FanGraphs Baseball

Every year in the draft, teams select ultra-talented baseball cyborgs who look like movie stars and project as potential future big league stars. Some of them even have sweet names — Spencer Torkelson sounds like a mid-career Arnold Schwarzenegger role, a screwup with a heart and biceps of gold. These draft picks are the way bad teams get good, the core building blocks of future juggernauts.

Every year until now in the draft, teams made many more picks. Some of them turn into legends. Some of them are major contributors right now. Most of them don’t pan out. There’s a fourth category here as well. Some of these late-round draft picks have short but non-zero major league careers.

Matt Adams, the example my mind first heads to in this category, was a 23rd round draft pick. He won’t make the Hall of Fame. He won’t make an All-Star game. He’s also accumulated 5 WAR in the big leagues already. In a league where 5 WAR on the free agent market will run you upwards of $30 million dollars, that’s a heck of a find.

I can’t tell you who the next Matt Adams is. If there was a draft-eligible player who was likely to have his career, he wouldn’t go in the 23rd round, or be signed as an undrafted free agent this year. Some team would snap him up. Instead, today I’m throwing darts. I hope to find a few position players who might be overlooked in a five round draft but who might hit enough, in some cases relative to their position, to make an impact in the major leagues at some point in their careers.

Of note, I do mean “hit enough.” I looked for these players in the statistical record, combing over college numbers looking for performers at smaller schools or ones who were overlooked for myriad other reasons. I have no doubt that there are pitchers who fit the bill here as well, but I can’t easily access velocity and spin rate data, something any team looking at these players could likely find either from old Perfect Game performances or from scouting. Given that, we’ll stick to college bats.

I’m going to highlight eight hitters. All eight might amount to nothing in the majors. Heck, that might even be the most likely answer. But they’re all doing something interesting, something that gives them a chance to stand out from the pack. They all have warts, too, of course; again, most of these players will go undrafted in this year’s abbreviated setup. And I’m not claiming to have scouting insight on these guys; I’m surveilling from a distance and guessing. These aren’t major league locks, and heck, I might be completely off. But here are a few names you might be excited to see your team sign after the draft. Read the rest of this entry »

On the heels of another weak offer by team owners, it’s worth re-examining their claims of losses on a per game basis in the regular season. While most of the discussions about MLB’s gains and losses in 2020 have been on a more global scale, individual teams are going to have vastly different financial outlooks this season. Those outlooks could be shaping the negotiations among the owners as they continue to present proposals to the players that try to satisfy all the owners at once.

It’s possible you’ve heard the claim that owners will lose $640,000 on every regular season game played. While there are a lot of issues with that claim given that national television money as well as other revenue from MLB’s central office like MLB.TV is not included, we can use the data from that assertion as a starting point in examining MLB’s finances. MLB’s claim of losses comes from taking a pro-rated share of local television money and then subtracting player pay based on the March agreement that dictated pro-rated pay. Then, around $55,000 is added per game for other revenue minus the cost to put on a game. For the television estimates, I used the data from this piece, added the MLB average for Toronto, and then made a 2% adjustment based on the figures in this Jeff Passan piece. That same piece also provided the salary rate of $1,674,800 per game. Based solely on that data, here’s the team-by-team look at gains and losses per game:

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2:02	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to another edition of my weekly chat! Apologies for not being able to fill this slot last week — the protests in Brooklyn left us without our usual dose of child care from my saintly mother-in-law, because travel from New Jersey was untenable.

2:04

Jay Jaffe: A bit of housekeeping: I’ve got a two-part deep dive into MLB amateur draft history, illustrating the best picks from later rounds by WAR. Many thanks to Ben Clemens for the database help that made such a series possible; I had some fun putting it together.  https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/beyond-round-5-the-best-later-round-dr… https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/beyond-round-5-the-best-later-round-dr…

2:04	Jay Jaffe: Regarding the draft: I’m really no expert, so I won’t have answers to most questions regarding who will go tomorrow — those questions are best left to Eric Longenhagen.

2:06	Jay Jaffe: The entirety of what I know about this year’s draft is that Torkelson was my cousin’s neighbor in Petaluma, California and so therefore should be taken first, because my cousin was super-generous with passing me his 1966-75 baseball card collection when I was younger.

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Matt Canterino was drafted out of Rice University a year ago this week. The now 22-year-old right-hander was selected in the second round by the Minnesota Twins, and soon thereafter signed his first professional contract. As is the case for every young player who gets to live that dream, it was an experience he won’t soon forget.

His subsequent introduction to pro ball centered more on education than on innings. Canterino took the mound just seven times, tossing 25 stellar frames — 31 strikeouts and eight hits allowed — between the rookie-level Gulf Coast League and the Low-A Midwest League. Most notably, he became acquainted with technology that showed him not only how his arsenal plays, but how his four-pitch mix can be optimized.

Canterino — No. 13 on our Twins Top Prospects list — discussed his draft experience, and his first-year education, over the phone from his home in Texas.

———

David Laurila: What was draft day like for you?

Matt Canterino: “It was more exciting than anything. I had a decent idea of where I’d be going — obviously nothing was set in stone — so to see that all come together once things got rolling into where I was projected to go… it was pretty surreal. It was also a dream come true. I feel like I’m still living a dream.”

Laurila: Did you go where you expected?

Canterino: “Yes. My agent gave me a range, and I pretty much fell right in the middle of it. Those were the expectations I went in with, and once that range started coming around, I realized there might be kind of a crunch time. But it happened really quick for me. There wasn’t much banter. It was a couple of teams, then one team, and all of a sudden I was drafted.”

Laurila: When did you start tuning in to the draft coverage? Read the rest of this entry »

It’s draft week, even in the fictional world of OOTP. The Brewers have drafted, so now it’s time to work out a negotiation strategy with the draftees. That, roster shenanigans, and more on today’s FanGraphs Live!
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I have a confession to make: I didn’t plan to write this article this week. The amateur draft kicks off Wednesday, as you can no doubt tell from Eric Longenhagen’s mock drafts and the rest of the staff’s complementary coverage. That made the topic for my next OOTP Brewers update obvious; preview OOTP’s amateur draft, and build a draft board for the Brewers.

Out Of The Park is an extremely faithful simulation of baseball, right down to the draft. This year, that even means real players; Spencer Torkelson, Asa Lacy, Nick Gonzales, and the rest of the gang are all available in-game, with attributes roughly based off of their college careers. What better way to bracket our draft coverage than by voting on our very own draft room?

There was one problem with my plan, however. Our OOTP league mirrors the season as it would have been before COVID-19, not the season as it actually is. That means the draft is also as it would have been; all the rounds, regular signing bonuses, and happening at its regularly scheduled time — last week. Whoops!

In any case, without the collective brain trust of FanGraphs readership, I had to formulate my own draft strategy. Our scouts really liked Reese Albert, an outfielder from Florida State. He has some Lorenzo Cain to him; plus speed, good approach at the plate, and the chance to stick at center field (though without Cain’s remarkable defense). In real life, Eric has him as a 35+ FV, which merits a position at the back end of the draft. In OOTP, our scouts have him as a 45, a talent level that puts him at the back end of the first round. Read the rest of this entry »

Picking up where I left off from Part 1, this is my round-by-round look at the best players drafted in each round beyond the fifth since the amateur draft was instituted in 1965. It’s an exercise intended to highlight the numerous quality major league players who might slip through the cracks with a shorter draft, not only this year’s absurdly curtailed five-rounder but also future years, particularly with minor league contraction looming.

With the database help of Ben Clemens, we’ve assembled top-five WAR rankings for rounds six through 25, plus a top-10 ranking for those chosen in later rounds. I’ve attempted to summarize the career highlights of each player in concise fashion (hat-tip to Baseball America’s Ultimate Draft Book for some of the tidbits on why draftees slipped to later rounds). Additionally, I’ve highlighted one active player who may or may not have cracked the leaderboard yet, but who’s also noteworthy. Read the rest of this entry »

Like many of you, since March I’ve been experiencing time dilation while interacting with the gravity of our global situation. The pandemic itself, as well as the institutional frailty — and human stupidity and ugliness — it has exposed has been, to borrow a prospect writing cliche, eye opening. Unless you tied your sheets together and rappelled out of your socially distanced bedroom window to CSBI or a Prep Baseball Report event over the weekend (which I would find distasteful but also be extremely jealous of), it has somehow been three months since anyone in our industry has seen live baseball. It has felt like forever and an instant all at once. For those who derive their sense of self from the game, or who use it as a three-and-a-half hour respite from the daily drone, I imagine baseball would have been an especially welcome refuge from the global circumstances that have instead become psychologically unavoidable in its absence.

I’m hopeful we’ll get our collective acts together and that eventually there will be some better long-term outcomes for our planet as a result of this, but right now it sucks. And so here’s a two-day dose of what you need: a draft. Like everything else it has been altered, maybe forever, and it will feel bizarre to those who have been through the exercise before, but it’s still a draft. The entire industry has had to feel around in the dark looking for ways to deal with the many quandaries that arose as a result of the shutdown. Not everyone is going to have solved them. That will make the draft interesting and entertaining. The lives of many young people and their families will change for the better this week, either instantly or as their careers blossom. Some of the players drafted tomorrow will become so good that your grandchildren will know their names. It’s an unavoidably optimistic exercise. I hope you enjoy it and that this piece and the other work here at FanGraphs helps you engage with it on a deeper level.

My player evaluations and rankings are here. My latest mock draft is here. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh talks to Braves outfield prospect Trey Harris about how he’s processed the murder of George Floyd and learned from the ongoing protests, how race and racism have affected his life and career, the additional barriers black players face, how he’s tried to talk to teammates, coaches, and friends about systemic racism and recent events, why baseball has historically been quiet about social justice compared to other sports and why players have started speaking up, the scarcity of black players, how to cover baseball better, the precarity of minor league life, acting casual in big league camp, the difficulty of not knowing if there will be a baseball season, how he’s trying to train and stay prepared to play, his thoughts on MLB’s negotiations with the MLBPA, how he’s used technology to improve as a player and what that might mean for the future of player development, and more.

Audio intro: The Pollies, "Things You Learn to Know"
Audio outro: Treyballcrazy, "Treyballin"

Link to Trey’s Twitter account
Link to recent Trey video interview
Link to start of section on Trey in The MVP Machine
Link to video of Trey at the AFL
Link to article about Trey’s 2019 season
Link to The Athletic on Trey
Link to Andrew McCutchen piece in The Players’ Tribune
Link to Adam Jones’ 2017 comments about racism
Link to Clinton Yates on black players and the Dream Series
Link to Victor Luckerson on Black Wall Street
Link to 13th on Netflix
Link to Votto’s opinion piece

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Prior to today, MLB owners had made one offer to the Major League Baseball Players Association to resume the season, one that included a renegotiation of the pro-rated player pay agreed to back in March. That proposal, made on May 26, was for 82 games and included about $1 billion in pay cuts from the March agreement. The offer seemed to unite the players rather than divide them, and five days later, the MLBPA proposed to play 114 games with expanded playoffs over the next two years. MLB has floated a 48-game schedule at full pro-rated pay, but never made that offer. Now, more than a week after the players made their proposal, the owners have responded with a proposal that’s somehow worse than their offer from two weeks ago.

As Karl Ravech first reported, the owners made an offer for 75% of pro-rated salaries for 76 games. He noted that the deal came with playoff pool money and that draft compensation for free agents would be eliminated. Jared Diamond reported that players were only guaranteed 50% of their pro-rated pay and would need to complete the playoffs to receive the rest. Diamond further reported that 20% of the $170 million advance would be forgiven. While the free agent compensation issue isn’t nothing, given the likely market climate this winter and the potential reduction in qualifying offers to begin with, it’s not clear how much this will actually benefit players. Overall, this offer is likely to be another unfortunate setback in the negotiations between the players and the owners, as it guarantees players less money than the owners’ other offer and pays them no more money upon completion of the playoffs.

Here’s a quick comparison of the 82-game offer with heavily decreased salaries compared to the 76-game plan with 75% pro-rated pay upon completion of the playoffs. The numbers include around $200 million in mostly fixed costs for player buyouts, pro-rated signing bonuses, and money still owed to players who have already been released; the per game amounts for pro-rated pay come from Jeff Passan’s piece last week:

Read the rest of this entry »