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Heading into spring training ahead of the 2018 season, there was a fair bit of optimism regarding Jorge Polanco despite a so-so 2017 campaign. He earned a starting job in 2017, but some early season struggles spiraled after a death in the family. He lost his starting position and heading into August, his 47 wRC+ was the worst in baseball among those players with at least 300 plate appearances. Polanco basically salvaged his season over those final two months by putting up a .317/.377/.553 slash line with 10 homers and a 145 wRC+ in 234 plate appearances. At 24 years old, he looked like he was building on his solid prospect status as part of a young Twins core expected to contend. An 80-game suspension for PEDs announced in spring 2018 robbed Polanco of the first half of games and the latter half of the season was rather uneventful, with a decent 110 wRC+ and 1.3 WAR. Through two months of the 2019 season, Polanco has been the best player on the team with the best record in baseball.

Jorge Polanco is hitting a robust .335/.405/.583 with a 160 wRC+ and a 2.6 WAR. That ranks eighth in all of baseball and is already half a win better than his preseason projections. After that decent half-season in 2018, it’s fair to call this season’s performance a big surprise, though it wouldn’t be fair to say he’s never done this before. Below you’ll find Polanco’s 50-game rolling wRC+ since the the 2016 season when he first got a real shot at playing time:

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Here is our latest mock draft, compiled using industry chatter from team personnel and player reps, our own in-person scouting, and educated guesses informed by how we believe individual teams have operated recently. For more information on the players mentioned below, head over to The BOARD, which we’ll continue to flood with player info in the coming days, as well as our first two mocks. New Jersey prep RHP Jack Leiter (Vanderbilt commit, son of Al Leiter) is the only player who definitely belongs in the top 78 picks on talent that isn’t in this projection, as he’s the most likely top talent to go to college based on his $4+ million asking price.

We’ll do two more mock before Day 1 of the draft kicks off — one on Monday morning, and a bare bones list of names shortly before the draft begins that evening. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the Rays’ four-man outfield against Cavan Biggio and the gradual ascendance of four-man outfields across the league, Sam’s belated thoughts on the Mets and baseball in Avengers: Endgame, a few underappreciated aspects of the late Bill Buckner’s career, and the record number of MLB debuts this decade by sons of former big leaguers (including the return of star-caliber sons), then discuss the origins and sustainability of the Minnesota Twins’ best-in-baseball start to the season, what makes the Twins an entertaining team, Cleveland’s comparatively disastrous first two months, and more.

Audio intro: Garcia Peoples, "Four Walls"
Audio outro: Weezer, "Trampoline"

Link to picture of four-man outfield against Biggio
Link to article about Biggio’s swing change
Link to four-man-outfield instances per season
Link to Ben on the history of four-man outfields
Link to Buckner on the Fielding Runs leaderboard
Link to Buckner on the Defensive WAR leaderboard
Link to examples of the Mets in post-apocalyptic movies
Link to Travis on MLB fathers and sons
Link to Stubbs interview episode
Link to Foley’s book-signing event
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

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Fred Merkle, Fred Snodgrass, and Mickey Owen had it easy by comparison. In a time before television and the internet, they didn’t have to endure the endless replay of their infamous gaffes, the worst moments of their professional careers re-stoking the enmity of championship-starved fans at the press of a button. Bill Buckner, who died on Monday at the age of 69, wasn’t so lucky in that regard. While the man spent parts of 22 seasons in the majors, finished with a .300 batting average or better seven times, won a batting title, made an All-Star team, started for two pennant winners, and racked up a career total of 2,715 hits, all of that was overshadowed by the Mookie Wilson ground ball that trickled through his legs in the 10th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. The clip (find it yourself) lives on eternally, the indelible image of his miscue accompanied by the excited voice of Vin Scully in one of his most memorable calls — a thrilling moment, unless you happened to be on the wrong end of it.

Though he was just one of several players who played prominent roles in Boston’s series loss, Buckner received countless boos and even death threats for his role in prolonging the Red Sox’s decades-long championship drought. Thankfully, both he and the Red Sox faithful eventually achieved some closure and catharsis regarding the matter. After a career spent grinding through countless ankle surgeries, injuries that required him to begin treatments five hours before game time — “Billy is the only guy in the game with cauliflowered feet,” quipped the Los Angeles Times’ Jim Murray in 1987 — he never lost the respect of the baseball world, and he accepted his spot in history with dignity and a measure of defiance.

According to his family, Buckner died after a battle with Lewy Body Dementia, a neurodegenerative disease that shares similarities with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Born in Vallejo, California on December 14, 1949, Buckner took to baseball so quickly as a youth that his mother falsified his birth certificate so that he could begin playing Little League a year early. At Napa High School, in addition to excelling as a lefty-swinging first baseman, he earned all-state as well as Coaches All America honors as a wide receiver. The Dodgers chose him in the second round in 1968 as part of the greatest draft haul the game has seen. In the four phases of the draft as it existed at the time, the team selected six players — Buckner, Doyle Alexander, and Tom Paciorek in the regular June draft; Davey Lopes in the January secondary phase, and Steve Garvey and Ron Cey in the June secondary phase — who would make a total of 23 All-Star teams, and signed 11 players who would combine for 235.6 WAR (Baseball-Reference’s version) at the major league level. (All of those are records according to MLB.com’s Jim Callis.) Read the rest of this entry »

The first experience I had with Will Smith was watching several people engaged in conversation about what song he should use as his walk-up music. Will’s expression implied that this was not the first time he’d heard such suggestions, but to his credit, he did settle on a few expected classics. After all, Bel Air is only about 20 miles from Chavez Ravine.

The second experience I had with Will Smith was witnessing him throwing the ball down to second base. Quick footwork and an ultra-quick release caused some wide-eyed double-takes aimed at stopwatches in the dugout at Lindquist Field in Ogden, Utah. Times ranged as low as 1.73 and few were higher than the upper-1.8’s. Smith’s athleticism and throwing ability behind the plate was immediately evident to the excited player development staff on hand.

In his first two years at his hometown University of Louisville, Smith hit a total of 15 extra-base hits in 300 plate appearances, showing good bat-to-ball skills but otherwise not a ton of offensive impact. His brief stint in the Cape Cod League after his sophomore season showed much of the same – he was a good athlete who looked like he should be able to provide value behind the plate (a position that was not familiar to Smith upon entering college, as he played the infield in high school), but not packing much punch with the bat.

Louisville’s 2016 team was loaded with draft prospects, and Smith’s performance put him in the same conversations as teammates Corey Ray, Zack Burdi, Drew Harrington, and Kyle Funkhouser. He matched his extra-base hit total from the previous two years combined in almost 100 fewer plate appearances while walking more than he struck out. His defensive prowess behind the plate was on full display as well, as he excelled while catching an impressive pitching staff that included the aforementioned Harrington and Funkhouser as starters, Burdi as a reliever, and then-sophomore Brendan McKay in the rotation.

Like many organizations, the Dodgers were enamored with Smith’s athleticism, high probability of staying behind the plate, and contact skills. The newly developing power pushed Smith’s ceiling even higher and he steadily crept his way up the draft board as the season went along and the power kept coming. The Dodgers had three first-round picks that year and used the first, the 20th overall pick, on Wisconsin high school shortstop Gavin Lux. With the second, the 32nd pick, the organization stayed within the skillset of up-the-middle players with good contact skills and selected Smith. Read the rest of this entry »

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“You don’t know the end result, and that part’s hard. So that’s why a little reflection right now, I need to reevaluate, go home, chill out and see how everything responds.”

– Dustin Pedroia, 5/27/19 press conference

The fat lady hasn’t sung for Dustin Pedroia, but she’s at least warming up for her aria. Pedroia, Red Sox manager Alex Cora, and president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski took a break from any Memorial Day barbecues to hold a press conference updating Pedroia’s injury status.

As you probably know by now, the news was not of the optimistic variety, with Pedroia announcing that he was taking a break from any rehab that specifically targeted a return to baseball in 2019. Pedroia’s knee has been a problem for years and he originally underwent surgery to repair a torn meniscus after the 2016 season.

Not all of Pedroia’s missed 2017 time was due to the knee injury, with the infielder also suffering issues with his ribs, his wrist, and even a nasal contusion after getting hit in the nose by a foul ball he hit off home plate. Complicating the situation was the hard slide from Manny Machado in an April 2017 game — there was a controversy at the time whether it was a dirty play — that led to Pedroia limping off the field. Pedroia’s stated in the past that he doesn’t hold a grudge against Machado, but that he does think about that injury.

After offseason surgery during the 2017-2018 winter that attempted to restore cartilage to his knee, Pedroia has suffered numerous setbacks, only getting into a few games in 2018 and 2019. When asked if he would return, Pedroia responded that he was not sure he’d ever play again. Read the rest of this entry »

The Twins have done a lot of winning lately.

Entering games on Monday, Minnesota was 36-16. No team in baseball had more wins, and no team in baseball had a better record. They’ve been buoyed by a potent offensive attack, becoming just the second team in baseball history to hit 100 home runs over their first 50 games in a season. Their pitching, too, has been quite good, as one might expect for a team that is already 20 games over .500 this early into the season.

Clearly, the 2019 season is going just about as well as the Twins could have expected. They’ve already built a double-digit lead in the AL Central, and their playoff odds reflect this newfound dominance:

The only place where the Twins were struggling was in attendance. As Craig Edwards chronicled at the end of April, baseball attendance to begin this season was a mixed bag. But the Twins in particular seemed to face difficulties putting people in the seats at Target Field. At the end of April, their average home attendance of 17,007 fans was the ninth-lowest in baseball, and their year-over-year change of -4,065 fans per game represented the third-most per game of any team.

Those weren’t promising numbers, especially for a team that had jumped out to a 17-10 record after the first month, holding an early AL Central lead.

In the weeks since, though, the Twins’ attendance has seen a major turnaround. On Sunday, Target Field hosted its largest crowd since 2016, with an official attendance of 39,913. That represented the third time in four games that the park hosted a crowd of at least 30,000. With that in mind, take a look at the Twins’ 5-game rolling average attendance since the beginning of 2017. (Single admission doubleheaders were counted as one game for this graph.) Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Ryan Dull, Tim Mayza, and Spencer Turnbull — on how they learned and developed their sliders.

———

Ryan Dull, Oakland A’s

“I started messing around with a slider my junior year of college. We happened to have some scouts over — it was a scout-day — and they talked to my coach about my curveball. They said I would best benefit by getting rid of it altogether, and throwing a slider. The day after that, I got together with the guy on our team who had the best slider, and started working on one. We worked on it every day.

“I actually started throwing it with a softball at first. My pitching coach in college, Aaron Rembert, had me do that. It helps give you a feel of how you get on top, and around, it. It won’t move like it would if it were a baseball, but you’ll be able to see the spin. You throw five to ten [pitches] with a softball, then take a baseball, which will give you the break you want. Read the rest of this entry »