Jonathan Loaisiga and the Yankees’ Player Development Machine
I first learned of the existence of Jonathan Loaisiga via the scouting service that is the Fringe Five, proudly produced by Carson Cistulli.
Entering 2018, very few non-baseball scouting professionals knew much of anything about Loaisiga, which is pronounced lo-AYE-siga. There’s been so much trouble with articulating his last name that Loaisigia is OK with “Johnny Lasagna” as a moniker.
Jonathan Loaisiga said that people call him "Lasagna" because they can't pronounce his last name. So Johnny Lasagna it is, Twitter.
— Bryan Hoch ?? (@BryanHoch) June 15, 2018
Loaisiga basically came out of nowhere. He was absent from all preseason top-100 prospect lists, though he did come in at No. 12 on Eric and Kiley’s Yankees preseason organizational list.
The San Francisco Giants signed Loaisiga as an international free agent in 2012, but injuries, including Tommy John surgery in 2016, forced him to miss a lot of baseball. He was released by the Giants after the 2015 season and signed by the Yankees. From 2013 to -17, he pitched only 71 innings in full-season baseball. This season? He’s enjoyed a meteoritic rise, posting a 31.2-point K-BB% mark at High-A and a 28.4-point figure in Double-A. He had walked just four batters in 45 minor-league innings this season against 58 strikeouts.
This coming-out-of-nowhere-to-dominate story has increasingly become a thing for the Yankees and intriguing pitching prospects.
Luis Medina was signed for a mid-tier sum of $280,000 in 2015.
Domingo German was part of a deal with the then-Florida Marlins on Aug. 8, 2009, having signed out of the Dominican Republic for a paltry $40,000. After being being traded to the Yankees in 2014 and then non-tendered in 2015 following Tommy John surgery, he signed a minor-league deal with New York. He’s risen to join the major-league club and has had bat-missing moments in the rotation.
Erik Swanson, an eighth-round pick by the Rangers in 2014 who was acquired in the 2016 Carlos Beltran deal, has struck out more than 30% of batters he’s faced at Double-A and Triple-A this season after improving his breaking ball. If he can’t stick in a rotation, Swanson looks like a potentially significant bullpen arm.
Albert Abreu’s prospect stock has risen since coming over in the Brian McCann trade.
And then there is staff ace and Cy Young-contender Luis Severino, who was signed for $225,000 in 2011. That’s one of the great value IFA signings in recent baseball history.
The Yankees are making a habit of this. When a club can produce impact arms without spending premium draft picks and/or international bonus pool dollars, it’s a significant way to produce value.
We’ll have to wait and see how the Loaisiga story plays out, but his debut was remarkable — five shutout innings — considering he had started only six games above A-ball. He at times overwhelmed Tampa Bay hitters in his debut on Friday.
Let’s start with his fastball that averaged 96.3 mph. We’ll have to see if the adrenaline from his first major-league appearance bumped up his velocity — or hurt his command (he walked four) — but he was regularly touching the mid-90s in the minor leagues earlier this season. Among qualified starters, his mark of 96.3 mph would tie him for sixth with Chad Kuhl, James Paxton, and Blake Snell. Pretty good company.
The pitch also featured above-average spin of 2,366 rpms, per Statcast data, and above-average lift at 9.5 inches.
While he missed with this following location, the fastball got over the swing of Wilson Ramos.
In his Fringe Five writeups, there were interesting GIFs of the Johnny Lasagna breaking ball. Here is one of it in major-league action:
But what was most intriguing to this author was how his changeup played. It looked like a wipeout offering. Consider this back-to-back changeup sequence to the helpless Mallex Smith:
The high-80s changeup had significant fade and he seemed to be able to manipulate its shape, some versions of it showing greater arm-side movement, others greater depth.
Loaisiga threw 91 pitches in his debut and got 17 swinging strikes: five via the fastball (47), seven via his breaking ball (31), and five on his changeup (13).
A high-velocity, high-spin fastball? Check. A swing-and-miss breaking ball? Check. What appears to be a potentially plus changeup? Check. Plus command? That’s what Loaisiga demonstrated in the minors. That’s a very intriguing skill set and starting point. And it’s yet another out-of-nowhere success story for the Yankees, who are either having incredible luck with these types of high-upside, high-risk, low-cost arms, or Brian Cashman and company are on to something.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
Kiley and Eric have talked a bunch about the Yankees’ ability to add velocity to their MiLB pitchers, so I don’t think it’s just luck.
“Luck is the residue of design.”
-Branch Rickey
6th round 2014 draft pick Jonathan Holder also doing work.
14th round 2013 pick Caleb Smith doing ok too
Does the fact the Yankees have 9 minor league affiliates, as opposed to the standard 7, help contribute to the Yankees development machine? I wonder if the Giants may have not cut Lasanga if they had an additional 50 roster spots available in the lower minors.
I absolutely think this helps. That being said, dont all teams have the option to add affiliates?
Yes, but…
Teams don’t typically own the affiliates. And there is a limited pool to choose from outside the DSL. It’s almost a zero-sum game.
Besides, the Yankees aren’t the only team with nine affiliates:
http://www.milb.com/milb/info/affiliations.jsp
Teams can create GCL and AZL affiliates more or less at will, can’t they? There’s certainly a lot of shifting of number and location of affiliates at that level
Some scrub getting called up and owning the Rays isnt rare and shouldnt be made a big deal of
I agree about not being made a big deal of… he’s had 45 innings above low A ball? I won’t subscribe to the scrub designation as that’s obviously premature, but I would like it very much if some Fangraphs writers would hold off on hype for guys with limited innings.
They throw a ton of other money at other IFAs that flame out, so that part isn’t as impressive, but the sheer volume of bullpen arms they’re able to churn out from unsexy college picks is remarkable
Those who can’t pronounce his name must not remember renowned drug kingpin Esteban Loaiza…
Hey, we had him, too!
Believe it or not, he’s not the first guy named Jonathan Loaisiga to play pro ball.
less than an hour left until AL only transaction moves are due. I’m interested to see what Johnny Lasagna goes for in FAAB — Tossed a $10 bid @ him..anything $11+ is a guaranteed two-year contract……..good read and interesting situation to watch
I remember when people used to knock the Yanks for talking up their prospects, but those days might be over.
Their AAA team is simply unreasonable, and (of course) Domingo dominated SEA, while Torres AND Andujar homered today (Yes, Torres came from CHC.).
In fairness, Yankees prospects got knocked for very good reasons. In the 15 years between 2000 and 2014, the only rookies the Yankees debuted who ever got to 20 WAR in the majors were Robinson Cano, Brett Gardner, and… yeah, that’s it, unless Phil Hughes or Ian Kennedy have a lot more left in the tank than they appear to. Meanwhile, Aaron Judge could conceivably get to 20 WAR as early as next year, and Luis Severino has an outside chance of joining him.
I think Jesus Montero is genuinely responsible for A LOT of the doubt.
The touted pitchers we had got injured, but still managed respectable careers: Montero was lauded for long and bombed disastrously, though.
As a jealous Red Sox fan, it seems like magic to me. Every time one of these guys comes along for the Yankees and performs like a ROY, I die a little inside. All props to those guys: they have really built a super-team, with no end in sight.
Maybe the Sox can compete with them this year and next (big maybe–our offense is nowhere near as good as theirs). But they are well set up for the next wave, especially considering their salary flexibility, whereas the next wave for us is not as clearly in sight.
The yankees have finally decided that with almost unlimited resources that they should have the best farm system. If you have the resources then getting the best minds to run it is just a function of spending wisely on the scouts/managers/developers of talent and then letting them go without interference (trades). Just think about the Chapman scenario: we bought low, sold high and then resigned. The yankees might do the same with Andrew miller to replace D Robertson if they decide not to resign him. As has been noted on various Yankees fan pages (and yes this is an over simplification but…): Brian Cashman turned
Caleb Cotham
Rookie Davis
Eric Jagielo
Tony Renda
Brendan Ryan
into
Aroldis Chapman
Gleyber Torres
Billy McKinney
Rashad Crawford
Giancarlo Stanton
This reminds me so much of how the Yankees set the stage to dominate in the 70’s. Homegrown talent like Munson, White, Guidry, etc. plus absolute heists in trading for Nettles, Lyle, Gossage, Randolph….
It’s like they started with a paperclip and kept flipping it until they had a roster half-full of Hall-of-Very-Good type stars. Not even counting the headline free agents they eventually added to this stellar foundation.
This generation of Yankees is frighteningly similar.
Seriously, what are the Yankees doing? They rarely developed anybody for over a decade, then they seemed to just figure it out in the last five years. Have their been any complaints from other teams to the commissioner’s office that the Yankees are poaching their best scouts?
What if they were?
Scouts and minor league coaches are notoriously underpaid considering all the money that swirls around them.
Maybe scouting and coaching are a market inefficiency.
Keep in mind that the Yankees were the pioneers in developing pitch-framing as an asset. It’s entirely possible that they’ve also developed a mechanical method for increasing velocity. If so, other teams will learn it eventually.
I think that’s unlikely. I’m not even sure it’s safe … a mechanical method to extend the limits of something that the human anatomy is rarely capable of doing?
What I actually see here, and what I love, despite being a Red Sox fan, is a change-up that can crater a batter’s perceptions, and a breaking ball that looks like it was pasted on the corner. Some pitchers, you just watch their five or six or seven and marvel … this kid might be one of them. Obviously the GIFs are hand-selected, but still. I would pay to watch this kid pitch.
As for velocity? Well, if the Yankee staff have anything here, it’s the willingness to throw young inexperienced arms into the mix, I think. After all, if you promote a AA guy with potential into the big leagues … his arm has a way to go before being worn down.
Take a young player, present him with a biomechanical coach, a sports psycologist, a strength and conditioning coach, a nutrition coach and a detailed development plan. Will he listen and follow it rigurously? If he buys in he’ll develop to the best of his talent and luck. If not, well teams need organizational players, too.
MLB restricts how many on field uniformed coaches a team employs but there are no restrictions on minor league staff. A team like the Yankees can afford to hire a dozen roving pitching coaches and a dozen swing coaches, each with a different specialty/expertise. And the whole crew would cost less than an aging of/dh used to make.
No salary caps on coaches, either.
Cashman was allowed to full control the team and its development plan. Before that he was handcuffed by ownership
Yes, that does seem to be WHY they changed, but it’s still not clear to me WHAT they changed.
What changed is how they spend the money.
Less to older free agents (players developed by others) and more to developing their own players.
That seems to be a league-wide trend.
They overhauled their scouting and development staff a few years ago, and started pouring money into their minor league complexes. They’ve also been quick to embrace “new age” metrics and analysis.
I can’t stop watching that video game changeup with the arm side movement. Just nasty.
It almost looks like a fast screwball. Which, honestly, is a pitch I truly miss.
Chad Green is another. 11th rd pick by Detroit, had a couple mediocre years as a starter in their system, they throw him into the Justin Wilson trade & now he’s a dominant reliever striking out guys at a 12 per 9 IP clip.
They have hit on something that no one else is seeing. Even if they’re signing more IFA’s than other teams, if you spend $3 million signing 20 pitchers & if only 2-3 work out, it’s a huge positive investment.
They also throw the least amount of fastballs in MLB.
What about Hall of Fame candidate Refsnyder, Mateo, Kaprelian, Fowler, Rutherford, Clarke, Wade, Cotham, McKinney, Cessa and the countless other can’t miss over hyped prospects?
I don’t remember any of them being described as can’t miss prospects. Mateo, Kaprielian, and Fowler were traded for Sonny Gray. …in any case, you can’t really criticise the Yankees for not developing prospects into good MLB players, and you certainly can’t criticise them for not having a perfect success rate.
Mateo,fowler and Rutherford were all used to bring in Sonny gray. Chase,wade and McKinney are all doing well in the minors, keep in mind that none of those 3 are the first choice for a promotion in case of injuries. Yankees never overhype ref, they play Stephen drew over him. What was the point of this comment?
They got Kahnle and Robertson (and Todd Frazier) for Rutherford, and they got Sonny Grey for Mateo, Kaprelian, and Fowler. What’s your point?
i up voted you out of respect and not wanting to pile on. I get it’s hard to look past a rabid fan base but Joey’s point above is legit: many years of your alluded to over hype and now a string of success. Hard for haters to tolerate like prior success for Red Sox (for Yankee fans.) Point is Boston leveraged analytics early and Yankees have caught up and apparently developed a competitive advantage in development. I get that hurts for you.
I’m sure a lot of this is due to the Yankees front office taking a more serious approach with not just how they choose to develop players, but with who they bring on to analyze data to give them this advantage.
With just about as much money to toss around as any other team in the league, they can theoretically put together as great of a scouting department as they want, an advantage teams like the A’s and Rays no longer have in the early days of analytical data. It was only a matter of time the goliaths adapted and whatever advantage the smaller market teams held would virtually evaporate.
Well, that would be a huge advantage for the big teams if they spent as much on the analytics department (and got as big a return per buck) as they do on the players.
But they don’t. No idea what the average Geek Back Office costs, but if it maxes out at more than $10 million, I’d be pleasantly surprised.
And the results are basically asymptotic, once you’ve flattened out market inefficiencies. You could double your spend (on my guess, to $20 million) and still only gain one WAR, if that. And it would be very unlikely that those goodies would show up when you need them, ie in the middle of the season, right now.
Did I mention that this kid is a treasure? I’m sure he’s scouted. I’m sure he’s analysed. I’m sure he’s coached.
But, let’s face it. Jonathan can flat out pitch!
Interesting article Travis. I would add Jordan Montgomery to the list who was a 4th round pick who since opening day 2017 provided 3.4 WAR, over 35 starts, an 11 – 7 record with a 3.84 ERA, and 1.24 WHIP.