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

Jorge Mateo, SS/CF, New York AL (Profile)
Level: Double-A Age: 22   Org Rank:  6 Top 100: 91
Line: 4-for-10, 2 3B, HR

Notes
As the dominoes fell following Gleyber Torres‘ injury, Mateo landed in Trenton. He split time between shortstop and center field down at High-A and the Yankees have the option to continue working him at both spots at Double-A with utility prospect Thairo Estrada on the roster. He struggled to do everything on the offensive end but steal bases in Tampa, failing to do damage anywhere but to his pull side. He’s off to a terrific start in Trenton, though, tallying five walks and three triples in just six games.

Read the rest of this entry »

The 2017 All-Star Futures Game will take place on Sunday, July 7th at Marlins Park as part of the All-Star weekend festivities. The rosters for the U.S. and World teams were recently unveiled. Below, one can find up-to-date KATOH and KATOH+ projections for the 50 players who were chosen to participate. WAR figures are projected totals for the relevant player’s first six years in the majors. Read the rest of this entry »

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

Jacob Nix, RHP, San Diego (Profile)
Level: Hi-A Age: 21   Org Rank: 7   Top 100: HM
Line: 9 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 11 K

Notes
A groin strain sidelined Nix until late May. Since returning, his fastball has been in the mid-90s, touching 97, and his curveball flashes plus. He has an inning-eater’s build (I have a Jon Lieber comp on the body) and throws lots of strikes. He’s rather firmly an overall top-100 prospect.

Read the rest of this entry »

Following Miguel Montero’s kerfluffle with Jake Arrieta, the Cubs designated Montero for assignment today. In his place, they called up Victor Caratini from Triple-A. The switch-hitting Caratini had been tearing up PCL pitching this season to the tune of .343/.384/.539. Needless to say, that’s mighty exciting coming from a catcher. Caratini’s offensive profile is built around an encouraging combination of contact and power. At Triple-A this season, he struck out in less than 15% of his plate appearances while posting an ISO just south of .200. The latter was largely due to his 20 doubles. Caratini has also run high walk rates in the past.

KATOH likes Caratini more than most, projecting him for 5.1 WAR over his first six seasons by stats-only KATOH and 3.7 WAR by KATOH+, which incorporates his prospect ranking. Those marks place him 80th and 100th, respectively, among prospects. Caratini doesn’t even sniff most scouting-based top-100 lists.

To put some faces to Caratini’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps. I calculated a Mahalanobis distance between Caratini’s Triple-A 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. A lower “Mah Dist” reading indicates a closer comp.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Adbert Alzolay, RHP, Chicago NL (Profile)
Level: Hi-A Age: 22   Org Rank: NR   Top 100: NR
Line: 5.2 IP, 3 H, 0 BB, 2 R, 7 K

Notes
His delivery is a bit rough (though it’s more efficient than it used to be), but Alzolay has good stuff, sitting in the mid-90s and topping out at 97 with arm-side run. He’ll flash an average changeup and can vary his breaking ball’s shape, at times exhibiting 12-6 movement and showing two-plane wipe at others. He has a chance for a plus-plus fastball an two solid-average secondaries, perhaps a tick above, to go with fringe command.

Read the rest of this entry »

FanGraphs now has Pitch Info data available throughout the site. For those unfamiliar with Pitch Info data, it is best known as the pitch-type data which powers much of BrooksBaseball.net.

Pitch Info tabs and tables have replaced all PITCHf/x tabs and tables by default. This includes the leaderboards, player pages, game logs, heat maps, and pitch-type splits. All the previous PITCHf/x data is now hidden by default, but you can un-hide it by going to your profile and checking the “Show PITCHf/x Stats?” checkbox. oth PITCHf/x and Pitch Info data will be continue to be updated on a nightly basis. We expect Pitch Info data from the previous night to be loaded by around 10:30 AM ET.

If you have custom dashboards, leaderboards, or links set up to PITCHf/x data, this change will not impact any of that. All PITCHf/x links and PITCHf/x fields in custom leaderboards will continue to work as they always have. You can even combine PITCHf/x and Pitch Info data in the same custom leaderboard.

One navigation change is that the pitch-type split data has been moved under the splits tab.

And here’s some additional information about the adjustments that Pitch Info makes:

“The Pitch Classifications are manually reviewed by Pitch Info using several parameters of each pitch’s trajectory and double-checked against several other sources, such as video evidence (e.g., pitcher grip and catcher signs) and direct communication with on-field personnel (e.g., pitching coaches, catchers, and the pitchers themselves).”

Because the PITCHf/x dataset provides the details of each pitch’s trajectory, we can slightly alter the default values to align better with reality than what is commonly reported. For example, we slightly shift our reported values back to a release distance of 55′ – which more closely reflects the actual release distance of most pitchers – so that release points are more tightly clustered and velocities are slightly increased. We also provide options to visualize pitch movement with gravity added back into the equation or with the effects of air drag removed.

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 »

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

Durin O’Linger, RHP, Boston
Level: Short Season Age: 23   Org Rank: NR   Top 100: NR
Line: 4 IP, 3 H, 2 BB, 1 R, 6 K

Notes
O’Linger isn’t exactly a prospect — his fastball sits in the 86-88 range and he’ll flash an average changeup — but of note due to his recent, historic postseason run at Davidson during which the senior threw 502 pitches over six appearances in a 16-day span. Rest was not a priority for O’Linger, who was so sure he had no future in pro baseball that he was set to attend the University of Florida’s pharmacy school in the fall. The 23-year-old is pitching with house money in the New York-Penn League right now.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Effectively Wild podcast gets a good number of emails every day, and a recent one was sent along by Aidan Jackson-Evans. He was asking about a trend that he noticed, and wrote about several days ago. I’d like to point you to his post, at High Heat Stats. You should read it, because this thing is quickly just building off that. I wouldn’t have noticed this trend if not for the email, and he’s already done a lot of the work.

I’ll get to the heart of the matter. At FanGraphs, we have splits going back to 2002. That’s not very long, but it’s long enough for research purposes. In this plot, you simply see league wOBA by leadoff hitters, and overall league wOBA. Nothing complicated, at least if we’re all to the point where we no longer think of wOBA as being complicated.

Last year, leadoff hitters were better than average. The same was true the year before that, and the year before that. And so on. Nothing earth-shattering. This year, the numbers have been exactly equal. Here’s where things get cooler. In here, leadoff-hitter wOBAs, split by whether it’s the first plate appearance of the game, or a subsequent plate appearance.

Allow me to translate that! Between 2002 – 2015, leadoff hitters averaged a .323 wOBA in their first plate appearances. Over all the rest of their plate appearances, they averaged a .325 wOBA. Essentially the same. Nothing weird. But since the start of last season, leadoff hitters have averaged a .343 wOBA in their first plate appearances. Over all the rest of their plate appearances, they’ve averaged a .323 wOBA. Leadoff hitters, in other words, have started performing a lot better in the top and bottom of the first inning. This is what Jackson-Evans found.

So what’s going on? As with everything in baseball, the answer is presumably complex. Yet, using data from Baseball Savant, I bet I can simplify. Firstly, let’s look at the rate of pitches thrown within the Gameday strike zone. Here you see two rates: the league overall rate, and the rate for first plate appearances.

The first batter of the game sees more strikes. But this might not seem very dramatic. It’s not! This is dramatic. Here’s the same as above, but showing fastball rates instead:

Over the past decade, over all plate appearances, hitters have seen an average of about 57% fastballs. However, leadoff hitters in the first inning have seen an average of about 73% fastballs. The margin so far this season is 72% to 55%. It’s particularly extreme if you look at the first pitch of the first plate appearance, where pitchers routinely throw fastballs more than nine-tenths of the time. Pitchers have historically been aggressive to start off, trying to get into the flow of things. If the results are any indication, leadoff hitters have started to ambush more often. That is, instead of letting pitchers get away with free strikes, those leadoff hitters in the first inning are going up more prepared to take a swing or two. It’s as if the hitters are getting ready before the pitchers are.

It’s weird to see it happen so suddenly, but this is where we are after thousands upon thousands of plate appearances. It’ll be interesting to see if pitchers try to adjust by folding in more secondary stuff at the beginning. It’s the obvious apparent correction, but it might not make them feel very comfortable. Maybe they want or need to settle in with a few early fastballs. It’s something for all of us to try to monitor, I suppose. Kudos to Jackson-Evans for identifying this curiosity.

The Tampa Bay Rays are 40-38. Now, that isn’t fantastically good. The Rays are not fantastically good. But that record is good enough to sit just 2.5 games back in the American League East. That record is also good enough to sit just one single game back in the AL wild-card hunt. The Rays right now are playing through the absence of Kevin Kiermaier, but they’re very much competitive, and very much capable of winning another 45 or so times. So the Rays are interested in getting better today.

Enter Adeiny Hechavarria! Rumors started to swirl before the weekend that the Marlins wanted to ship Hechavarria to somebody else. It will not surprise you that the motivating factor here was shedding the salary. The Rays are picking up the salary, and also the player.

Deal is done: Hechavarria to Rays for two minor-leaguers, outfielder Braxton Lee and RHP Ethan Clark.

— clarkspencer (@clarkspencer) June 26, 2017

Braxton Lee is a talented baseball player, and I have nothing against him. Nor do I have anything against Ethan Clark, another talented baseball player. But the people who are supposed to know these things don’t think either one of those players will develop into an impact big-leaguer. We’ll see. Both these teams understand this is mostly a salary dump. The Marlins could get a lucky break, but for now, Hechavarria is the guy to talk about.

Let’s do that. He’s 28, and coming off a strained oblique. Although he’s been around for years, his career WAR is 1.7. If you know anything about Hechavarria, and you’re also a FanGraphs reader, you know the numbers have seldom liked him. But! Something did turn around for him a few seasons back. The Marlins always talked up Hechavarria’s raw defensive talent. In 2015, that talent turned into results. The performance kept up into 2016. Since the start of the 2015 season, 37 shortstops have played the position for at least 1,000 innings. Hechavarria’s been the seventh-best defender by DRS, and the fifth-best defender by UZR. He’s become a plus glove, and that’s the major reason why the Rays had interest here in the first place.

Yet Hechavarria has a career wRC+ of 70. To make matters worse, between his last two full seasons, he dropped from 87 to 56. His WAR, therefore, dropped from 3.1 to 0.4. One of those is good! One of those is not good. You could easily interpret him as a declining asset.

Here’s where Hechavarria gets kind of interesting. I mean, the defensive stuff is already interesting, but here’s what makes him more interesting still. Even in 2015, Hechavarria didn’t qualify as a good hitter. Then, by his results, his numbers tanked. But Baseball Savant also now hosts an expected wOBA statistic, based on Statcast inputs. In 2015, Hechavarria topped his expected wOBA by 26 points, which was one of the bigger gaps in the majors. Then, in 2016, Hechavarria undershot his expected wOBA by 30 points, which was one of the bigger gaps in the majors in the other direction. According to Statcast, 2016 Hechavarria was better. According to hard-hit rate, 2016 Hechavarria was better. It’s his actual numbers that went in the toilet. That’s neat, even if we don’t know quite what to do with it.

It seems like Hechavarria’s results are misleading. It seems like he went from overachieving to underachieving, and the Rays might figure the bat has just enough life. We don’t know expected wOBA well enough to say for sure, but it’s something to take a chance on. And if Hechavarria can hit enough, the Rays know he’ll be their best defensive shortstop in a while. Certainly better than Matt Duffy, who’s still recovering from an operation. This’ll be good for the infield.

And, ideally, good for the team. Hechavarria will have to be better than an offensive black hole. There’s reason to believe that’s well within his reach.