Chad Pinder learned how to turn on inside fastballs this season. Doing so didn’t turn the 26-year-old infielder/outfielder into a slugger, but it did make him a more well-rounded hitter. That’s bad news for opposing pitchers. Pinder had already been well on his way to establishing himself as an asset to the Oakland lineup.

A quest for higher launch angles wasn’t the impetus behind the “biggest adjustment” he’s made since the A’s took him in the second round of the 2013 draft out of Virginia Tech. While Pinder possesses pop, his 37% fly-ball percentage this year wasn’t exactly Khris Davis-esque. As much as anything, the former Hokie is now no longer quite so susceptible to being beaten by inside heat — even though his hands remain on the noisy side.

Pinder — coming off a season where he slashed .258/.332/.436 with 13 home runs in 333 plate appearances — discussed that adjustment, and his overall continued development as a hitter, earlier this month.

———

Chad Pinder on hitting: “I’ve never actually gone through that phase of, ‘Hey, I’m going to hit the ball in the air.’ For me, it’s all about contact point. Contact point is everything. That’s what Jed Lowrie harps on. He’s all about where he’s meeting the baseball. Nothing else matters to him other than being in a position to get to the baseball, and he knows what move he has to make for every single pitch in the zone. That’s why Jed is such an incredible hitter.

“I’m still not there. I don’t have that deep of an understanding, like Jed does — or a JD Martinez or a Mookie Betts. Those guys are All-Stars for a reason. I’m still progressing. I’m still learning my swing. Read the rest of this entry »

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 Philadelphia Phillies.

Batters

Even before the end-of-season collapse, Philadelphia’s offense wasn’t its strong suit. The team finished 11th in runs scored, 10th in on-base percentage, and 11th in slugging percentage, and didn’t put up a team OPS of .730 over any individual month of the season. Rhys Hoskins was the only member of the offense who was a real significant plus for the team — if we’re not counting the brief stint of Wilson Ramos — but he turned out to be quite dreadful defensively. It wasn’t for lack of effort, but -11 runs in the outfield by UZR and an almost amusing -24 by BIS was far from the adequate-big-guy-in-outfield the team crossed their fingers for, being more akin to Todd Hundley if forced to wear a pegleg. Fitting the disappointing Carlos Santana’s bat in the lineup wasn’t worth that defensive hit.

Hoskins’s projection looks more normal back at first base, and the Phillies’ big acquisitions so far this offseason — the trade for Jean Segura and the signing of Andrew McCutchen — should give the team the legitimate above-average performances they sorely needed without forcing anyone to play grossly out-of-position. But the team’s still missing, as Jack Donaghy said on 30 Rock, the third kind of heat. Unlikes the Braves, who have graduated Ronald Acuña and Ozzie Albies to the majors in the last couple of years, the Phillies can only get such a boost with the power of splashing cash. Either Bryce Harper or Manny Machado slide into the lineup quite nicely. But the uncertainty of signing them (other teams can make bids, after all; you can’t just go to the Bryce Harper Store and pick up as many as you can pay $350 million) made McCutchen and Segura crucial additions.

Pitchers

Outside of Aaron Nola, a pitcher with whom ZiPS has had a long obsession, ZiPS just isn’t that excited about the team’s rotation. It’s solidly average, yes, but a question mark surrounds most of the non-Nola starting talent. Jake Arrieta in particular takes a big hit in the projections, with ZiPS seeing his nearly 20% decline in strikeouts as a troubling sign. Which, historically, it has been.

On the other hand, the bullpen, despite the lack of eye-popping names a team like the Yankees possesses, projects as a deep, competent group with a lot of extra parts.

Bench and Prospects

In the sense of 2019 reinforcements, among the hitters, ZiPS only sees 2017 first-rounded Adam Haseley as having the potential to contribute to the parent team. Haseley projects as a worse offensive player than Dylan Cozens, but also has more defensive versatility, which might be important for a team not blessed with terribly exciting outfield depth. Speaking of that depth, I can’t blame the computer for not knowing what to make of Aaron Altherr at this point. I’m not sure what to make of him either, what with his Ryan Raburn-esque pattern of alternating overachieving and underachieving seasons. ZiPS has all but written off Mickey Moniak as a prospect.

Sixto Sanchez just missed getting a projection this year due to my dislike of projecting pitchers with no experience in the high minors, but he’s probably still the best bet on the roster for a nice surprise, and I may need to project him by midseason. ZiPS has a cyber-crush on former MLB pitcher’s son Luke Leftwich and while the team’s deep set of relievers means he’ll face an uphill battle for a roster spot, he’s at least a name that other teams should be paying attention to if they need to fill out the back of their bullpens.

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.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here at site.

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 following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. It is based on earlier work done for SI.com. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Roy Oswalt spent a decade as one of the National League’s top pitchers before injuries took their toll. Though listed as just six feet tall and 180 pounds — size that caused him to be overlooked by scouts during his amateur days — he spent nearly a decade as a staple of the Astros’ rotation and a perennial Cy Young contender. Relying primarily on a mid-90s fastball/curve combination with an almost 20 mph differential, he never took home an award, or won a championship, but he played a key part on five postseason-bound teams in Houston and Philadelphia.

Had Oswalt enjoyed better luck in the health department, his career probably would have been the subject of spirited debate on, say, the 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. Alas, lower back woes caused by a pair of degenerative discs curtailed Oswalt’s major league career. His last effective season was in 2011, his age-33 season, and he threw his last pitch one month past his 36th birthday. His total of 2,245.1 innings is fewer than those of all but one Hall of Fame starter — and no, it’s not Sandy Koufax, it’s Dizzy Dean. While he may not truly be a viable candidate, he’s on a separate tier from the one-and-dones whom I’ll cover in brief later in this series.

Born in Kosciusko, Mississippi on August 29, 1977, Oswalt grew up in nearby Weir, a tiny town with a population of just 550. His father Billy Joe, a logger and rec league softball player, saw his son excel in Little League and eventually petitioned the school board to start up a baseball program at his high school, Weir Attendance Center; Billy Joe volunteered to clear pine trees for a ball field using his own equipment. Looking to get every advantage he could out of his small stature, the younger Oswalt came up with an unorthodox delivery. From a 2006 profile for ESPN Magazine by Buster Olney:

Because he was so slightly built, he had to use everything he had to propel the baseball-arm, legs, soul.

Young Roy had seen enough to know that most pitchers start their delivery with one foot parallel to the rubber. This made no sense to him. He was trying to drive himself toward the batter, like a sprinter breaking out of the blocks. Sprinters, he thought, don’t plant their feet parallel to the starting line; their feet are pointed forward.

So that’s how Oswalt designed his pitching mechanics, with his back foot, his right foot, angled slightly forward. He raises his left foot, pauses slightly, then hurls his body at the batter, more like a javelin-tosser than a sprinter in the end. Nobody else in the majors uses mechanics like these, and no pitching coach would teach them unless he was considering a change of profession. But batters have confessed that Oswalt’s motion can be unnerving, this wiry six footer leaping at them like a mugger.

Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Washington Nationals. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from our own (both Eric Longenhagen’s and Kiley McDaniel’s) observations. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a new feature at the site that offers sortable scouting information for every organization. That can be found here.

Other Prospects of Note
Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.
Young Sleepers
Viandel Peña, 2B
Jose A. Ferrer, LHP
Carlos Romero, RHP

Peña, who turned 18 in November, is short at about 5-foot-8 but he has a good frame for that size. He’s a switch-hitting middle infielder with precocious feel for the strike zone and a nice swing. Ferrer (not the guy from Dune, a different Jose Ferrer, but also not this one) can really spin it and posted 2800 breaking ball spin rates in the DSL last year, but he’s quite physically mature. He has an upper-80s fastball and it’s unclear how much more is coming because the frame isn’t obviously projectable. Romero is a 6-foot-6 projection arm with little feel for spin. He sits 87-91 right now.

Bench Types
Cole Freeman, 2B
Jake Noll, 3B
Austin Davidson, 1B/LF
Jose Marmolejos, 1B

Freeman has above-average bat-to-ball skills and speed, and he plays with his hair on fire. He could be a utility infielder. Noll has power but is limited to the corners on defense and will be 25 in March. Davidson has performed for several years but took a tumble down the defensive spectrum last year and now sees time in left field and first base instead of at second and third. Marmolejos had a bad statistical season after several very good ones. It’s hard to roster more than one Noll/Davidson/Marmolejos type at the big league level, and Washington already has Matt Adams.

Post-hype Long Shots
Anderson Franco, 3B/1B
K.J. Harrison, C/1B
Gilbert Lara, 3B

Franco is a 21-year-old power bat with a good frame and raw bat. Harrison and Lara were acquired together for Gio Gonzalez and both were once very interesting prospects. Harrison had a huge freshman year at Oregon State but his aggressiveness at the dish began to be toyed with the following year. He has pop, but the bat and inability to catch are a barrier. Lara was a $2 million signee who looked like he might be a shortstop or third baseman with huge power as an amateur. After a raucous first fall and spring as a pro, he just stopped hitting and it’s never been clear why.

Catching Depth
Raudy Read, C
Tres Barrera, C

Read has enough stick that he might one day be a 40 but he’s coming off a PED suspension. Barrera has the better glove. Both project as third catchers.

Starter Depth
Kyle McGowin, RHP
Jackson Tetreault, RHP
Nick Raquet, LHP

McGowin has a 40 fastball but can really spin a breaking ball, and he throws strikes. He’d be fine making a spot start. That’s what Jackson Tetreault projects to be, but he’s very lanky and thin for a 22-year-old and some think there’s more velo on the way. Raquet is a funky lefty, 90-93, average secondaries.

Older Relief Fliers
Austin Adams, RHP
Ronald Peña, RHP
Joan Baez, RHP

Adams has nasty stuff — mid-90s, elite breaking ball spin — but can’t repeat his delivery and sends many pitches skipping to the backstop. Peña, who has touched 100, is similar and improved a bit last year. He’s 27. Baez sits 94-96 and flashes a plus curveball. Any of this group could be on the main section of the list pretty quickly if they arrive for spring training with better command.

System Overview
This system is very thin but has about as much potential high-end impact as most farm systems do. Both Denaburg and Crowe, who has some of the better spin rates we’ve dug up during this process (you can see those on The Board), could be on our midseason top 100, and Antuna and Romero have more talent than the typical 40 FV. This farm is strangely better equipped to add a star in a one-for-one kind of deal than it is to add talent with a package of 40s and 45 FVs.

Seven of the twenty-two prospects we wrote up for this list have had UCL reconstructions, by far the greatest number and highest rate of any club we’ve covered so far. That’s not accusatory and other than the org’s penchant for drafting players who have fallen past where they’d be drafted on talent due to a TJ, is probably just randomness.

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Royals signing Terrance Gore and turning themselves into a bad-but-entertaining team of stolen-base threats, the Angels signing Matt Harvey and how they stack up, the renaming of Safeco Field, and the new posting system for Cuban players. Then (28:18) they talk to left-hander Rick Teasley about becoming the first pitcher ever to strike out Willians Astudillo twice in one pro game, the significance of getting big leaguers out, his itinerant career, staying safe in Venezuela and the deaths of Luis Valbuena and Jose Castillo, why fan participation in other countries kicks MLB’s butt, how he weighs where (and whether) to keep pitching, his time as a Tampa Bay farmhand, and more, followed by a few outro updates.

Audio intro: Elliott Smith, "Speed Trials"
Audio interstitial: Bob Marley, "Do it Twice"
Audio outro: The Flashing Lights, "Same Thing Twice"

Link to Ringer Royals article
Link to Jeff’s Harvey post
Link to Gore episode
Link to Octavio’s brawl video
Link to closeup video of brawl
Link to summary of latest Russell revelations

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It’s been long known that the Chicago Cubs would likely form their own regional sports network (RSN) after their partnership with the White Sox, Bulls, Blackhawks, and Comcast ends at the conclusion of the 2019 season. The news that the White Sox, Bulls, and Blackhawks would stick with Comcast, as reported by Bruce Levine, left the Cubs needing their own partner for a new network. The specific details vary, with the Sun-Times reporting the Cubs had agreed to a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group while Bruce Levine indicated Sinclair were merely frontrunners, with Jon Greenberg hearing the same. In addition to the Cubs, Sinclair is also in the bidding to buy 15 more FOX RSNs. That should worry Major League Baseball, but perhaps not just for the reasons many think it should.

Sinclair has been in the news most recently for its political leanings. According to FOX Business, Sinclair “control(s) more than 200 stations in over 100 local markets. The local media empire was built on snapping up these stations around the country and adding an extra element of right-wing commentary to its programming.” The company has come under fire for its content practices across those affiliates and been defended by the President for the same. Those content-based criticisms are surely a concern for many, but their business model also presents a separate potential issue for baseball. While baseball is trying to expand its reach and ensure young people have access to the sport, Sinclair is tied to an older model that could threaten massive carriage fee disputes and blackouts for fans in local markets.

The vast majority of the Sinclair-owned stations are the traditional, over-the-air networks like FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, and the CW. Anyone with an an antenna and in range of the broadcast tower can view those networks for free, but cable and satellite providers aren’t allowed to simply broadcast those networks. Instead, cable providers must pay a retransmission fee to broadcast those networks on their cable packages (here’s a primer on retransmission fees). Sinclair has leveraged those fees in the past and been a part of the largest blackout in television history.

The biggest issues with Sinclair’s retransmission fees occurred in the lead-up to its eventual purchase of the Tennis Channel. Back in 2015, Dish Network, which has had its fair share of carriage fees disputes, indicated that it had reached agreement to broadcast 129 Sinclair-owned stations, but was being blacked out due to Sinclair’s attempt to gain leverage in its carriage negotiation with an unnamed cable network it was planning to purchase. Roughly five million Dish customers went without local programming.

In 2016, Sinclair bought the Tennis Channel, which was then available in about 30 million homes, and said it planned to pair negotiation for that channel with its broadcast networks. For the most part, the plan worked. The Tennis Channel now has roughly 55 million subscribers while nearly every other cable channel has been seeing its numbers drop. But those increases did not come without collateral damage. In addition to the previous Dish Network blackout:

• In the beginning of 2017, Frontier Communications and Sinclair could not agree to a deal in a dispute that affected customers in the Pacific Northwest.
• In September, failure by Sinclair and Hulu to reach an agreement led CBS corporate to undercut Sinclair in markets with a Sinclair CBS affiliate.
• PsVue and Sinclair couldn’t reach an agreement earlier this year.

Sinclair’s attempt to buy half the regional sports networks offering baseball comes on the heels of a failed merger with the Tribune Company that might have meant an even greater reach of local broadcast networks, including those in Chicago and New York. That deal failed when the FCC determined that approving the merger would violate the law that caps the percentage of households into which one owner can broadcast. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai found fault with some of the sales Sinclair proposed to bring it under that cap, saying the sale “would allow Sinclair to control those stations in practice, even if not in name, in violation of the law.” Tribune Media Company has since sued Sinclair for the part they played in halting the deal.

A deal for the Fox RSNs would not require FCC approval, as they are cable channels, but would fall under anti-trust regulations. The problem for baseball is less the federal regulations, and more in how Sinclair would negotiate carriage fees. Of the cities with Fox RSNs, Sinclair owns local stations in Minneapolis, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Milwaukee. They also own stations in a whole host of smaller markets in Michigan, Ohio, California, Texas, Georgia, Florida, and New York. It’s not difficult to imagine how Sinclair might attempt to leverage retransmission fees to extract even more money for the RSNs. With few exceptions, RSNs have had little difficulty gaining entrance to cable providers basic digital package. This isn’t a situation analogous to the Tennis Channel, as the RSNs are already in a large percentage of homes. But if Sinclair raises the price higher than providers are willing to pay, disputes become more likely.

We could also see the RSNs used as leverage to gain greater access for the Tennis Channel; Sinclair could make getting an RSN on cable contingent on the provider accepting the Tennis Channel as well. Both situations would find the RSNs that broadcast baseball games caught in the middle of disputes having very little to do with the popularity of the sport or the desire of fans to watch baseball. While carriage disputes are in some respects inevitable, the results, with the Dodgers being the prime example, can be messy and deprive fans of access to the game and limit the number of new fans the sport can draw. With Sinclair potentially owning the rights to the broadcasts of 16 teams in 16 different markets, might they let a dispute drag out in Cincinnati or San Diego if they thought they could get a better deal in large-market Dallas?

As baseball moves forward, it’s imperative that it avoid these types of disputes, particularly as its audience grows older. Sinclair’s current difficulties negotiating with newer streaming platforms like Hulu and PSVue could be a warning sign that the company will likely cling to its older methods of extracting revenue from customers, and disputes could get worse as the number of cable subscribers shrink. That would be bad news for baseball as it tries to reach the consumers who are ditching cable for these streaming services.

Disney is in the process of buying a large number of Fox Entertainment assets. In order to receive regulatory approval for that purchase, it agreed to sell Fox’s RSNs to ensure that Disney, which owns ESPN, wouldn’t control too much of the cable sports market. The first round of bids was just received and were apparently underwhelming, coming in below the more than $20 billion expected price. According to reports, Sinclair is currently in the driver’s seat to purchase the RSNs if all of the networks are sold as one. It’s possible the RSNs aren’t worth the $20 billion, as initial estimates proposed, but a large part of that misestimation could be because MLB has said it retains control of the digital streaming rights, leaving any potential buyer with an uncertain future and more negotiations to contend with. It could be that at some point, MLB joins the fray in bidding for these networks, so as to easily combine streaming and broadcast rights, but it seems likely they would prefer someone else pay for that guarantee. In the end, Fox may attempt to buy back the stations they’ve sold, but if the highest bidder ends up being Sinclair, it could be in the league’s best interest to make their own bid and ensure a bigger say in controlling its own future. There is considerable risk in making such a purchase, but Sinclair’s track record indicates there is also significant risk in letting it control who gets to watch baseball across the country.

I don’t think I need to tell you what Matt Harvey was. Earlier, in his prime, he was a bona fide celebrity, someone whose presence stretched well beyond just his excellent pitching. And, of course, that pitching was excellent. Harvey blossomed as one of baseball’s best starters, and he did so on New York’s massive stage. Given that Harvey is and has been a Scott Boras client, one could envision an enormous free-agent contract down the line. The target would’ve been this very offseason. Boras would’ve extolled Harvey’s many virtues using language only Boras could design.

At this writing, Harvey is 29 years old. Indeed, he found himself represented by Boras on the free-agent market. And he’s agreed to a one-year contract with the Angels, worth at least $11 million, and at most $14 million. In the same market, Nathan Eovaldi was guaranteed $68 million. J.A. Happ was guaranteed $34 million, and Lance Lynn was guaranteed $30 million. Garrett Richards was guaranteed $15.5 million, and he won’t pitch at all next year. Kurt Suzuki was guaranteed $10 million. Jesse Chavez was guaranteed $8 million.

This wasn’t the free agency Harvey or Boras imagined. There are reasons for that. You can squint and still see a similar pitcher. But the years, I’m afraid, have taken their toll.

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The 2018 season brought with it a number of unexpected developments. The Braves won their division! The Athletics were good! Max Muncy hit 35 home runs! But those sorts of developments are why we watch baseball: the unexpected and the fun. There was another development in the 2018 season, though: the return of the opener, a baseball strategy that isn’t novel, but had mostly fallen out of fashion. It started with Tampa Bay and Sergio Romo, then spread through the rest of the league. Even teams like the Dodgers, who always seem to have more competent starting pitchers than available rotation spots, employed the strategy. The Athletics even used an opener for their playoff game against the Yankees, though there it was borne more from necessity.

The baseball logic for the opener is pretty straightforward. We know that pitchers, especially starting pitchers, face a times-through-the-order penalty. In general, the more times a hitter faces the same pitcher in a game, the worse the results will be for the pitcher and the better the results will be for the hitter. This makes intuitive sense. Pitchers get tired; batters adjust. Pitchers make more mistakes when they get tired, and hitters gather more data the more they see of a pitcher’s repertoire. An opener can help mitigate that. Having a reliever, especially one with a handedness advantage, face the top of the order in the first inning means that the pitcher who comes in afterwards won’t face that third-time-through-the-order penalty – at least, in theory. A pitcher who begins his night by facing the middle of a team’s order instead of the top can go five innings and face the top of the order only once – again, in theory.

But there’s a part of the opener we really haven’t explored yet – and it’s one the always-thoughtful Zack Greinke discussed with Steve Miller earlier this year.

“[The opener is] really smart, but it’s also really bad for baseball,” Arizona starter Zack Greinke says. “It’s just a sideshow. There’s always ways to get a little advantage, but the main problem I have with it is you do it that way, then you’ll end up never paying any player what he’s worth because you’re not going to have guys starting, you’re not going to have guys throwing innings.

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