Taylor Williams is a tad shorter than the 5-foot-11 he’s listed at in the Milwaukee media guide. But as the saying goes, size doesn’t matter. His fastball averaged 96.1 mph, and ticked up even higher, in his 2018 rookie season. More importantly, he consistently recorded outs. In 56 appearances out of the Brewers bullpen, Williams fanned 57 batters in 53 innings, and fashioned a 3.95 FIP. All in all, it was a successful campaign for the 27-year-old right-hander who hails from Camas, Washington.
He faced a speed bump on his way to Beer City. Seemingly on the fast track after a stellar first-full professional season, the 2013 fourth round pick suddenly began feeling elbow discomfort. Rest didn’t help, nor did a platelet-rich plasma injection. He underwent Tommy John surgery and missed all of the 2015 and 2016 seasons.
He barely missed a beat after returning to action. Williams pitched well enough at Double-A Biloxi to earn a five-game cameo with the Brewers in September 2017. Then came last season’s further step forward, which portends a continuation of what could arguably be called a David-slays-Goliath career.
The undersized — but by no means underperforming — hurler discussed his path to the big leagues midway through last summer.
———
Williams on being drafted out of Kent State: “I was originally at Washington State, but decided that I didn’t want to go back. This was after after my freshman year. I transferred to Mount Hood Community College, in Oregon, in part because I didn’t want to have to sit out a season. I finished my associates degree at Mount Hood, then transferred to Kent State.
“I’d played summer ball with some Kent State guys after my freshman year. That was up in the New England Collegiate Baseball League. The team I was with played out of Keene, New Hampshire. The NECBL is a good league. Our All-Star team actually beat Team USA that year. Read the rest of this entry »
The Cincinnati Reds did more than hire a new manager over the offseason. They also revamped their coaching staff. Two of the additions will be entrusted with optimizing the offense. Turner Ward, formerly with the Dodgers, is now the hitting coach. Donnie Ecker, who came over from the Angels, will serve as the assistant hitting coach. Neither will be faced with the challenge of helping Billy Hamilton turn a corner. The Reds non-tendered the enigmatic speedster, who subsequently signed with the Royals, back in November.
I recently asked Dick Williams about the decision to cut ties with Hamilton, who slashed .245/.298/.333 in his five seasons as Cincinnati’s centerfielder. Before we get to that, here is the team’s President of Baseball Operations on Ecker:
“We’ve had some really interesting sessions the last couple of days, where coaches have gotten up and talked about their areas. Donnie Ecker is a movement specialist. He has a bio-mechanical approach to the swing. We had some great hitters in the room, like Barry Larkin and Eric Davis. Donnie gave a bio-mechanical explanation of some of the things he sees in hitters, using descriptions and examples that all of us could understand.”
Would Ecker, along with Ward, have been able to transform Hamilton into the productive hitter he’s thus far failed to become? Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about differently shaped players being in the best shape of their lives, the Luis Severino extension, and three trends: the disappearance of highly ranked pitching prospects, the plateauing of league-wide fastball velocity, and arbitration-eligible players signing team-friendly extensions. Then they preview the 2019 Minnesota Twins (17:54) with Baseball Prospectus editor-in-chief Aaron Gleeman, and the 2019 Philadelphia Phillies (46:23) with The Athletic Philadelphia’s lead Phillies writer, Matt Gelb.
As far as FanGraphs is concerned, we’re just wrapping up Prospects Week. But as far as Major League Baseball is concerned, it’s just wrapping up Extensions Week. Aaron Nola signed an extension with the Phillies. Both Max Kepler and Jorge Polanco signed extensions with the Twins. And now, as of Friday, Luis Severino has signed an extension with the Yankees. You’ll remember that Whit Merrifield had already signed an extension with the Royals. Other players are surely going to sign extensions with other teams. That’s what happens this time of year.
Severino is a Super Two player who was looking at a 2019 salary of at least $4.4 million in his first of four arbitration years. That’s all wiped out now, with the Yankees having bought out all four arb years for $40 million. There’s also a fifth-year club option, that would have this contract max out at $52.25 million. The terms are similar to what Nola got from the Phillies, although Nola signed away two would-be free-agent years, while Severino signed away one. This shouldn’t be his last opportunity to make a splash.
The explanations tend to mirror one another. Teams like these contracts because they provide cost certainty. Teams also like these contracts because they usually end up looking club-friendly. Players like these contracts because they’re opportunities to become financially stable and secure for the rest of one’s life. How could Luis Severino possibly turn down a chance to make forty million dollars? Especially as a pitcher in the age of Tommy John. Severino’s set. His family is set. You know how all this goes.
This still looks club-friendly. So many players just don’t want to chance it.
The deepening cold war between Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association has touched on topics ranging from shoes to minor league pay to free agency. What it hasn’t garnered as much attention are player benefits, such as pensions and healthcare.
In other words, this isn’t that dissimilar from any other employer-based health insurance system. But playing baseball isn’t like other employment, and that can lead to trouble for former players.
UMP: The Untitled McDongenhagen Project, Episode 9
This is the ninth episode — and the season two premiere! — of a mostly weekly program co-hosted by Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel about player evaluation in all its forms. The show, which is available through the normal FanGraphs Audio feed, has a working name but barely. The show is not all prospect stuff, but there is plenty of that, as the hosts are Prospect Men.
We used to include timestamps so you could skip around by topic, but this episode has just one topic: Prospects Week. If you’re not into that, we bet you’ll like the new into/outro music.
For Bryce Harper, the comparisons to Mike Trout have faded with time. While the Angels’ center fielder has played at an MVP-caliber level in each of his seven full seasons — taking home two awards and finishing as runner-up in the voting four times — his ex(?)-Nationals counterpart has ridden a performance rollercoaster since winning his lone MVP award in 2015, with injuries, struggles against the shift, and shaky defense dimming his star at least somewhat. There’s little doubt that inconsistency is one factor in slowing down Harper’s market now that he’s a free agent, and may prevent him from reaching a record-setting payday, though it is hard to sort out how much of him remaining unsigned is the result of Harper-specific concerns, and how much is the market’s generally tepid temperature. Still, Harper is just 26 years old, as is Manny Machado, his top-tiered counterpart on the free agent market. Both players remain unsigned, even as camp has opened for pitchers and catchers.
Measured against what the 27-year-old Trout has accomplished — last May, Trout surpassed the JAWS standard for center fielders, the average of each Hall of Fame center fielder’s career WAR and his seven-year peak WAR (Baseball-Reference flavors), and he now ranks seventh in the metric — the two free agents’ resumés pale by comparison. Even so, at a time when so many teams are finding excuses not to invest in them, or at least not on the terms they’re seeking, it’s worth considering how the pair stack up historically. This isn’t about haggling over dollars, and it’s less about finding recent comparisons for the past few seasons put up by Harper and Machado, as Craig Edwards did earlier this winter, and more about situating the pair within a broader context, appreciating their accomplishments to date and where their careers might take them. Read the rest of this entry »
After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for more than half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Washington Nationals.
When I saw the Washington Nationals towards the end of the randomly generated ZiPS order back around Thanksgiving, I thought to myself, “There’s no way that Bryce Harper appears in those projections unless he re-signs.” But here we are! Even more surprising is the degree to which ZiPS has fallen in love with Juan Soto, leaving Bryce Harper as merely the second-ranked player on the Nationals’ list. Young players don’t get the Ken Griffey Jr. offensive comp very often. In fact, I think Soto is the first player to get Jr. as his top comp at this early an age. Comps to Griffey in his thirties tend to be more common (Edwin Encarnacion got him as his No. 3 comp).
What you have here is a lineup in which the cream is very…uh…creamy. Soto’s projections rank him the No. 1 left fielder in baseball among the teams whose projections have gone live and I don’t think I’m giving any spoilers away by saying that neither Kyle Schwarber or Brett Gardner will have better projections. Anthony Rendon won’t drop below fifth among third baseman and there’s nobody left to push Trea Turner below the bronze at shortstop. That give the Nationals three players with a mean projection that makes them legitimate stars. The supporting cast is pretty good, too: Eaton’s at the back of the top 10 if he can stay healthy, ZiPS projects a decent bounce back campaign from Brian Dozier, and catcher and first base don’t drag the team down. Victor Robles isn’t projected to make as big a splash as Juan Soto, but is still soothsayed as an above average center fielder as a rookie.
Pitchers
The pitching bears a resemblance with the lineup in that the highs here are very high. You could do a lot worse than your top three starters having Greg Maddux–Bret Saberhagen–Andy Pettitte as a set of comps. And as weird as it sounds, ZiPS may even be slightly underrating Patrick Corbin; if I used a beta version of ZiPS that is probably a year away from going live, Corbin’s 3.63 ERA would drop to 3.42 and he’d go from the 16th pitcher ranked so far to the 12th. The difference is the full implementation of plate discipline data, which shows Corbin was the second-hardest starting pitcher (min. 100 innings) to make contact against in 2018. It’s easy to cruise on your team’s defense or a lucky BABIP; it’s much harder to cruise by fooling batters, and Corbin doesn’t use a novel trick that might cause him to have a short shelf life.
After the top three starters, ZiPS is unimpressed with Anibal Sanchez and Jeremy Hellickson. ZiPS would actually slightly prefer that the Nats use Erick Fedde and Joe Ross in those slots, but none of them are all that exciting. Ross was at one point, and he’s young enough to still recover, but his career was waylaid considerably by injury.
The bullpen is pretty much the same story. After Sean Doolittle (who has the 7th best projected ERA+ in baseball so far, though Yankees ‘pen is still to come) and Trevor Rosenthal, there’s a whole lot of meh going on. The only relief pitcher who really makes the computer feel a little flush is Austin Adams (there are two Austin Adami), a reliever with the classic mid 90s-fastball/slider combo and another classic trait of many hard-throwing minor league relievers: frequent control issues. Last year, Adams made real progress with his control, getting his walk rate under four in Triple-A while striking out 15 batters per nine innings, though Washington showed little interest in seeing what Adams can do. Washington never really seemed to have much faith in Felipe Vazquez or Blake Treinen either. One would think they’d have learned their lessons about not being more curious about hard-throwing strikeout machine relievers with command issues.
Bench and Prospects
ZiPS has the Nationals with the most WAR in the NL East, but does not similarly project them to be the first-place team. Simply put, ZiPS is unimpressed with team’s depth overall. This is due both to the reserves and the back of the bullpen, but also a minor league system that is likely to provide little in the way of additional reinforcements. Now, Robles is still technically a prospect, but he’s already considered here as a starter, not a reinforcement, and of the center field time split in the depth chart WARtoon, it’s Robles who makes up the bulk of the value rather than Michael Taylor.
The one exception is Carter Kieboom, a player who ZiPS thinks could backstop an injured infielder quite adequately, and certainly be an upgrade from Wilmer Difo, who would be the likely replacement if injury strikes a Turner or a Rendon (something which has happened before). Long-term, ZiPS projects a lot of power upside from Kieboom, thinking he’ll get into the twenties in home runs a year fairly easily, with peak WARs that suggest multiple All-Star appearances.
After that, there’s very little in short-term value. The next-best position player in the minors for the Nats, at least in terms of how ZiPS views 2019, is catcher Tres Barrera, projected to hit .228/.287/.355 for a 0.3 WAR in just under 300 plate appearances (which will almost certainly all be in the majors in 2019). And really, if a catcher was injured, whichever of Kurt Suzuki and Yan Gomes is healthy is likely to simply take over most of the additional playing time.
One pedantic note for 2019: for the WAR graphic, I’m using FanGraphs’ depth chart playing time, not the playing time ZiPS spits out, so there will be occasional differences in WAR totals.
Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors — many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2019. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production — a .240 ZiPS projection may end up being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future.
Players are listed with their most recent teams, unless I have made a mistake. This is very possible, as a lot of minor-league signings go generally unreported in the offseason.
ZiPS’ projections are based on the American League having a 4.29 ERA and the National League having a 4.15 ERA.
Players who are expected to be out due to injury are still projected. More information is always better than less information, and a computer isn’t the tool that should project the injury status of, for example, a pitcher who has had Tommy John surgery.
Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR — which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.
The Electrician: Do you think there will be a rush of free agent signings once teams move their guys to the 60 day DL and open up 40 man roster spots?
9:09
Jeff Sullivan: Already seeing it. Oakland used a 60-day stint to make room for Robbie Grossman. Also used one to make room for Brett Anderson. Arizona used one to make room for Caleb Joseph. Miami used one to make room for Sergio Romo. Kansas City used one to make room for Jake Diekman, etc
In January, the two of us (along with Managing Editor Meg Rowley) had the opportunity to attend Driveline Baseball’s Pro Day in Kent, Washington. We were itching to get out of the house and watch baseball in some form, even if it was just to see dudes in shorts throw live batting practice. But because Driveline is as much a laboratory as it is a training facility, it was unlike any player workout or showcase we’ve been to, and we want to share our experience with readers.
We realize, though, that readers may require some context for the day, as they may not have a great idea of what a “normal” scouting showcase entails. So we’re going to talk about that and then about how Driveline’s pro day was different, touching on the pros and cons of each format along the way.
Finally, we’re going to talk about some of the players we saw, but with a little twist. Dozens of scouts were in attendance for the pro day, and one of Driveline’s stated goals for the event was to make things as easy for them as possible. They circulated a ton of information to aid with player evaluation (more on that shortly), and included us on the distribution list. Kiley, who spent a lot of time during the event schmoozing with baseball folks, was handed the data and asked to provide a preference list of pitchers from the pro day based solely on these numbers. Conversely, Eric sat fidgeting in a chair behind home plate while everyone threw, and took notes by hand. He was not allowed to look at the data, and was required to compile his pref list like our forefathers did, based only on his eyeball evaluations.
A bit of background on player workouts. Most in-person scouting is done during some kind of live baseball game, be it your run-of-the-mill minor league game somewhere in middle America, or a college game on a Friday night. But there are several scenarios where scouting occurs outside of this context. A player might throw a bullpen session for scouts while attempting some kind of comeback, or pro players might participate in a backfield simulated game, where there are no stakes and coaches create artificial scenarios to simulate and instruct players on procedure during certain game situations. Sometimes sim games don’t even utilize an actual pitcher. Scouts are often at these sorts of events, too, trying to learn whatever they can about an individual player’s talent, or get injury updates or pitching probables for the week.
The most common type of workout though, is the kind of showcase one would see for high schoolers or international amateurs. International amateur showcases typically include traditional batting practice for the hitters, outfielders throwing to the various bases, infielders fielding a standard directional sequence of ground balls and throwing to first base, catchers showcasing half a dozen pop times, and everyone running the 60-yard dash. At big events, there are usually a few games after this. At workouts at an individual trainer’s academy, or for free agent hitters, there generally aren’t enough players for that.
At Driveline, some pitchers threw bullpens, but the entire session was being recorded by a TrackMan unit and a Rapsodo camera and radar monitor. In addition to measuring velocity like a handheld radar gun would, TrackMan and Rapsodo measure all sorts of other stuff that teams have found to correlate with pitching success, or that can be used as a player development tool to provide immediate feedback to the player or a coach, which means players can make adjustments in real-time.
After a few pitchers threw unopposed bullpens, the hitters training at Driveline took their version of batting practice against a high-speed pitching machine that was spitting out balls at about 88 mph, at times with cutting action. This is much different than a middle-aged man in a form-fitting baseball uniform chucking balls at hitters from behind a screen at the base of a mound. The logic behind this alteration is that hitters don’t see pitches as slow as traditional BP lobs are in games, and training in a way that replicates in-game conditions more closely will better prepare them. This makes sense, but scouts we spoke with after the event indicated they left with almost no feel for the hitters.
Driveline is limited because their facility is indoors, and while a HitTrax machine helped depict the flight path of batted balls when the hitters faced live pitching later in the day, the number of opportunities they had to really square balls up and show scouts raw power in the way scouts are used to were limited. Onlookers left Kent with more considered opinions on the size of Daniel Comstock’s butt than they did anything else about the hitters, who they also didn’t see run or field.
After hitters got loose against the pitching machine, the rest of the pitchers took turns warming up and facing live hitting, with every piece of technology in the room switched on. Usually a rowdy environment, several of the players and staff commented on the quiet in the building that day, at least before Eric Sim arrived. That’s not to say that it was boring. The event had good pace and energy despite the early silence and the stakes — a potential pro contract if you impressed the right person — were high.
Having set the scene, we’ll turn to our individual pref lists. We’d first like to acknowledge all the athletes who participated in the event, and the work they did to get there. We were made to understand that those who were chosen to throw and hit had to clear a certain talent and work bar, and we believe everyone there has the talent to play highly competitive baseball at some level, professionally or otherwise.
We’ve omitted Albertus Barber and Seth Baugh from these rankings because both players are draft eligible, rather than allowed to sign a pro contract. They’ll be on the 2019 Draft section of The Board before June. We’ve also omitted left-handed pitcher Luke Heimlich, who has been training at Driveline since high school and who, according to Driveline, threw during the event at the request of “a few teams.” Prior to the event, Driveline sent out a roster of scouts and media members expected to be in attendance, and the highest ranking individual on the list was Royals Pro Scouting Director Gene Watson, though none of us saw Watson at the facility and we’re unsure whether he was there. The Royals are the lone team to have an employee (General Manager Dayton Moore) express interest in Heimlich, who pleaded guilty to child molestation as a minor.
I thought Matzek threw some plus-plus sliders and had enough feel for locating his two breaking balls (I put a 50 on his curveball) that I was less worried about his fastball command. He was a scattershot 89-92 and has had issues locating his heater near the zone in the past, but he’ll be allowed to work more heavily off his breaking stuff now than he was as a prospect because that style of pitching is more widely accepted. He could help a team in a relief role.
Robbins was 92-95 and threw several plus changeups in the mid-80s. They had bat-missing action down-and-in on righties. Hitters were taking big, confident hacks throughout the day but looked most uncomfortable and tentative against Robbins, especially against his slider, which I thought was average in a vacuum.
Hagerty had been out of baseball longer than I’ve been in it and it’s amazing that he’s throwing this hard. He was up to 98 for me and threw a few plus breaking balls, but also sent some pitches into the screen. There’s risk he’s wild like he was when he was in pro ball a decade ago, but I’ll take that fastball. I thought Simpson had a solid four-pitch mix. He was up to 93, his fastball had some tail, I liked the depth of the repertoire, which I thought was mostly average, and he’s one of the younger arm who threw. Kelleher had arguably the best two-pitch mix there as he was up to 96 and had a tight slider with bat-missing, vertical depth. I was put off by how violent his delivery is and didn’t think he had feel for locating the slider in places that were enticing to a hitter. Reyes was also 91-93 with a bunch of 50s, but I thought his fastball’s angle was more hittable, and his age rounded up (he’ll be 27 in April) put him beneath Simpson.
When I saw Karsen Lindell in high school, he was throwing 86-88; now he’s 92-95. He threw some 50 breakers but they were less consistent than Reyes’ or Simpson’s. Beimel was up to 93 and lived right on the edge of the plate to his glove side for almost his entire session. His secondary stuff is fringy but there were some 50 sliders in there, which are fine if you’re locating them, and Beimel was. He is in incredible shape for 42. Moskos had similarly consistent command but he worked down, at or below the knees, with a two seamer. I put 45s on his two-seamer, cutter, and curveball.
Kiley’s Data-Driven Pref List
1. Kevin Kelleher, RHP (25)
2. Tyler Matzek, LHP (28)
3. Karsen Lindell, RHP (22)
4. Arturo Reyes, RHP (26)
5. Luke Hagerty, LHP (37)
6. Robert Robbins, RHP (24)
7. Lance Simpson, RHP (22)
8. Jackson Sigman, RHP (23)
9. Tyler Gillies, RHP (23)
For this pref list, I considered only the TrackMan data from the event, the pitchers’ ages, and their previous stat lines. I’ve disregarded anything I know about them from watching them in a scouting context, which was easy to do when it came to this event because I was at a terrible angle to grade pitches.
Kelleher’s fastball has plus velocity (95.7 average, 96.8 peak), plus-plus rise, and good plane, and he threw 18 of 22 of them for strikes, while operating up in the zone where his heater plays best. His slider averages 3070 rpms, which is about as high as that measure goes (Blue Jays righty Trent Thornton has the highest average breaking ball spin rate among prospects we’ve covered this offseason), and threw 5 of his 7 sliders for strikes. Both pitches grade out as a 60 by use of the rough metric I’ve created using TrackMan, and while it wasn’t a long look, Kelleher’s control would also be plus (I won’t try to grade command on just a couple dozen pitches). Kelleher has essentially no affiliated pro experience, and he’s 25, but there’s a lot of stuff to work with here.
Matzek graded out with a solid-average fastball, slider, curveball, and strike-throwing rate. Given his past struggles with strikes and his major league experience, he seems like a nice gamble to be an upper minors contributor at least. From this very limiting view of this limited event, he and Kelleher both seem to have big league potential.
Lindell had a plus fastball, average slider, below changeup, and threw strikes, so there’s a nice fit as a reliever at the lower levels given his age. Reyes is older but has Triple-A experience and his fastball/curveball combo is fringe-to-average, but his slider graded as plus.
Hagerty’s heater topped at 98.5 and his curveball was about average, but he’s 37, had below strike-throwing at the event, and his career initially fell apart due to the yips, so I’m not optimistic he gets a long big league look. Robbins performed well, threw strikes, and has an above average fastball, but the off-speed stuff didn’t grade out as well. Simpson flashed an average fastball/slider/changeup combo, but the control was lacking. Sigman throws from a low slot, had an average slider, and a good strike-throwing rate, so I rounded up on the fastball grade since the slot excuses the lesser velo (89.7 mph average). Gillies has an average fastball/slider combo and threw strikes with the heater.
Of the pitchers on our preference lists, Hagerty, Kelleher, Matzek, Reyes, and Robbins signed minor league deals following the event, while Simpson was invited to try out for a club. David Carpenter and Sam Selman, who also threw that day, signed MiLB deals as well.
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