We are lucky to live in the time of Mike Trout, whose 186 wRC+ is tops in baseball, but — seemingly like the rest of the world around us — the game’s current crop of center fielders appears to be going to hell in a handbasket. The position’s average wRC+ of 93 is the lowest for the 2002-2019 period covered by our splits, and translates to “literally half as productive as Trout, relative to the league.” Woof.

Given that, it shouldn’t come as too great a surprise that several contenders — which for this series I’ve defined as teams who are above .500 or have playoff odds of at least 10.0%, a definition that currently covers 18 teams (make up your damn minds already, Rangers) — are getting meager production from the middle pasture (less than 1.0 WAR at the spot), making them eligible for a spot among the Replacement Level Killers. As the July 31 trade deadline approaches, there’s an urgency to patch that problem, particularly given that the August waiver period during which they can tweak the roster is no more. Even so, I’m less concerned about these teams’ eventual solutions, whether via trades or internal options, than in pointing out the problems. I’m a real hit at parties.

At the other end of the defensive spectrum, and at the very last stop in this series, we’re in an age where relatively few teams have devoted the designated hitter spot to a single batter. Just three teams have given their DHs enough plate appearances at the position to qualify for the batting title (3.1 PA per team game), and just three contenders have given a single player even 200 PA at DH. With the position’s production from AL teams at a modest 103 wRC+, eight points below last year and the third-lowest mark of the 2002-19 period, it shouldn’t be too surprising that several contenders are enduring Killer-type situations. Given that defensive competence doesn’t matter a bit, this shouldn’t be too hard to fix, and yet here we are.

Note that I’m waving off the Nationals here. Rookie Victor Robles has been a mild disappointment with the bat (90 wRC+), but even so, he’s been worth 1.1 WAR overall even considering his modest -0.8 UZR, and even better than that if we swap in his 10 DRS. It’s Michael Taylor’s -0.5 WAR in 69 PA at the spot that’s pushed them below the threshold, and given that he’s safely stashed in the minors, this is one area the Nationals don’t have to worry too much about. Read the rest of this entry »

Below are some changes we made to The BOARD in the past week, along with our reasons for doing so. There’s more info on all the players below on The BOARD. All hail The BOARD, prostrate yourself before it and bask in its infinite wisdom and benevolence and dynamic farm system rankings.

Note that with the trade deadline upon us, Kiley and I have been focused on seeing and making calls about players from contenders’ systems, since those are the teams most likely to move prospects in the coming days.

Remember these changes are announced as they happen by our Twitter account, @FG_Prospects.

Moved Up

Ryan Jeffers, C, Minnesota Twins:
After amateur scouts were skeptical about Jeffers’ ability to catch long-term, he has turned into a good receiver. He’s an offseason Top 100 candidate.

Bryan Mata, RHP, Boston Red Sox:
Once upon a time, Mata and Cubs righty Jose Albertos were almost identical prospects. Both had been teenagers who had unusually advanced stuff, including swing-and-miss changeups, but concerning control. For a stretch, each of them had stock-altering strike-throwing regressions, from which Mata has emerged and appears beyond, while Albertos’ season is grounded.

Alexander Vargas, SS, New York Yankees:
Vargas had $3 million on the table from Cincinnati but rather than wait until 2019 to sign the deal like the Reds needed him to, he got $2.5 million from the Yankees last year. It’s looking like quite the coup now. Vargas, still 17, was one of a handful of Yankees DSL prospects brought up to the GCL after very few games. He’s a projectable, athletic, switch-hitting shortstop with surprising power for someone his size and age. We moved him up just shy of the FVs of the late first round high school shortstops from this year’s draft. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, news came out of Tampa Bay that Blake Snell will undergo arthroscopic surgery to remove loose bodies in his arm. While that isn’t the worst-case scenario when it comes to pitcher injuries, he’s expected to miss at least a month. If this injury had occurred in April or May, we probably wouldn’t be too worried about it; missing 15%-20% of the season isn’t a huge deal. But when the injury occurs in late-July, losing a team’s best starting pitcher and best player for half of the season’s remaining games is a big deal. It’s especially important for the Rays, who are sitting just outside of a Wild Card spot.

Snell isn’t the only injury problem Tampa has had of late.

• Brandon Lowe, still second on the Rays in WAR with 2.5 wins, has been out with a shin injury since the beginning of the month.
• Kevin Kiermaier, the club’s standout center fielder, went on the injured list on Sunday with a left thumb sprain.
• Yandy Diaz, the team’s starting third baseman who has put up 118 wRC+, went on the IL on Tuesday with a foot injury.

Those three position players rank second, fifth, and fourth respectively on the Rays in WAR this season. They have put up 5.7 WAR this year, which is 38% of the team’s total from the position player side. Similarly, Snell and the previously injured Tyler Glasnow represent a quarter of the Rays’ 2019 pitching WAR. That’s roughly one-third of the Rays’ production on the injured list right now. While the injuries are relatively minor, for a team fighting for a playoff spot, every game matters. After a great start to the season, Tampa has seen its playoff odds go from near-sure-thing to a coin flip:

Read the rest of this entry »

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Who have been the best players in the Midwest League so far this season? I recently posed that question to some of the circuit’s broadcasters, with an important qualifier: I requested that they base their selections on what they’ve seen with their own eyes, and not on players’ reputations. I also asked for snapshot observations on each player named, which the respondents graciously took the time to provide.

As noted in last season’s survey, the Midwest League comprises two divisions, with an unbalanced schedule. Couple that with the fact that this is a midseason look, and the respondents will have seen some players more than others (or not at all). For that reason, notable prospects may not appear on a particular list.

Six broadcasters participated — four from the Eastern Division and two from the Western Division. Their respective lists were put together within the past couple of weeks.

———

Nathan Baliva, Peoria Chiefs (Cardinals)

1. Wander Franco: A generational talent. Hitting and fielding. Sadly we only got to see him for one series with the Midwest League crossover schedules, but you could tell he was special, with baseball instincts and natural ability. Hits the ball hard and has everything you could want. Will be fun to watch him go up the ladder.

2. Alek Thomas: This kid has crushed us all season. Had a series in early July where he was 9-for-10 and very nearly had cycles on back-to-back days. Hit the ball all over Dozer Park with power, using all fields and [showing] his speed. No matter what was tried, we couldn’t get him out that series. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, I’ve been pondering the strange way I think about HR/FB ratio. On one hand, it’s a way to explain away a hot or cold stretch from a hitter. When Joc Pederson got off to a blazing start this year, I looked at his HR/FB, a spicy 33.3% through the end of April, and told myself it was a small sample size phenomena. That’s the first way I use HR/FB for hitters — as a sanity check.

At the same time, HR/FB is something we’ve all used to explain someone’s power. Joey Gallo is powerful, obviously. How do we know that? Well, he hits the ball really hard, which gets expressed by more of his fly balls turning into home runs. Gallo had a 47.6% HR/FB at the end of April, and even though I didn’t expect that to continue, I was willing to accept high numbers for Gallo’s HR/FB much more easily than I was for Pederson.

This leaves HR/FB in a weird spot. It’s a number we use to see if players are getting lucky or unlucky relative to average, but it’s also a number we use to look for underlying skill. Problems arise when it’s unclear what is noise and what is signal. Is David Fletcher unlucky to have a 5.4% HR/FB? Surely not — he’s a contact hitter. Is Jose Ramirez unlucky to have a 6.5% HR/FB? I assume so, but I only assume so because he hit 39 home runs with a 16.9% HR/FB last year. What if last year was the outlier, not this one?

Another way to think about this conundrum is that HR/FB contains an inherent contradiction we have to work around mentally. Putting fly balls as the bottom of the ratio implies that all fly balls are created equal, and that’s clearly untrue. Gallo is unloading on the ball, crushing many of the fly balls he hits into orbit. Fletcher, meanwhile, sports one of the lowest average exit velocities in the game. Even though a home run counts the same for each, the population of fly balls is tremendously different. How do we handle this contradiction? Read the rest of this entry »

After a surprise first-place finish in the National League East last year, the Atlanta Braves entered this offseason searching for an offensive threat to bolster their lineup. After being shutout twice in their Division Series matchup against the Dodgers, they probably had good reason to be on the lookout for a new bat to add to their roster. They quickly struck a one-year deal with Josh Donaldson worth $23 million in the hopes that he would rekindle some of the magic that made him the second-most valuable player in baseball from 2013-2017.

Through the first two months of the season, it seemed like a worst-case scenario was playing out for the Braves’ biggest offseason acquisition. Through May 31, Donaldson had posted a 118 wRC+ and 1.2 WAR in 217 plate appearances. Above average, yes, but a far cry from his 148 wRC+ he averaged annually in the five years prior to 2018. With a lengthy injury history since at least 2016, you had to wonder if all that wear and tear had caught up with his 33-year-old body.

A shoulder injury sapped him of his power last year, so it was a little worrisome that his ISO was just .186 through the first two months of the season. That would have been his lowest power output since 2012, the year before he broke out with the Athletics. But more concerning was the 28.1% strikeout rate, higher than any other season in his career except for the brief cup of coffee he received way back in 2010. In his prime, he had always been able to combine reasonable strikeout rates with his massive power.

Since June 1, however, Donaldson has put together a vintage performance. He’s matched his previous offensive output exactly, posting a 148 wRC+ and 1.8 WAR across 198 plate appearances. He’s tied for the National League lead in home runs during this period with 16. That puts him on pace to launch more than 30 home runs for the fourth time in five years. So what happened to his power early this season and why has it come on so strong recently? Read the rest of this entry »

This is an unusually sunny era in which to write about player development. Seemingly every other month, someone new finds their power stroke, optimizes their curveball, or writes a best-selling book about how players are embracing technology to improve. I don’t know if any one player embodies the face of the movement, if only because so many people have jump-started their careers with a swing change or weighted ball program.

It’s easy to forget that these kind of career-altering breakthroughs are still somewhat uncommon. Ballplayers are constantly tinkering — a new grip or arm slot here, a different stance or hand position there — and the vast majority of those developments will never break a projection system. Sometimes, they’re just meant to get a struggling player back on track. In many other cases, guys make changes that give them an edge, albeit a fleeting one. These adjustments generally don’t make headlines, but under the microscope, they offer a fascinating window into the game.

Consider the case of Glenn Sparkman. Sparkman, a 27-year-old clinging to a job in Kansas City’s rotation, is the kind of guy who constantly needs to be at the top of his game to succeed. He’s a righty with slightly above average arm strength; his secondaries are competent but unremarkable. His stats are as bland as the previous sentence:

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