Being a fan of a rebuilding team is a tricky line to walk. You want the players to do well, obviously — you’re watching them every day, after all, and it’s only human to root for what you’re watching. At the same time, if they do too well, they’re probably getting traded — how much mental energy should you invest in a player who won’t be on your team in two months? Did that reliever you like find another gear? Cool, enjoy the two lower-level prospects the team will get back for him in a month. Rooting for a past-their-prime star? Well, if they have a good stretch, the team might ship the one face you remember from the good old days out for some salary relief.

There’s one great joy in watching a team that’s in the middle of a rebuild. Whether by accident or design, teams don’t end up trying to retool if they have a ton of solid major league players, which means there’s a playing time void that gets filled by whoever’s available. Minor league free agents and past-their-prime vets? Step right up. Lifetime minor leaguers looking for their first real chance? Someone needs to play third base, so grab a glove. When one of those lottery tickets hits, that feeling makes up for a lot of the bad parts of rebuilding. Here’s a player who has always wanted a chance, and your team gave it to him. If he’s young, he might even be around when the team’s good again, and you, the fan, were there at the beginning. All of this is a roundabout way of saying: Niko Goodrum might be awesome, and the Tigers gave him a chance.

If you haven’t heard of Niko Goodrum before, I can’t blame you. He got a cup of coffee with the Twins in 2017 before signing with the Tigers after the Twins released him, and he delivered a solid if uninspiring 2018 (103 wRC+ in 492 PA, 1.1 WAR) while playing across the diamond. He’s been excellent to start this year, putting up a 132 wRC+ with nearly as many walks as strikeouts while batting cleanup and playing both centerfield and first base. Now you, the sophisticated FanGraphs reader, are no dummy. You know that a 132 wRC+ a few weeks into the season isn’t all that outrageous. It’s above average, sure, but no one’s going to lose their mind over it. What makes me so sure Niko Goodrum is amazing all of the sudden? Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Johnny Cooney as the Vroom Vroom Guy, minor-league closer Dusten Knight’s backflip save-celebration ritual, the extreme struggles of the Red Sox, and a new way to represent Willians Astudillo’s success at making contact, then answer listener emails about umpires calling balls and strikes from second base and the most commonly known things about baseball, plus a Stat Blast about the disappearance of old pitchers.

Audio intro: The Undertones, "Jump Boys"
Audio outro: The Capes, "First Base"

Link to backflip videos
Link to Chapman somersault video
Link to Jeff on classifying closer celebrations
Link to Astudillo leaderboard
Link to umpire-accuracy article
Link to The Roots video
Link to post on White Sox caps and hip-hop culture
Link to piece on politicians’ baseball metaphors
Link to Sam on a 50-inning game
Link to Ben on early-season stat changes
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

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These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Nicky Lopez, SS, Kansas City Royals
Level: Triple-A   Age: 24   Org Rank: 7   FV: 45
Line: 3-for-5, 2 HR, 2B, BB

Notes
In our recently-published Royals list, we openly wondered if we should be heavier on Lopez largely because A) he plays shortstop and B) his peripherals are excellent. Shortly after publication, an executive reached out to us and they agreed we should be more enthused about Lopez, who we currently have evaluated as a second-division regular. He’s struck out just once so far this year. We don’t expect Lopez to hit for much power (he’s little and hits the ball on the ground a lot), but he may do enough to be part of Kansas City’s rebuilding efforts.

Brusdar Graterol, RHP, Minnesota Twins
Level: Double-A   Age: 20   Org Rank: 3   FV: 50
Line: 7 IP, 1 H, 1 BB, 0 R, 8 K

Notes
After two semi-wild starts during which his stuff was still too good for opposing hitters to do anything with, Graterol was slightly more efficient and utterly dominant last night. He’s holding upper-90s heat late into games, and while his slider is more horizontally oriented than is ideal (vertical breaking balls are typically better at missing bats), Graterol’s has enough length to be a real problem for hitters anyway. He’s only 20 and carving up Double-A. If there’s a scenario in which Graterol sees the big leagues this year, it almost certainly involves a tight AL Central race and a start like the one he’s off to.

Jarred Kelenic, CF, Seattle Mariners
Level: Low-A   Age: 19   Org Rank: 3   FV: 50
Line: 4-for-4, 2 2B, SB, BB

Notes
After a rough first week, Kelenic has heated up and is hitting like one would hope the most advanced high school bat would hit during their first full pro season. Both he and Nolan Gorman are performing and seem on the fast track. Kelenic has also looked comfortable in center field. Big and muscular aleady at 19, there’s some thought Kelenic may eventually move to a corner, but if he races through the minors, he’ll get to the bigs before he slows down.

Oscar Gonzalez, OF, Cleveland Indians
Level: Hi-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: HM   FV: 35
Line: 2-for-5, HR, 2B

Notes
Perhaps the epitome of the high-risk hitting prospect, Gonzalez continues to hit for power despite employing one of the most swing-happy approaches in pro ball. He still hasn’t walked this year and has just three free passes dating back to last June. The realistic ceiling for a player like this is a Hunter Renfroe-y sort of player.

Dispatch from Chula Vista

I’m in Southern California to see Eastlake High School infielder Keoni Cavaco, perhaps the most signifiant pop-up prospect in this year’s draft. Though his swing is a little unorthodox and handsy, Cavaco has big raw power and speed (he homered to dead center yesterday, turned what would typically be a gap single into a double, stole a base) and maybe the best body in the draft. He mishandled a ball at third base (where he moved, from second, late in the game) and saw little defensive action beside that.

We have Cavaco at the back of the 45-FV tier in this year’s class. There can only be so much confidence in his bat because he wasn’t part of last summer’s big showcases, where he would have faced better pitching than he’s seeing now. On tools, and based on what teams had extra heat in to see him (Seattle, Cleveland, Arizona), we’ll likely slide him up a few spots on The Board. I may head back to see more of him today.

Brandon Hyde is slowing settling into a routine. As a first-year MLB manager, it’s one that includes a number of new responsibilities. The 45-year-old Baltimore Orioles skipper isn’t without experience — he’s served in a variety of different roles, most recently with the Cubs as Joe Maddon’s bench coach — but again, he’s never been at the helm of a big league team. What’s he’s experiencing is a whole new animal.

His day starts long before the first pitch is thrown, and it ends well after the last out is recorded. There are reports and video to go over. There are coaches and front office executives to consult with. There are players to cultivate relationships with. There is a lineup to put together. And as everyone in Hyde’s role knows, there is also the media.

Hyde discussed his daily routine prior to Saturday’s game at Fenway Park.

Brandon Hyde: “I get up, have coffee or tea, and read the news from the night before; I look through world events and sporting events. The baseball news I read is national, because I want to keep up with what’s happening throughout the game. From there I’ll usually try to hang out with my family for a couple of hours before I go to the ballpark. Or, if I’m on the road, I’ll do something like go out to the driving range. I’ll try to do something relaxing.

“I get to the park fairly early. For a night game, that’s around noon-ish, maybe 12:30-ish. The first thing I do is double-check the lineup, which has already been set. That happened the night before. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 859

FanGraphs Audio welcomes back Kiley McDaniel, prospect analyst, to discuss all things scouting, including Kiley’s recent trip to Florida to see potential draftees in the 2019 draft class and the biggest risers and fallers on the draft section of The BOARD. We also engage in a little bit of contract extension talk, particularly as it pertains to Ozzie Albies, and the concept of bummers. And finally, we indulge a little non-baseball talk, offering our spoiler-laden assessments of the new season of Game of Thrones.

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 59 min play time.)

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Yesterday, I wrote about how at the team level, won-loss records at the 16-game mark are meaningful when it comes to predicting final records. At the individual level, we’re in small sample theater, however, with extreme and anomalous performances all over the place, virtually all of which will come out in the wash. For most hitters, the only stats that have begun to stabilize are exit velocity (40 balls in play), swing rate (50 plate appearances), and strikeout rate (60 PA), which means that players’ batting lines may contain all sorts of oddities in other categories.

Before they vanish into the ether, it’s worth gawking at some of the extremes, both the very, very good and the very, very bad. Unless otherwise indicated, all stats are through Tuesday. C’mon, let’s get weird…

The Very, Very Bad

-5 wRC+

Over the weekend, Chris Davis ended the longest hitless streak in major league history (54 at-bats) with a three-hit game against the Red Sox, and on Monday, he homered. That binge lifted his wRC+ from -67 — a number that can really only be understood in the Upside Down — to 2, which, well, it’s at least a positive number.

At this juncture, one player with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title (3.1 per team game) is still in the Upside Down, namely the Tigers’ Josh Harrison. The 31-year-old infielder, who didn’t sign with Detroit until February 23, is hitting a bare .123/.203/.140 through 64 PA, for a -5 wRC+. That’s 6-for-64 with a double and five walks, which ain’t much to write home about. Harrison, who has ranked in the sixth to eighth percentile in exit velocity from 2016-18, is making better contact than that this year (86.9 mph, 25th percentile), but the hits aren’t falling; he’s got a 111-point gap between his wOBA (.167) and xwOBA (.276). Stuck in an 0-for-13 slump, he can take solace in the fact that things can change quickly, as Davis showed; the Rockies’ Garrett Hampson, who entered Tuesday with a -9 wRC+ (.176/.189/.235 in 54 PA), went 2-for-4 with a homer against the Padres to lift his mark to 17. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Rule 5 picks aren’t known to be guaranteed successes. Of course, there are the obvious exceptions, like Odubel Herrera, Marwin Gonzalez or Hector Rondon, but for every success, there’s a Tyler Goeddel, a Jabari Blash, a Taylor Featherston. Generally speaking, the Rule 5 Draft is a good way to ensure players aren’t buried on a roster, but in terms of long-term contributors, not much often comes of it.

With that said, let me introduce to you right-handed reliever Brandon Brennan. He was the 13th overall selection in the 2018 Rule 5 Draft by the Seattle Mariners, who were so interested in bringing him aboard that they made the pick even after missing out on signing him as a minor league free agent.

When the decision to draft Brennan was made, Mariners Vice President of Scouting Tom Allison expressed his enthusiasm to Greg Johns of MLB.com. “Opportunity is probably what he needs the most, and we have that to give him,” Allison said.

What I love most about this quote is how accurate it is four months later. Brennan not only made the Mariners’ Opening Day roster, but he’s been superb so far here in the early going, making the most of the opportunity that Allison said Seattle had to give. Granted, he’s made just nine appearances and pitched just 12.1 innings, but the results have been there. Brennan has pitched to a 0.73 ERA (one earned run allowed) and 2.57 FIP, with 13 strikeouts (29.6 K%) to just two walks (4.6 BB%) across the 44 batters he’s faced. Hitters are hitting just .143 (6-for-42) against him. Anecdotally, he’s been called “the Mariners’ best reliever this season.” Read the rest of this entry »

The summer of 1962 was one of political turmoil. Within the United States, the civil rights movement continued to fight for an end to racial segregation, and outside the United States, the globe-consuming tension of the Cold War continued to intensify. The Vietnam War continued to escalate, with Robert F. Kennedy declaring in February that the United States would not leave Vietnam until Communism was defeated. The Space Race proceeded apace, with both Americans and Russians being launched into orbit. And the brewing conflict between President Kennedy’s administration and the still-new Castro regime in Cuba was reaching a fever pitch. In February, President Kennedy extended the embargo on trade with Cuba to include almost all exports; in March, the participants in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of the previous year were put on trial by the Cuban government, and in May were sentenced to 30 years of imprisonment. Both the United States and the USSR continued to test new kinds of nuclear warheads. The Cuban Missile Crisis loomed on the horizon; by midsummer, it was already clear that the pressure was about ready to boil over.

It was perhaps inevitable, then, that this conflict found its way into the relatively uneventful world of American professional baseball, where the most interesting thing going on was the Mets’ 120-loss inaugural season. Baseball in the United States, after all, is embedded in the national mythology, from the legends surrounding the sport’s invention to its status as America’s Pastime. The cultural significance of baseball was not lost to either side of the Cold War Conflict. New York Mirror columnist Dan Parker wrote that he was sure the world would be a better place “[i]f more ambassadors used sports instead of double talk as their medium of expression,” and that he’d “like to see the new envoy to Moscow introduce himself in the Kremlin by fetching Uncle Joe Stalin a resounding whack on the noggin with one of Joe Dimaggio’s castoff bats.”

Soviet paper of record Izvestia, meanwhile, in an attempt to undermine baseball’s status as a pillar of American values, claimed baseball was actually a descendant of the old Russian game lapta. In Cuba, where baseball had been the country’s most popular sport for almost a century, the game had developed yet another ideological purpose as a nationalist symbol, with the excellence of Cuban baseball demonstrating the values and victory of the revolution. 

In August of 1962, the ideological tensions existing in baseball manifested themselves in the form of one unlikely person: a 17-year-old boy in a 16-foot boat.

***

On August 5th, 1962, the Associated Press ran a curious news item. The headline read “Cuban Baseball Player Branded as Traitor,” and opened with this paragraph:

A Cuban baseball player who signed a U.S. major league contract but kept it a secret so he could disqualify his nation’s entry in the Central American Games has been denounced as a traitor, Havana Radio said yesterday.

The story identified the player as one Manuel Enrique Ameroso Hernandez. There was no other information about him, no age or identifying characteristics. All that was known was what he had done, and what he had planned to do: He had signed a contract with a major league team, which made him a professional baseball player, and had intended to identify himself as such and claim political asylum in Jamaica, where the Central American Games were being held. The Cuban team, then, having had a professional play for their team, would be disqualified from the competition.

Given baseball’s cultural importance to Cuba and the revolution, this would have been a stunning act of sabotage if it had been successfully carried out. But Hernandez’s reserved, apathetic demeanor leading up to the competition drew suspicion, and he eventually admitted his plan to his teammates. His actions were condemned in the strongest possible terms. Teammates were quoted as saying that they “would prefer death a thousand times before selling ourselves for the bloody dollars of the Yankee monopolies,” and the team issued a statement condemning “the traitorous and miserable attitude of Ameroso Hernandez for having signed as a professional and keeping this secret for the ruinous and cowardly object [of giving] our enemies the opportunity to disqualify our invincible team.” There was no clarification of what was to happen to Hernandez, nor of which major league team he had signed with in the first place.

In the coming days, as the story spread in the American media, more information came out about Hernandez. There was, first, the fact of his talent: Raul Castro had only recently sung Hernandez’s praises on the national stage as Cuban baseball’s finest player, and assessed his annual value at $60,000. (The highest salary in the major leagues in 1962 was $90,000, earned by both Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays.) This revelation was followed by one that made the former all the more surprising: Hernandez was only 17 years old. Read the rest of this entry »

Pete Alonso, it should first be said, really isn’t a great defender. The Mets were quick to let everyone know this throughout 2018, when they didn’t call him up early in the year, when he won Defensive Player of the Month for the Mets’ Triple-A affiliate in July, and when they didn’t make him a September call-up in a completely lost season for the big league club. Seventeen games into his major league career, however, I can say one thing with certainty: I don’t care that he’s supposedly bad at defense. Alonso’s plate appearances are turning into appointment viewing, because he flat-out crushes the ball. I’m not talking garden-variety “boy, that large man can hit,” either. Alonso might not have the best strike-zone recognition, or the best general plate discipline, but when he makes contact, he’s doing damage like almost no one else in baseball.

If you want to understand how truly incredible Alonso’s start has been, you need to look past the WAR leaderboards. Heck, you need to look past the wRC+ leaderboards — like I said, his plate discipline is a work in progress. Alonso has a near-200 wRC+ with a 31% strikeout rate — the three players at the top of the wRC+ leaderboard check in at 11.5%, 8.6%, and 15.0%, respectively. No, the magic really starts when Alonso puts the ball in play, and I do mean magic. Take a look at the top 10 players in baseball in terms of barrels (a Statcast designation that basically means a ball that is tremendously likely to be an extra-base hit) per batted ball:

Think of it this way: about a third of the time that Alonso puts the ball in play, he’s hitting an absolute rocket. Just being on this list, let alone at the top of it, tells us something. This isn’t a list of guys who have lucked into some game power. It’s not a list you can get on just by taking some walks, like a wRC+ leaderboard — Alex Bregman might have had a nice 2018 at the plate, but it’s hard to fake hitting the ball this hard and this optimally (Bregman ended 76th in barrels per batted ball last year). This isn’t just home run power, either, though it’s certainly that — Alonso has six homers already, including a 118.3-mph, 454-foot missile off of Jonny Venters that had SunTrust Park looking like a water hazard at the Masters:

Read the rest of this entry »