Position: MLB Advanced Media Coordinator, Club Relations

Location: New York, N.Y.

Description:
The Coordinator, Club Relations will assist the Manager, Club Relations, in providing stats, data, reports and services to the 30 MLB clubs, all minor league clubs, and their vendors and business partners, as well as MLBAM internal consumers. Candidates must have a strong knowledge of baseball, a high degree of comfort with new technology, and extreme attention to detail and procedure. Work generally takes place during ordinary business hours, but on-call responsibilities are required as necessary.

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Aaron Judge is large. He’s 6-foot-7 and 275 pounds of human. A lean, mean slugging machine. He is one of, if not the, largest players in the game right now, and we are blessed to be able to watch him ply his craft in the big leagues. It doesn’t hurt that he plays in Yankee Stadium, which is essentially the size of a thimble, but Judge doesn’t exactly need shallow walls to do his thing.

That’s 443 feet of dinger. You can fit 67.3 Aaron Judges into that distance. It’s easy power from an easy swing, because turning baseballs into FAA-sanctioned aircrafts is one of the perks of being the size of the Incredible Hulk. It’s also worth noting that Judge did this on a cold, damp night. That’s not an environment that’s conducive to monster bombs. The ball tends to fly further when it’s warm out. This leads us to a very important question: what the hell is Aaron Judge going to be doing a month from now? Are the Yankees going to need to install some sort of protective awning over the bleachers? Is he going to be peppering the middle of the upper deck? Is that beer stand in danger?

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

Christian Arroyo, 3B, San Francisco (Profile)
Level: Triple-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: 1  Top 100: 69
Line: 4-for-5, 2B, HR

Notes
That’s a home run in two consecutive games for Arroyo — both in Sacramento’s Raley Field, which is pitcher-friendly compared to most other PCL parks. Arroyo’s home run on Monday was a 350-foot opposite-field poke. I wouldn’t prematurely jump ship on Arroyo despite his modest statistical output last year. He’s still just 21, already at Triple-A and has rare bat-to-ball skills. He’s a better defensive fit at second or third base than shortstop (where he’s playing most of his time now) and lacks power and great walk rates. But Arroyo is tough to strike out and should be able to play somewhere favorable on the defensive spectrum or several positions. If the bat maxes out, he could profile similarly to Martin Prado.

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Position: Tampa Bay Rays TrackMan Stringers/Operators

Location: Port Charlotte, Fla.

Description:
TrackMan Stringers/operators will be responsible for running the TrackMan system for Charlotte Stone Crabs’ home games they’re assigned in Port Charlotte, Fla. The number of games each stringer works varies by week. Stringer(s) will start as soon as possible.
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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Lewis Brinson, CF, Milwaukee (Profile)
Level: Triple-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 1  Top 100: 16
Line: 4-for-6, 2B, HR, 2 R

Notes
Brinson has hit in five consecutive games since returning from a dislocated pinkie. Injuries and strikeouts have long been Brinson’s issues, but he’s made significant adjustments in what are now parts of six pro seasons. Once vulnerable on the inner half due to lever length, Brinson can now pull his hands in and, even though he isn’t getting extended, he’s strong enough to do things like this:

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

Note from Eric: we were recently alerted that another baseball website, the reputable Sox Prospects, runs a daily post entitled “Cup of Coffee” (the former name of this series of daily posts). The present column didn’t run yesterday as Carson Cistulli and I attempted to produce a new title that was clever, appropriate, and algorithmically effective. We did not succeed. Please continue to enjoy these as if they were perfectly titled. End of note.

4/17

Jimmy Herget, RHP, Cincinnati (Profile)
Level: Double-A   Age: 23   Org Rank: 23  Top 100: NR
Line: 6 IP, 3 H, 0 BB, 0 ER, 6 K

Notes
Herget has thrown six innings this year and allowed just two baserunners while striking out 13. He works in the low to mid-90s, is deceptive, and throws catroonish sliders like the one below. Pitchers with an arm slot like this elicit platoon-related concerns from scouts, and Herget did allow an OBP to lefties that was .050 higher than he did against righties last year, but most observers think Herget has enough command to mitigate the issues and think he could, one day, close.

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In yesterday’s ninth inning, Sam Dyson came in with a lead, and left with a loss. It’s the second time that’s happened. Another time, he came in with a tie, and left with a loss. Another time, he came in with a lead, and left with a tie. Dyson has so far pitched in six games, and he’s been charged with four of what we call Meltdowns. He has zero saves, three blown saves, three losses, and a 27.00 ERA. The Rangers are probably going to give Dyson a break from closing, not because they necessarily think he’s toast, but because at some point you just need to make a change so that Dyson doesn’t completely lose confidence.

Dyson has two scoreless appearances, both of which came in low-leverage spots. He’s been a nightmare in the four higher-leverage spots. Of Dyson’s seven worst career appearances, as ranked by Win Probability Added, four have come in the last two weeks, with Dyson owning a total -2.6 WPA. The next-worst mark in baseball right now is Steve Pearce‘s -1.2. The next-worst mark for a pitcher right now is Xavier Cedeno’s -1.1. Dyson, already, has been a win and a half worse than the next-most harmful player.

It’s natural to wonder about historical context. And I couldn’t find a real clean way to look this up, but I’ve done the best I could, using the Baseball-Reference Play Index. Looking at pitchers only, I searched for the worst starts to seasons, by WPA, through a team’s first 12 games. And assuming I did everything correctly, Dyson is the big winner, or the big loser. I couldn’t find a pitcher with a worse 12-team-game WPA than Dyson’s -2.6. The closest I found was -2.0, belonging to 2011 Matt Thornton. If this is correct, then Dyson has had the worst such start by more than half a win. It’s a weird and oddly specific stat query, but it might be helpful to know that Dyson’s troubles have indeed been historic in magnitude. Nobody else on record has struggled like this in circumstances like his.

As a certain amount of consolation: Matt Thornton that one year allowed 10 runs in his first 4.2 innings. Opponents managed a 1.061 OPS. From Thornton’s next outing onward, his ERA was 2.95, and opponents managed a paltry .594 OPS. Thornton got himself back on track, as if nothing had ever happened. The Rangers probably figure Dyson should be able to do the same. In the short-term, though, expect them to protect themselves, just in case. So much damage — so much damage — has already been done.

Yesterday, Ender Inciarte hit a home run. Two games before that, he hit a home run. The game before that, he hit two home runs. Four. That’s four home runs. Last season, Ender Inciarte hit three home runs.

Inciarte owns plenty of firsts now for SunTrust Park. I don’t care about that as much as I care about another first. Last season, there were 146 so-called “qualified” position players. The cutoff there is 502 plate appearances. I know that seems like a silly number, but, what do I care, I didn’t make it up. Looking at that group of position players for 2016, and for 2017, Inciarte has become the first of them to achieve a higher home-run total this year. I know it’s a lot easier for Ender Inciarte to top three than it is for Mark Trumbo to top 47, but maybe Trumbo shouldn’t have set so high a bar for himself.

When something like this happens, the automatic follow-up question is, “why?” Why the power surge? I don’t want to make too much of it yet. Four homers. But look at the Sunday homer. Or look at this earlier homer:

Check out the confident bat-drops! Since when does Inciarte know enough about hitting home runs to develop such a confident bat-drop?

Two times, Ender Inciarte has looked like a power hitter, so at the very least, this is something to keep your eye on moving forward. Inciarte doesn’t have a history of hitting for power. He’s got 17 career dingers to his name, to go with a .099 ISO. In this year’s tiny sample, Inciarte hasn’t cut down on his grounders. He has pulled the ball more, and he has swung more often, with less contact. The samples are so small I’m almost embarrassed to even be analyzing them, but let’s face it — if I didn’t look at the numbers, you were just going to click through and look at the same numbers. I’m saving you time. Maybe Ender Inciarte is up to something? Maybe he’s not, and he’s just made an unusual amount of great contact lately. But it’s easy to let your imagination get the best of you, given that Inciarte already runs and fields so damned well. Baseball’s so weird Inciarte might as well go deep 40 times.

Time will tell how much Inciarte will accomplish at the plate. Already, he’s accomplished one thing, thanks to having accomplished four things: He’s become the first qualified hitter from 2016 to reach a higher home-run total in 2017. Your turn, Jose Iglesias.

The present author, in his ongoing pursuit of total obscurity, has passed much of the night composing another installment of his top-college posts which appear intermittently at FanGraphs.com. That, in itself, is almost certainly of little interest to the reader.

Perhaps of greater interest, though, is the video embedded here. While attempting to gather intelligence on probably talented and certainly draft-eligible Arizona center fielder Jared Oliva, I accidentally encountered footage of a strange baseball play/absurdist happening from this past Sunday in Pullman, Washington.

So far as I can tell, the principal characters in this avant-garde production are Arizona’s Cal Stevenson (batting) and Washington State first baseman James Rudkin. With one out and two on in the top of the ninth, Stevenson elects to perform a safety squeeze. He fulfills his duties admirably, laying down a deft bunt to the right side of the infield. Rudkin, recognizing the challenges that lay ahead of him, senses the need for improvisation. Rather than fielding the ball and throwing it to his catcher in the conventional manner, he instead uses his glove to forcefully roll the ball in the direction of home plate. The result? An improbable second out of the inning.

Rudkin’s play ultimately didn’t make a difference: Washington State lost by a score of 5-6. Is this the point, though? A brief examination of things suggests that, no, this isn’t the point. The mental acuity exhibited by a member of our own, typically helpless species: this appears to be the point. Or, if not that, then it’s certainly closer to the point.

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

Foster Griffin, LHP, Kansas City (Profile)
Level: Hi-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: HM  Top 100: NR
Line: 6 IP, 3 H, 0 BB, 0 ER, 6 K

Notes
I saw Griffin sit 86-89 last year and get torched by a good Lynchburg lineup. He’s allowed one run and K’d 14 over 11 innings so far this year.

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