Tommy Pham had a breakout 2017, and while he remained above average in 2018, his stats took a significant hit. His past two seasons have been so good that his trade to the Rays is widely derided by Cardinals fans as one of the team’s least-astute moves of the past few years. However, entering his age-31 season, there are questions about whether he can maintain his level of production at the plate. Twelve games and 56 plate appearances into the season, Pham needs to make some adjustments if he wants to repeat 2017.

His 2017 season was outstanding, as he became the first Cardinal to reach the 20/20 mark in 13 years. He ended that season with 25 stolen bases (fourth in the NL) and 23 homers. Pham’s slash line of .306/.411/.520 was fantastic, and that .411 OBP was third in the league. His wRC+ of 148 was fifth in the league among qualified hitters and his 13.4% walk rate was ninth. However, there was a substantial dip in those stats last season.

All of Pham’s numbers took a step back in 2018, though they remained well above average. Since it was his second full season, there could be a few different reasons for that downturn. It could be pitchers adjusting to him. Maybe it was reaching his age-30 season, and the beginning of a decline. Or perhaps his struggle with injuries in the second half was a major contributor. Maybe it was all three! Whatever it was, we can conclude that Pham’s ceiling is capable of more than what he did last season, even if his 2018 was pretty good!

The first thing to note about Pham in this young 2019 season is that he is maintaining his uptick in exit velocity. He continues to make hard contact, with his average exit velocity sitting pretty at 92.9 mph. That is virtually the same as it was last season, and is a 3.6 mph increase from his best season.

The two words most often used to describe Tommy Pham are “focused” and “intense.” That really shines through in his plate discipline. Below are his swing and contact rates for pitches inside the strike zone.

His swing rate in 2017 was about 60%, which went up by one percentage point last season. Those are good numbers. On those pitches, he made contact 86.5% of the time in 2017 and 87.4% last year. That has remained consistent over the first couple weeks of the season, as Pham has swung at 60.9% of pitches inside the strike zone and made contact on 83.0% of them.

Let’s step away from batted balls and look at the other facets of plate discipline. Pham keeps taking walks at a similar rate; 11.8% of his plate appearances last year and 13.4% the year prior resulted in walks. In his first 12 games, Pham has split the difference and worked 10 walks, good for a 17.9% rate, about 10% higher than last year’s MLB average. In addition to bases on balls, Pham’s strikeout rate is fairly consistent, if a tad above the league norm. The average strikeout rate for all batters was 22.3% last season, and Pham fell in at 24.6%. He is at 17.9% so far this season. These first 12 games are a very small sample, but everything we have seen from him indicates he is still seeing the ball well.

We know he understands the zone, but what about results? What happens once Tommy Pham puts a ball in play?

His ground ball rate has been, at times, problematic. In 2015, 51.3% of the pitches he put in play were on the ground. That decreased to 45.5% in 2016, then jumped up more than 6% the following season. Are these numbers making you dizzy? In 2018, the ground ball rate fell to 48% but that roller coaster has swung back up to 57.1% this season, though again, it’s early.

Pham has not proven himself to be a power hitter; all 12 of his hits this season have been singles. In 2017, only 35% of his hits went for extra bases, then 33% of his hits last season. The major league average is 36%; Pham hasn’t reached that point even at his best. His wRC+ this season is 112. He relies on ground ball singles, which is not what he should be doing if he wants to repeat 2017. His batting average is above the mean, but all these singles do not generate runs at a high enough rate.

The counter-argument is that he bats second in the Tampa Bay lineup. His role is to get on base, not so much to be the guy driving in the most runs. Walks and singles suit his role. Pham already has four stolen bases after taking 15 last season. He has the ability to compensate for all these singles by stealing an additional base and is well on track to outpace his stolen base total from 2018. Whether the extra base hits will come in 2019, and how often, remains to be seen.

Looking at last season, however, it appears Pham tried to make some of these adjustments.

Even during his fantastic 2017 season there were things Pham could improve. He needed to make more hard contact and did just that. After being traded to Tampa Bay, the hard contact increased even more. His ground ball to fly ball ratio was consistent in St. Louis, but was nearly cut in half during his time as a Ray. And his overall ground ball rate decreased fifteen percent! While only 29% of his hits went for extra bases during his time in St. Louis last year, that number jumped to 41% once he was traded to Tampa Bay. Something in that Florida water worked pretty well for Tommy Pham. If he gets back to that contact and fly ball rate over the course of this season, that wRC+ will increase and he could bounce back all the way to his 2017 numbers.

Pham’s lack of extra base hits are cause for concern, as is his penchant for ground balls. Last year, however, he proved he could make the necessary adjustments to make harder contact and put more balls in the air. The question is whether he will do it again.

Pham appears to be maintaining the aspects of his game that made him dangerous at the plate. Since being traded to Tampa Bay, he has played in 51 games for the Rays and has been on base in 49 of them. He walks, he steals bases, and he hits for a good average. Pham is not the sort of person to swing wildly at anything and is fairly selective with the pitches he sees inside the strike zone. There are ways he can improve, but even if he just matches his 2018 season, he will be a great offensive asset this year. If he picks up where he left off last season, Pham might just be as good as he was in 2017.

12:23

Kiley McDaniel: here’s some high speed via twitter, two more pitches on the @fangraphs instagram:   FanGraphs Prospects @FG_Prospects   Last night @kileymcd saw our 15th-ranked 2019 draft prospect, FL prep righty Matt Allan, sit 94-96 and hit 97 until a rain delay. He also broke off a couple 65-grade breaking balls, here’s one of them fangraphs.com/prospects/the-… 10 Apr 2019

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While the Dodgers’ bolt from the gate isn’t too surprising given their back-to-back NL pennants and preseason playoff odds around 90% (though yes, I reaaaally nailed the timing of my investigation into their hitting), the Mariners’ hot start is the kind of early-season anomaly that reminds us how reality often fails to conform to our preconceptions. Expected to be a bystander during a rebuilding year, Seattle opened the season by sweeping a two-game series in Japan against last year’s upstarts, the A’s, and has continued to roll. They own the majors’ best record (11-2) and run differential (+40) so far.

The Mariners did spend most of last year in contention, ultimately notching 89 wins — their highest total since 2003 — but finishing eight games behind the A’s for the second AL Wild Card spot. In missing out on the October festivities, they ran their postseason drought to 17 years, the longest in North American professional sports. Given a club record payroll ($157.9 million as of Opening Day 2018) and the game’s worst farm system, general manager Jerry Dipoto opted to plunge the team into rebuilding mode, bidding adieu to free agent Nelson Cruz and trading away Robinson Cano, Alex Colome, Edwin Diaz, James Paxton, Jean Segura, and Mike Zunino, among others — nearly all of the popular kids, basically. With Kyle Seager suffering a torn tendon in his left hand, the only players common to Seattle’s 2018 and ’19 Opening Day lineups were Dee Gordon, Mitch Haniger, and Ichiro Suzuki, the last of whom used the Japan series as a farewell tour. Read the rest of this entry »

This past Sunday’s notes column included Trevor Williams on the subject of pitcher won-lost records. As was pointed out in the piece, the Pittsburgh Pirates righty probably deserved better than last season’s 14-10 mark. On eight occasions he got either a loss or a no-decision despite allowing three-or-fewer earned runs.

His wins weren’t gift-wrapped. Not by a long shot. Ten times he went at least six innings without allowing a run — that was the most in the majors — and he was nearly as stingy in the others. Only five of the enemy combatants who crossed the plate in Williams’ 14 W’s went onto his ledger. At season’s end, his 3.11 ERA stood seventh-best in the senior circuit (min. 170 innings).

Not bad for an 26-year-old hurler who, for all intents and purposes, was acquired in exchange for a pitching instructor.

As Pirates fans are well aware, his ascent began in July. Williams went into last season with a 4.36 ERA in 163 big-league innings, and through 19 starts he was holding that form to a T. His ERA was exactly what it was on Opening Day. Then he morphed into Greg Maddux. Over his final baker’s-dozen outings, Williams allowed just 11 runs — four of them in his lone clunker — in 71.1 frames. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re talented enough to make it to the majors, you often have had to make a series of adjustments to maximize your potential and survive in the league. If you are really talented, knowing yourself and being open to changes can really put your name on the map. Yandy Diaz is really talented. We’ve raved about his tools and uber-muscular physique. The Rays are giving him a starting opportunity pretty much every day, which is exciting; they have to be excited by the return as well.

So far in 2019 (all statistics are as of April 9), Diaz has turned in a .308/.386/.615 line with a 183 wRC+ and three home runs. The Rays have gotten what they have hoped to get from him in the first 10 games. Diaz’s underlying numbers — not only this year, but also from the years prior — testify to his strength. In 2017 and 2018 with Cleveland, Diaz hit for average exit velocities of 91.5 and 92.1 mph, respectively, which was well above the league average of 87.4 mph. He also was an extreme ground-ball hitter. In 2018, his launch angle was 4.4 degrees, much lower than the league average of 10.9. As a result, 53.3% of his batted balls last year were grounders, which, if he had had a qualified number of at-bats, would have ranked in the top 10 in the entire league.

Because Diaz has such a low launch angle, all he has to do is swing up, elevate, and celebrate, right? It’s not exactly that simple. In midst of baseball’s fly-ball revolution, we have seen instances of players actually trying to swing more “level.” Last year, Jeff Sullivan noted Joc Pederson and Kyle Schwarber’s adjustments. Kris Bryant also saw strides in his production after adjusting his swing to spend more time in the zone. We have many other success stories in which hitters benefited from, well, learning to lift the ball. The point is that the equation isn’t so simple. If it were, every hitter would be enjoying success by altering their swings in the same way. It is a league-wide trend, for sure, but there are things that work for some and don’t for others.

Diaz is a special case though. Because he is such an extreme groundball hitter who can also hit the ball hard, it could be worth it for him to experiment with different approaches to become his best self in the majors. It might not work out, of course. But because of his above-average exit velocity, it could pay off quite handsomely. Look at his home run versus Gerrit Cole from earlier this season.

Readers, that was smoked. It traveled for a 112.2 mph exit velo with a distance of 420 feet. It’s been documented that Diaz can hit for average (he had a .311/.413/.414 career line in the minors and hit .312/.375/.422 with Cleveland last year), but what raised my eyebrows were his 2019 power numbers. Increased power production is usually a product of some sort of change. Think Jose Bautista with his leg kick and Justin Turner with Doug Latta. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the beautiful things about baseball is that history is always being made. During every season, every game, every pitch, we may witness something that has never happened in the long history of this sport.

This offseason, the Twins made baseball history in a different way than I think you were expecting. They hired Wes Johnson, then the University of Arkansas’ pitching coach, to join their big league staff, serving in the same role. According to this story from La Velle E. Neal III in the Star Tribune, Johnson became the first pitching coach in baseball history to move directly from college to the majors. And, at the time, he was believed to be the first coach or manager of any kind to make this transition since Dick Howser left Florida State to manage the Yankees in 1980. That’s some legitimate baseball history there.

What was even more interesting about the Twins’ hire was Johnson’s pedigree as a pitching coach. From Neal’s story:

[Johnson] studies biomechanics. He uses analytics. He is into the gadgets teams invest in to help train pitchers. He earned a reputation in college as a velocity expert, someone who can help pitchers throw harder — although he says it’s difficult to do once a pitcher is no longer in his teens.

Perhaps the story of the Twins hiring a pitching coach who “uses analytics” might not sound all that exciting to you; you likely assume big league coaches use analytics at this point. But the change represented a real organizational philosophy shift. Read the rest of this entry »

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

Seuly Matias, RF, Kansas City Royals
Level: Hi-A   Age: 20   Org Rank: 1   FV: 45+
Line: 3-for-4, 2B, 3B
Notes
Matias’ 34% career strikeout rate is a sizable red flag that ultimately is what kept him off our overall prospect rankings. With a few exceptions, even the most whiff-prone big leaguers struck out less than that when they were in the minors. But so gifted and physically dominant is Matias that we think he’ll be effective, even if it’s in a streaky, inconsistent way like Domingo Santana or Carlos Gomez. As a teen, he was already posting exit velocities on par with burly, Quad-A type hitters. We hope he learns to take a walk, but “Randal Grichuk with more raw power” is a good player, so we’re cautiously optimistic that the Royals at least have a good big leaguer here, and a potential superstar if there’s contact/approach refinement, which is admittedly easier said than done.

Nolan Gorman, 3B, St. Louis Cardinals
Level: Low-A   Age: 18   Org Rank: 3   FV: 50
Line: 2-for-5, 2 HR
Notes
The Cardinals gave Gorman some reps with the big league team during spring training, and a scout told me they thought it would make Low-A, where Gorman struck out 37% of the time for a month of 2018, appear slower and easier by comparison. He has reached base in each of his 2019 games, and six of his 10 hits have gone for extra bases. We considered Gorman one of the more advanced high school bats in last year’s class (he and Jarred Kelenic were the only two in that top tier) and thought he might move quickly if the strikeout issues that popped up during his senior spring could be remedied. It looks like Gorman is just going to strike out a little more than is ideal, but he also appears poised for a quick move to the upper levels of the minors. When is the right time for promotion? I’d give opposing pitchers the chance to make adjustments to Gorman, and vice versa, which means waiting until mid-May when he sees Beloit, Quad Cities, Wisconsin, and Cedar Rapids for the second time. If he hits until then, and those clubs can’t find a way to get him out the second time they see him, perhaps we see Gorman in Hi-A just after he turns 19.

Joey Bart, C, San Francisco Giants
Level: Hi-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 1   FV: 55
Line: 2-for-5, HR, 2B, BB
Notes
Nothing to see here as Bart should be expected to hit for power in the Cal League both because of its offensive environment and because last year he teed off on ACC competition, which is second only to the SEC, in my opinion. It’s ironic that the top two picks in last year’s drafts seem likely to be ready for the majors well before their parent club is likely to be competitive, but perhaps it will behoove the Giants to move Bart to Double-A semi-early this summer if for no other reason than to get him working with that pitching staff, which I think has more future big league teammates on it than the group in San Jose does.

Josh Naylor, DH, San Diego Padres
Level: Triple-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: 11   FV: 50
Line: 3-for-6, 2 2B
Notes
Naylor should be monitored closely because he’s the type of hitter who could explode if he makes a relevant approach change. He has both huge raw power and excellent bat control, but his willingness to offer at pitches he can’t drive had limited his power output until 2018, when he homered 17 times at Double-A. If he learns to attack the right pitches, he’ll hit so much that it won’t matter that he doesn’t really have a defensive home. As Naylor is just 21, we’re cautiously optimistic that he will. It’s too early to draw conclusions from his stats but his pull% is currently much higher than is usual.

Trying New Things
I noticed two odd things while combing box scores last night. First, Astros prospect Myles Straw (17th on the Astros list) has been playing shortstop. A quick perusal of the interwebs unearthed this article in the Houston Chronicle, which reports that the Astros will give this a try for a few weeks and see if Straw can actually play there. Their upper levels have been so crowded with outfielders that many of those players have been traded, and seeing as Straw’s best tool (his defense) is made redundant by Jake Marisnick, it makes sense to explore his defensive versatility.

Similarly, the Rangers are trying 1B/LF/3B Andretty Cordero at second base. Unlikely to do enough damage to profile at first (where he’s seen the most time), Cordero’s bat was still notable enough to include him in the Others of Note section of the Rangers list. Should he prove passable at second base, he’ll be much more relevant.

Former shortstop Javy Guerra of the Padres has moved to the mound, and I’ve been told he’s sitting in the upper-90s with natural cut. He’s on the San Diego 40-man.

Mike Clevinger was forced to leave his Saturday start against the Blue Jays after five innings of one-hit ball and 10 strikeouts. This was disappointing, but the initial reports were promising, with Clevinger expressing that it was a precautionary measure. Given that he was ultra-dominating over his first two starts, the hope was that it was a minor back strain that wouldn’t prove to be more than a brief setback. Those hopes were dashed this morning with Cleveland manager Terry Francona stating that it would be six-to-eight weeks until Clevinger would even pick up a baseball, and unless he meant that Clevinger had secretly developed a method for telepathically launching crippling sliders and curves, this amounts to Bad News.

It’s especially poor timing for Clevinger considering what a roll he’s been on to start the 2019 season. If his back was bothering him before, his performance gave no indication. Against the White Sox on April Fools Day and the Blue Jays on Saturday, Clevinger combined for 22 strikeouts and two hits allowed over 12 innings and had yet to be scored on. Admittedly, this was against the White Sox and the Blue Jays, two teams with very poor offenses, but he didn’t just dominate two bad teams, he pretty much turned their offenses into armies of Chris Davis clones. (Note for budding mad scientists: this theoretical would not be a good use of your resources). Clevinger even added a couple mph in fastball velocity this year, continuing his pattern of making one of his pitches absolutely frightening each season. Previously mostly used to set up his curveball and slider, his fastball was at +3.8 runs for the year, already his career high!

The good news is that in the early analysis at least, it appears that Cleveland’s simply being careful with Clevinger. Careful would be a kind way to describe a rather disappointing offseason, largely fueled by three of the other four teams in the AL Central being terrible and the remaining team one that saw Cleveland’s free agent apathy and actually reduced the team’s payroll. Running the numbers, the loss of Clevinger barely puts a ding in the team’s playoff odds, but what is of interest is what option the Indians go to. Unlike in some cases, the best fill-in for Clevinger is non-obvious. So let’s arbitrarily rank some candidates from best to worst! Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodgers juggernaut was stopped in its tracks on Monday night in St. Louis. For the first time in this young season, the team failed to homer, and for the second time, they failed to score at least four runs, and for just the third time in 11 games, they lost. Still, there’s much for the two-time defending NL champions to be happy about at this point in the season, particularly compared to last year.

Recall that it took the 2018 Dodgers until the third game of the season to get on the board, as they lost their first two games by 1-0 scores, both courtesy of Joe Panik solo homers. With a lineup lacking Justin Turner and a bullpen coping with a struggling Kenley Jansen, they stumbled to a 4-9 start, took until the 19th game of the season to score their 87th run, and didn’t really right the ship until mid-May, after they’d dug a 16-26 hole and lost Corey Seager for the season due to Tommy John surgery.

It’s been a different story this time around. On Opening Day, the Dodgers pounded out a major league record eight home runs against the Diamondbacks, and so far, they haven’t looked back. Through 11 games, they’re 8-3 with 87 runs scored, the most by a team to this point in the season since the turn of the millennium:

As you might expect, bashing out so many runs so early often portends good things. While “only” eight of the 18 teams above besides this year’s Dodgers and Mariners made the playoffs, five of those 18 teams (including the Boston Americans, who became the Red Sox circa 1908; the Milwaukee Brewers, who became the St. Louis Browns in 1902; and those Baltimore Orioles, who were dissolved and replaced by the New York Highlanders in 1903) were battling it out in the inaugural edition of the American League, which must have been crazy circa April and May, 1901; the Junior Circuit averaged 5.35 runs per game that year overall, compared to 4.63 in the NL. Read the rest of this entry »

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