As if the Dodgers weren’t already rolling along with the NL’s best record (43-19) and top offense (116 wRC+), over the past couple of weeks Corey Seager has begun rounding into form. The 25-year-old shortstop had started the 2019 season slowly after returning from a lost year in which he played just 26 games before undergoing both Tommy John surgery in May and an additional surgery to repair a torn left hip labrum in August. Over his past 12 starts, he’s collected 11 extra-base hits and the Dodgers have gone 10-2.

In case the injuries have clouded your memory, it’s worth recalling that Seager hit a combined .302/.370/.497 (132 wRC+) while averaging 24 homers and 7.8 UZR in 2016-17, leading all shortstops in WAR in both seasons, with 7.0 during his NL Rookie of the Year-winning campaign and 5.9 in his follow-up. He was an All-Star in both seasons, and finished a solid third in the NL MVP voting in 2016. In our 2018 preseason staff poll, he tied with Nolan Arenado as the third-most popular NL MVP pick behind Bryce Harper and Kris Bryant (only one staffer out of 40 picked Christian Yelich).

At least to this scribe’s reckoning, that optimism was based on the notion that the elbow soreness that had limited Seager to pinch-hitting duty for nearly two weeks in August and September 2017 was a thing of the past. But while the shortstop spent the winter working on strengthening the elbow, that proved not to be the case. He exacerbated his elbow problems with some questionable relay throws, his power never materialized, and he hit just .267/.348/.396 with two homers before being sidelined in late April. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Cubs signing Craig Kimbrel, ruminating about how he’ll help Chicago, why other teams may have held off, and why it took so long for his prolonged free agency to come to a close. Then (18:06) they bring on FanGraphs prospect experts Kiley McDaniel and Eric Longenhagen to analyze the amateur draft and modern development, touching on player picks and team approaches they liked or disliked, how their mock drafts held up, pitchers vs. position players, trends in the types of players selected, whether there’s more consensus among clubs about amateur prospects than there used to be, how data is changing the draft and development, whether technology is inclusive or exclusive, college pitch counts, 2018 draftees who’ve improved the most, whether prospects will be promoted more quickly than before, changing the time and location of the draft, the outlook for the 2020 amateur draft, the ETA for (and problems with) an international draft, and more (plus a Dallas Keuchel addendum).

Audio intro: Jim James, "Better Late Than Never"
Audio interstitial: Sparks, "Reinforcements"
Audio outro: Super Furry Animals, "The Gift That Keeps Giving"

Link to Rosenthal on the Cubs signing Kimbrel
Link to Rosenthal on other teams not signing Kimbrel
Link to Craig Edwards on the Kimbrel signing
Link to Craig’s draft-pick valuations
Link to Kiley and Eric’s first-round review
Link to Kiley and Eric’s draft odds and ends
Link to part one of Rany’s research on high-school hitters
Link to part two of Rany’s research on high-school hitters
Link to Kiley on hitter development in college
Link to Ben on pitcher development in college
Link to Gerald on 2019 college pitcher usage
Link to Eno on draft trends
Link to Kiley and Eric’s podcast on the international draft
Link to Trout and Ohtani as the new Bash Brothers
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Because we are maniacs, we’re already midway through a clean sweep of all of our rankings. Since the signing deadline for the draft is July 15, we won’t know who is going back to school and who is joining a pro club for sure until then, but we have a way around this. Any player drafted in the top 10 rounds, as well as any college draftees, are assumed to be signing, while any high school player drafted outside the top 10 rounds is assumed to be going to the school to which he’s committed. There will likely be a handful of unsigned top 10 round prospects, who are often impossible to handicap at this point since post-draft physicals are usually the reason, and some college players will head back for their senior season, but we’ll just adjust those as we learn their fates. This means the 2020, 2021, and new 2022 draft boards all have our up-to-the-second rankings, thoughts, and tool grades, and will be updated regularly throughout the summer as prospects sign and we attend amateur showcases, tournaments and summer leagues.

With this in mind, next week we’ll add all of the top 10 round prospects and any 11th round or later with confirmed deals and 35+ or better FVs to team prospect lists. We’ll also take graduated prospects off, and re-do the top 100, likely with about a half dozen more prospects jumping into the 50 FV tier. Just after this, we’ll do a sweep through each team list to update based on what’s happened this spring, and also do a refreshed farm rankings based on all these changes. This will lead into trade deadline season, which will lead to more changes and another farm rankings update. You can find our current minor league prospects rankings and draft prospect rankings on THE BOARD and our pre-draft farm rankings here.

The 2020 Draft Class
We aren’t putting out a 12-months-early mock draft because that’s unnecessary, and if you want to know who the top players are for the 2020 class, we’ve been regularly updating that list for over a year now. The list currently has 188 players and will probably have close to 300 by the end of the summer. Our version of a mock draft would be pointing to the top tier of our list, which goes 34 deep and is essentially what a first round would be, and just assume they go in that exact order. We’ve also included blurbs and tool grades. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 863

FanGraphs writer Jay Jaffe joins the program to discuss his impressions of the recently concluded MLB draft as a non-obsessive prospect observer, the trends and narratives that have most surprised and delighted him in the young season, and also, the free agent situations of Craig Kimbrel and Dallas Keuchel. Please note, this podcast was recorded prior to Kimbrel’s signing with the Cubs, but we think the discussion is still interesting. You can find Craig Edwards’ analysis of the Kimbrel signing here.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @megrowler on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximate 52 min play time.)

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When Xander Bogaerts played in the 2013 World Series as a 20-year-old rookie, it was easy to see the start of a promising career: he was a glove-first shortstop (though he played mainly third base in 2013, ceding short to Stephen Drew) with enough pop and size to eventually be an impact bat. Over the next four years of his career, though, that promise of power remained tantalizingly out of reach. At the end of 2017, Bogaerts’ career line was nearly exactly average (101 wRC+), but the extra-base hits never quite developed as projected. His .127 ISO was in the 19th percentile of batters with at least 2000 PA over that time period, and his slugging was hardly better (.409, 28th percentile).

Now, a league average bat at shortstop is still tremendously valuable. Bogaerts was worth 12.9 WAR over those four-plus years, a 3 WAR/600 PA pace that would make him a starter on virtually every team. Still, you could look at the promise of a 20-year-old Bogaerts, a 6-foot-1 live wire getting important at-bats on the biggest stage, and wonder why he hadn’t tapped into more offense. It had been four years, after all. Surely if he was going to fill out and add power, it would have already happened.

Two years later, that 2017 endpoint looks awfully conveniently timed to fit a narrative. Since the start of the 2018 season, Bogaerts has found another gear. He’s batting a scintillating .291/.366/.526, good for a 134 wRC+, and the power has miraculously appeared, with his .235 ISO ranking in the 84th percentile among qualifying batters. Still only 26, Bogaerts now looks like one of the best players in the game, full stop. The player fans and scouts saw glimpses of in 2013 is finally here.

What did Bogaerts do to tap into his enormous potential? Well, given that his power numbers have spiked across the board while his strikeout and walk numbers have barely budged (18.5% strikeouts and 7.2% walks 2013-2017 versus 18.1% and 10.2% thereafter), it would be easy to say he just started hitting the ball harder. He always looked like he had the potential to do that. A few pounds of muscle here, a little physical maturation there, a smattering of juiced baseball, and warning track power becomes home run trots. Take a look at Bogaerts’ average exit velocity from 2015 (the first year of Statcast data) to now, on all batted balls and also balls he hit in the air: Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Jay Jaffe: Hi folks, and welcome to today’s chat, the last one I’ll be doing before heading up to Cape Cod for a week and a half.

12:04

Jay Jaffe: it’s an annual tradition in the Jaffe-Span household, spearheaded by my awesome mother-in-law, Paula Span (who writes for the New York Times). I’ll be doing at least one chat and filing a few articles from up on the Cape (Wellfleet, to be more specific), and I just booked a very cool interview to conduct while I’m up there. Also scheduled to see at least one Cape Cod League game, which should be fun.

12:04

Jay Jaffe: Anyhoo, let’s get to…

12:10

Jay Jaffe: If Stanton were to opt out, he’d be 30 years old and bypassing a minimum guarantee of $218 million over his next seven seasons, including the final buyout. Given last year’s dip in productivity, this year’s absence, and the industry’s changing free agent dynamic, right now I have a hard time imagining he’s going to do better than that, particularly as most of the other situations to which he’d be checking in lack the guaranteed commitment to compete that comes with being a Yankee.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you take one look at Max Scherzer’s player page, it is not hard to identify where he has improved.

Both Scherzer’s strikeout (33.4%) and walk (5.1%) rates remain excellent, as is the standard. But his FIP (2.13) — which finds itself at the top of the pitching leaderboard — has fallen by more than half a run. If the season ended today, it would represent a career-low. This FIP decrease is due to a drop in Scherzer’s home run rate. In 2018, 2.7% of plate appearances against Scherzer resulted in a home run; in 2019, that figure is 1.7%.

Contributing to Scherzer’s home run reduction appear to be two main factors: better luck and more groundballs. His 8.0% home run per fly ball rate would represent his lowest mark since joining the Nationals. Considering that we’re in an era of home runs galore, some regression there is likely expected, though the seemingly livelier ball complicates that question. But a potentially more sustainable change rests in the large increase in Scherzer’s groundball rate, which he’s seen jump from 34.3% in 2018 to 42.8% in 2019. Read the rest of this entry »

Eight months ago, Craig Kimbrel declared for free agency. A lot has happened since then. There were rumors in November that Kimbrel wanted a six year deal. We don’t know what happened to Kimbrel’s demands or when. We don’t know what offers were made and then rejected, or not made because of those perceived demands. We don’t know if draft pick compensation was a legitimate concern or simply an excuse for teams to hide behind. What we do know is that Craig Kimbrel is no longer a free agent. Ken Rosenthal first reported that Kimbrel had agreed to a deal with the Chicago Cubs for three years and roughly $45 million, with Jeff Passan reporting Kimbrel will make $10 million this season and $16 million in each of the following two years with a $1 million buyout on a team option for 2022.

Every team could use Craig Kimbrel. The Red Sox — whose current saves leader, Ryan Brasier, has a 5.30 FIP and ERA over four as the team has struggled to stay above .500 — wasn’t interested in bringing Kimbrel back and paying the 75% tax on his salary. The Atlanta Braves — who are in a fight for first place with a below replacement level bullpen performance that is worse than every teams outside of Miami and Baltimore and payroll flexibility coming off a division title and new taxpayer-funded stadium — opted not to get involved. The Nationals — with an MLB-worst 6.66 bullpen ERA as they try to get back into playoff contention — chose to try and stay below the competitive balance tax. The Brewers — who watched Corey Knebel go down with a season-ending injury and watched their 2018 strength turn into a liability outside of Josh Hader — sat and watched Kimbrel go to their rival. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the paucity of pitchers selected at the top of the draft, the Hall of Famers Mike Trout passed in career WAR in May, Trout’s quietly impressive season, whether WAR has helped Trout’s reputation more than Trout has helped WAR’s, the surprising names at the top of the 2019 WAR leaderboard for pitchers, and Andrew McCutchen’s season-ending ACL injury, then answer listener emails about baseball-inspired national holidays, what would happen if Max Scherzer insisted on batting cleanup, and the most inconsequential topics discussed on baseball broadcasts, plus an update on the pulling-pitchers-mid-plate-appearance approach and a Stat Blast on the lack of good hitters over 30 and whether old players are getting worse or young players are just getting better.

Audio intro: John Lennon, "Cleanup Time"
Audio outro: The Cardigans, "War"

Link to the amateur draft’s first-round results
Link to Ben on the decline of top-rated pro pitching prospects
Link to Sam on the Hall of Famers Trout passed in May
Link to Meg on Hamels
Link to Ben and Rob on old hitters and fastballs
Link to Rob on old hitters’ slow pace
Link to order The MVP Machine

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 Sponsor Us on Patreon
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 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

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