with the second-worst season belonging to 2013 Juan Pierre, at -9.7. Davis is taking this and running away with it.

Because the season hasn’t finished, Davis could recover. His arm could play better from here on out. But that’s likely to require some luck, since the arm isn’t good on its own. Davis seems to be having the worst arm season on recent record. It’s usually not the kind of thing you worry about, but in this particular case, it’s been costing the A’s actual runs. I don’t know what you do about it, given that Davis appears too good at running down flies to be a DH. This is just a part of the Oakland reality.

The one assist to 2017 Davis’ name? Jose Ramirez was the victim.

Ramirez lost track of the ball, and froze. Davis identified what was happening, and hit his cutoff. In one sense, it was a gimme assist. In another, was it, really?

We’ve known for some time that Bradley Zimmer is unusually tall. We’ve also known for some time that Zimmer can move, and more recently we’ve found out that he’s one of the fastest sprinters in the game. When Zimmer gets himself to full speed, he’s practically the same as Billy Hamilton, and while that doesn’t say anything about the time required to get to full speed, it’s still a little surprising. Zimmer can rightfully be considered extreme, in terms of his running skill.

He’s got another one of those! Another extreme skill, I mean. Perhaps it’s not *as* extreme, but it’s close enough. We here at FanGraphs have measures of outfielder arm value. There’s arm value according to Defensive Runs Saved, and there’s arm value according to Ultimate Zone Rating. I don’t know which is better or worse, so I went ahead and combined the two. After adding and dividing, here are this year’s top 10 most valuable outfield arms:

Zimmer is in second place. What’s more, look at the innings column. Zimmer has played a good deal less than all these guys. Still, his value is where it is. As you probably understand, arm value can be a noisy statistic, and things like assists can sometimes be fluky. So it goes. To paint a more detailed picture, here’s a selection of this year’s center fielders, plotted by assists — as a rate metric — and the rate with which they’ve held would-be advancing baserunners. The held% statistic comes from Baseball Reference, and Zimmer is the point in yellow.

Zimmer has held an above-average rate of runners. More importantly, he already has seven assists. He’s one off the league lead in that department, despite the playing-time deficiency. The other extreme point here, for what it’s worth, belongs to Leury Garcia. He also has seven assists. He’s done well, but this is a Bradley Zimmer post.

By the results, Zimmer looks good. He also looks good if you dig in a little deeper. Eric Longenhagen put a 60 on Zimmer’s arm, and there’s also this relatively recent highlight clip:

Now, last season, according to Statcast, Aaron Hicks uncorked a throw four miles per hour faster than that one. Aaron Hicks has a crazy arm. Zimmer presumably doesn’t have the strongest arm in the league, but now we know it’s at least among them. As you can see in the highlight, that was 2017’s fastest throw for an assist. Zimmer has a strong arm, and so far it’s been sufficiently accurate. That leads to both held baserunners, and dead ones.

Incidentally, in the same game in which Zimmer made the above assist, he made another assist, with another strong throw. Previously, Bryce Harper had recorded the fastest outfield assist in 2017. Zimmer knocked that down to third place in one day. The arm is for real, is the point, fluky statistic or no. In the long run, Zimmer’s arm is likely to be an asset.

Brandon Guyer recently gave Zimmer a Kevin Kiermaier comp. Guyer has played with them both. Comparisons don’t get much more flattering. Zimmer will continue to work on his offense, and he’s going to have his bad games and his better ones. As a defender, Zimmer has near-league-leading speed, with near-league-leading arm strength. That takes care of two of the five tools.

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

Dawel Lugo, 3B, Detroit (Profile)
Level: Double-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 9   Top 100: NR
Line: 2-for-5, 2 HR

Notes
It isn’t always pretty, but Lugo finds all sorts of ways to get the bat on the ball and hit it to all fields. His aggressive approach produces game power beneath what he shows in batting practice, but Lugo manages to put the ball in play consistently. Not all scouts like him at third base, citing lack of range, but he has the arm for it and his hands are okay. It’s certainly a corner profile, defensively, and seemingly one without prototypical game power, but Lugo certainly looks like he’s going to hit. He at least has the makings of a high-end platoon or bat-first utility man.

Read the rest of this entry »