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.

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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.

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Earlier this week, I wrote about UCLA’s pitcher overuse problem. At one point in that piece, I provided a comparison between league-wide and Bruins-only Pitch Smart violation rates. Pitch Smart represents a series of guidelines designed to protect the health of young athletes.

The NCAA benchmarks I reported in that post on UCLA were slightly different than those I found last August, as Pitch Smart’s age 19–22 guidelines have changed over the past year.

A brief summary of the old and new criteria:

By and large, the 2016 and 2017 guidelines are similar. But there are two differences: one is a change in the pitch boundary separating three- and four-day rest periods; the other is in the fine print, where it’s recommended that pitchers shouldn’t be used on three consecutive days. Because that qualification didn’t exist last year, there was a loophole in the “rules.” MLB and USA Baseball didn’t (and still don’t) set a firm ceiling for workloads — they say that the appropriate limit varies from arm to arm — so pitchers could throw fewer than 30 pitches each and every day without defying the guidelines. Now, a Pitch Smart-adhering pitcher can’t string together more than two straight outings.

Let’s look at how often the average NCAA pitcher defies both editions of Pitch Smart recommendations. Both sets of violation rates are broken up by class year for the 2012–2015 NCAA pitcher population.

The guideline adjustments send nearly all collegiate violation rates upward. In the regular season, the figures only rise by a few ticks. But when it comes to tournament appearances, rates increase by an extra 1% for sophomores, juniors, and seniors. The end result is a further magnification of the overuse issues across college baseball. The older a pitcher gets, the more likely a coach is to abuse his arm. And violation rates rise sharply in the NCAA tournament, where upperclassmen are being used irresponsibly in over 10% of their appearances.

Position: Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Research & Development Data Engineer

Location: Los Angeles

Description:
The Los Angeles Dodgers are seeking a Data Engineer for the team’s Baseball Research and Development (R&D) group. We are looking to find someone who thrives in a big data environment. As the scope and quantity of data in baseball continue to rapidly increase, we need a highly-talented individual to manage the computational and informational complexity associated with that growth. The Data Engineer will work closely with our baseball systems and analytics teams to design, build, and maintain a database and computational platform for leading-edge baseball research.

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The Red Sox need a third baseman — at least, if they’re not going to give Rafael Devers a shot, like I think they should — and maybe some more relief help. This isn’t any kind of secret. Dave Dombrowski is even openly talking about it. And Todd Frazier, a walk-year player on a team trading everything that isn’t nailed down, was an obvious fit. He’d have been a fit if they wanted to keep the spot open for Devers, since he could have played some first base too, potentially giving them an upgrade over Mitch Moreland if Devers came up and mashed.

Like every other contender, they could also use another reliever or two. Their bullpen has been good so far, but also heavily worked, and no one every really has enough good bullpen arms. The White Sox were also selling good relievers, including a young controllable arm that Jeff just wrote up today. A deal between the two Sox franchises seemed like an obvious fit.

So, of course, the Yankees are apparently getting in the way, and according to reports, are closing on a deal for Frazier, David Robertson, and Tommy Kahnle.

Source confirms reports by @JonHeyman and @Joelsherman1: #Yankees gaining momentum toward trade for Robertson, Frazier and Kahnle. @MLB

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) July 19, 2017

Chase Headley has been decent enough at third base that Frazier would probably play first base in New York, or at least give them options to run some platoons at the corner infield spots with Frazier bouncing between the two spots. But for New York, this is probably more about getting two more good arms for a bullpen that has been pretty lousy so far, and then keeping Frazier away from their division rival because why not?

Given what Ryan Madson and Sean Doolittle cost, I’d imagine this trio is going to fetch a decent return, depending on how much of Robertson’s salary the Yankees are picking up. If they’re absorbing all of the ~$18 million he’s owed through next season, that might lighten the package a bit, but Kahnle was likely going to cost a lot, given his dominance this season and remaining years of control. Odds are the Yankees simply outbid the Red Sox, and I wouldn’t be surprised if making sure the Red Sox didn’t get better easily was at least partly about the reason the Yankees got involved here.

Since the deal isn’t yet done, we don’t know what price New York is paying, but I certainly wouldn’t want to try and come back against this potential bullpen in October. Kahnle, Robertson, Dellin Betances, and Aroldis Chapman would be a pretty rough group to try and score off of.

The Diamondbacks are officially going for it. Despite being 10 1/2 games behind the Dodgers in the NL West, they are right in the thick of the Wild Card race, and with just three teams fighting for two spots, have a pretty good at reaching the play-in game. And today, their line-up just got a lot better.

Source confirms: #DBacks acquiring J.D. Martinez from #Tigers. First: @JonMorosi.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) July 18, 2017

J.D. Martinez was the best hitter available, as he’s now on year four of being an elite hitter. Since the start of the 2014 season, Martinez is ninth in MLB in wRC+, right between Anthony Rizzo and Justin Turner. He’s a beast.

With Yasmany Tomas on the shelf, the Diamondbacks had been using Gregor Blanco, Daniel Descalso, and Chris Herrmann in left field, so swapping those guys for one of the game’s best hitters is going to be a huge upgrade. The projections — which still don’t totally buy Martinez’s bat, thanks to his weak pre-2014 numbers — have him worth a little over a win over the remainder of the season, but you can probably bump that up to +1.5 WAR if you think ZIPS and Steamer are too conservative on his offensive production.

Given how competitive the Wild Card race looks to be, that win or two could be the difference between making it or sitting at home. And now sticking Martinez behind Paul Goldschmidt gives the Diamondbacks a pretty fearsome pair of hitters if they advance deep in October. Given how well the team is pitching, this makes Arizona a potentially tough postseason opponent, should they get there.

To land Martinez, the D’Backs are giving up three prospects. Nick Piecoro had the details.

Dbacks are sending prospects Dawel Lugo, Sergio Alcantara and Jose King to the Tigers in exchange for J.D. Martinez.

— Nick Piecoro (@nickpiecoro) July 18, 2017

Obviously things can change during a season, but these are three kind of shocking names to be traded for an elite hitter, even a rental one. Eric had Lugo as the best prospect of the trio last winter, giving him a 40 FV and ranking him as the team’s 10th best prospect. Alcantara was in the others of note section. King wasn’t mentioned.

Lugo’s been fine in Double-A this year, but hasn’t done anything that would dramatically change his stock that I can see. Alcantara is running a 96 wRC+ in high-A ball, which lines up with Eric’s pre-season report of a future utility infielder or a lower-tier starter. King is an 18 year old in rookie ball.

These guys might turn out well for the Tigers. Perhaps Lugo is closer to being big league ready than we think. Maybe the market for rentals really has crashed.

But hard not to like this for Arizona. They get an elite hitter for the stretch run for three prospects that, to be honest, don’t look all that special. You never like giving up any potential, but for the present upgrade, this looks like Arizona did quite well.

Last Friday, the best player in the American League West returned after a nearly two month absence due to a broken left thumb. Today, the Astros announced that maybe the second best player in the AL West is going to miss the next two months due to a broken left thumb.

Astros have placed Carlos Correa on the 10-day disabled list with a torn ligament in his left thumb. He is expected to miss 6 to 8 weeks.

— Houston Astros (@astros) July 18, 2017

Trout had the UCL in his thumb repaired, going on the DL on May 29th, and then he returned on July 14th. Assuming Correa’s injury is of similar nature and requires a similar amount of time away, Correa would be looking at a return in early-to-mid September. That would give him a few weeks to get back up to speed before the postseason begins.

While this is a blow to the Astros, the enormous early lead they’ve built allows them to absorb this better than most contenders. With a 15 1/2 game lead over the second place Mariners, their chances of winning the division, even without Correa, are still quite high. The real concern here is whether this is something that might linger and affect him in October.

In Correa’s absence, we’d expect either Alex Bregman or Marwin Gonzalez to take over as the everyday shortstop, with the other manning third base. Both have played the position previously, so it will depend on whether the team prefers to move Bregman back to the position he played in college and the minors, or whether they prefer to keep him at third base, since that’s where he’ll play when Correa returns. Gonzalez’s offensive explosion this year means the team has a reasonable fill-in, regardless of how they line up the defense.

I do wonder if this will nudge the Astros towards adding a corner outfielder at the deadline, however. Gonzalez had drawn 23 starts in left field, his most at any position, and if he’s an everyday infielder now, the team will have to lean more heavily on Nori Aoki or Jake Marisnick. You probably don’t want either of those guys as an everyday player in October, so adding an LF upgrade could provide some insurance for the team’s offense in case Correa’s return doesn’t go as well as hoped, or if the injury saps him of any power after he returns.

The Astros have the benefit of not needing to overreact to this news, but this does add some uncertainty to the mix. Depending on what is available, it’s probably not a bad idea for the Astros to look around for some corner outfielders now, especially if they can find a solid bat who swings from the left side.

Josh Harrison leads the majors in times getting hit by a pitch. He led the majors in April, and after a down month in May, he’s led the majors since the start of June. In June itself, Harrison was hit 10 times, which is tied for the second-most for any player in any month in baseball history. Back in April, Harrison got hit four times in a row. Harrison has nearly as many hit-by-pitches as walks, which is both good and bad, I suppose. Harrison is sitting on a career-best OBP.

Usually, when we’ve talked about hit-by-pitches, we’ve been talking about Brandon Guyer. It is, technically, a skill that some hitters can possess, typically because of their stances. The twist for Harrison is that he hasn’t been a pitch magnet in the past. He’s been drilled 20 times this season. He was drilled 26 times before this season. Shown in graphical form:

That’s a leap forward this season, depending on what your definition of “forward” is. Here now is a plot of Harrison’s career hit-by-pitches, separated by year:

The evidence suggests that Harrison has moved a little closer to the plate. Which, yeah; I can’t come up with any reasonable alternative explanation. He’s standing a little closer, and he closes himself off with his front leg. By which I mean, Harrison raises his leg with a standard kick, and then he steps forward in the box. He’s standing closer to the plate, and then he steps closer to the plate. This is where hit-by-pitches come from, since it’s not like there is just a sudden rash of opposing pitchers who are holding a Josh Harrison-specific grudge.

Here’s the kicker. Harrison, a year ago, was hit in about 1% of his plate appearances. Harrison, this year, has been hit in about 5% of his plate appearances. That seems like a big increase, but how much of an increase is it, really? I went all the way back to 1900. I looked at every player who’s ever batted at least 250 times in consecutive seasons. Here are the biggest year-to-year jumps in HBP%:

Okay then. For now, No. 1, and by a full percentage point over F.P. Santangelo. There’s more season to play, so Harrison isn’t totally locked in here, but as he plays in more games, he’s likely to get hit by more pitches. I’m sorry, Josh Harrison. I’m sorry for the painful, helpful free bases. Although I guess it’s as much Harrison’s fault as anyone else’s. To this point, he’s refused to back off.