If you take one look at Max Scherzer’s player page, it is not hard to identify where he has improved.

Both Scherzer’s strikeout (33.4%) and walk (5.1%) rates remain excellent, as is the standard. But his FIP (2.13) — which finds itself at the top of the pitching leaderboard — has fallen by more than half a run. If the season ended today, it would represent a career-low. This FIP decrease is due to a drop in Scherzer’s home run rate. In 2018, 2.7% of plate appearances against Scherzer resulted in a home run; in 2019, that figure is 1.7%.

Contributing to Scherzer’s home run reduction appear to be two main factors: better luck and more groundballs. His 8.0% home run per fly ball rate would represent his lowest mark since joining the Nationals. Considering that we’re in an era of home runs galore, some regression there is likely expected, though the seemingly livelier ball complicates that question. But a potentially more sustainable change rests in the large increase in Scherzer’s groundball rate, which he’s seen jump from 34.3% in 2018 to 42.8% in 2019. Read the rest of this entry »

Eight months ago, Craig Kimbrel declared for free agency. A lot has happened since then. There were rumors in November that Kimbrel wanted a six year deal. We don’t know what happened to Kimbrel’s demands or when. We don’t know what offers were made and then rejected, or not made because of those perceived demands. We don’t know if draft pick compensation was a legitimate concern or simply an excuse for teams to hide behind. What we do know is that Craig Kimbrel is no longer a free agent. Ken Rosenthal first reported that Kimbrel had agreed to a deal with the Chicago Cubs for three years and roughly $45 million, with Jeff Passan reporting Kimbrel will make $10 million this season and $16 million in each of the following two years with a $1 million buyout on a team option for 2022.

Every team could use Craig Kimbrel. The Red Sox — whose current saves leader, Ryan Brasier, has a 5.30 FIP and ERA over four as the team has struggled to stay above .500 — wasn’t interested in bringing Kimbrel back and paying the 75% tax on his salary. The Atlanta Braves — who are in a fight for first place with a below replacement level bullpen performance that is worse than every teams outside of Miami and Baltimore and payroll flexibility coming off a division title and new taxpayer-funded stadium — opted not to get involved. The Nationals — with an MLB-worst 6.66 bullpen ERA as they try to get back into playoff contention — chose to try and stay below the competitive balance tax. The Brewers — who watched Corey Knebel go down with a season-ending injury and watched their 2018 strength turn into a liability outside of Josh Hader — sat and watched Kimbrel go to their rival. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the paucity of pitchers selected at the top of the draft, the Hall of Famers Mike Trout passed in career WAR in May, Trout’s quietly impressive season, whether WAR has helped Trout’s reputation more than Trout has helped WAR’s, the surprising names at the top of the 2019 WAR leaderboard for pitchers, and Andrew McCutchen’s season-ending ACL injury, then answer listener emails about baseball-inspired national holidays, what would happen if Max Scherzer insisted on batting cleanup, and the most inconsequential topics discussed on baseball broadcasts, plus an update on the pulling-pitchers-mid-plate-appearance approach and a Stat Blast on the lack of good hitters over 30 and whether old players are getting worse or young players are just getting better.

Audio intro: John Lennon, "Cleanup Time"
Audio outro: The Cardigans, "War"

Link to the amateur draft’s first-round results
Link to Ben on the decline of top-rated pro pitching prospects
Link to Sam on the Hall of Famers Trout passed in May
Link to Meg on Hamels
Link to Ben and Rob on old hitters and fastballs
Link to Rob on old hitters’ slow pace
Link to order The MVP Machine

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UMP: The Untitled McDongenhagen Project, Episode 17

This is the 17th episode of a sorta 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.

This episode is focused on Monday’s MLB Draft and our coverage of it, which is featured in the widget above and on THE BOARD. We spent a few minutes on each team, the timestamps for which below so you can get to the part you’d like to hear:

2:20 – Arizona Diamondbacks
5:23 – Atlanta Braves
8:01 – Baltimore Orioles
10:38 – Boston Red Sox
13:00 – Chicago Cubs
15:17 – Chicago White Sox
17:39 – Cincinnati Reds
20:41 – Cleveland Indians
23:18 – Colorado Rockies
25:59 – Detroit Tigers
28:33 – Houston Astros
30:25 – Kansas City Royals
32:28 – Los Angeles Angels
35:09 – Los Angeles Dodgers
37:38 – Miami Marlins
40:36 – Milwaukee Brewers
43:04 – Minnesota Twins
45:45 – New York Mets
48:10 – New York Yankees
51:02 – Oakland A’s
53:20 – Philadelphia Phillies
56:15 – Pittsburgh Pirates
59:05 – San Diego Padres
1:01:40 – San Francisco Giants
1:04:20 – Seattle Mariners
1:06:40 – St. Louis Cardinals
1:08:40 – Tampa Bay Rays
1:12:30 – Texas Rangers
1:15:15 – Toronto Blue Jays
1:17:40 – Washington Nationals

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @kileymcd or @longenhagen on Twitter or at prospects@fangraphs.com.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 85 min play time.)

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Speed bump aside, Jordan Groshans has been hitting on all cylinders in Low-A Lansing. Currently on the shelf with a stress injury to the navicular bone of his left foot — his return is still TBD — the 12th-overall pick in last year’s draft was slashing .337/427/.482 when he went down in mid-May. Few question his ceiling. The 19-year-old shortstop is ranked fifth in a strong Blue Jays farm system.

Groshans brings more than tools to the table. According to Gil Kim, Toronto’s Director of Player Development, character and drive were major selling points for the Magnolia, Texas product when last summer’s draft rolled around.

“Area scout Brian Johnston, cross-checker C.J. Ebarb, and our amateur department as a whole did a nice job of identifying his talent,” said Kim. “They were also convicted that the strong makeup would allow him to continuously improve and to impact his teammates. That’s the part that we’re most excited about. He’s always asking questions, he’s open to feedback, and he’s always engaging in conversations with our staff about how to get better. Jordan has been fun to work with because he burns to be great.”

The youngster feels that his biggest strides have come in the plate-discipline department; the numbers back that up. His 13.5% walk rate with the Lugnuts is nearly double last year’s 7.3% in rookie-ball. Easing his foot off the gas pedal has been a key. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s play a little game. Here is a Statcast leaderboard of the Barrels per plate appearances leaders (minimum 50 batted ball events). Without looking it up, try to figure out who’s behind Gary Sanchez:

I’ll give you a hint: he’s a catcher. Another hint: he’s on the Minnesota Twins. And no, it’s not Willians Astudillo, as much as we wish it were him. The answer is Jason Castro. Granted, Castro only has 92 plate appearances to his name this season. He also has accumulated 2,839 plate appearances over his career and, as far as Statcast has detected since 2015, he’s never hit the ball this hard. His career-high in average exit velocity was 88.6 mph back in 2015. He’s coming off a 2018 season during which he hit for an average exit velocity of 86.8 mph, his lowest in the Statcast era. In 2019? 92.6 mph. Here’s the difference between 2019 Jason Castro and his 2015-2018 self:

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On Tuesday, the Phillies snapped a five-game losing streak and maintained their razor-thin margin atop the NL East, but not before suffering a different kind of loss when they learned that Andrew McCutchen will miss the remainder of the season. The 32-year-old outfielder tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee while trying to avoid being tagged during a rundown in the first inning of Monday’s game against the Padres. It’s a costly loss for the Phillies. Not only has McCutchen — the leadoff hitter in 59 of the team’s first 60 games — been one of the team’s most productive players, but Philadelphia’s outfield depth has been depleted by a variety of other means.

The play on which McCutchen got hurt was a strange one. After he led off the game by drawing a walk, Jean Segura popped up but lost his balance and fell to one knee in so doing. Rather than catching the ball, Padres second baseman Ian Kinsler alertly let it drop, then barehanded the ball on the first hop and threw to first baseman Eric Hosmer for the first out. That left McCutchen in no man’s land; he broke for second, then reversed towards first, threw on the brakes, then tried an ill-advised spin move to elude Hosmer. By the time he was tagged, Cutch was clutching his knee:

Rotten luck. “I didn’t feel it pop or anything,” McCutchen told reporters after the game. “Something felt uncomfortable, something that made me grab my knee and go down. I’ve had an ACL injury before and I know what that feels like. This didn’t feel like that.” Alas, the outfielder’s optimism proved to be ill-founded, as an MRI taken on Tuesday showed the tear.

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Think back to the first weeks of the season. Those few weeks of time are disproportionately important, because they shape our understanding of the baseball season in a way that two random weeks normally wouldn’t. It’s taken quite a while, for example, for everyone to realize that Christian Yelich is excellent but probably not the second coming of Babe Ruth, or that Paul DeJong is a good shortstop who isn’t one of the best five players in baseball. Marco Gonzales was a no-strikeout pitching phenom, compiling a 3.1 FIP (2.8 ERA) and 1.3 WAR. He’s been below replacement level since, but you wouldn’t know that if you didn’t take the time to look. Yes, the first few weeks of the season exert a powerful hold on our minds.

What if they didn’t, though? What if, for some crazy reason, the first month-plus of baseball didn’t happen, and the season started on May 1? The narratives and the takes would be extremely different. We don’t see them now, because a month of March and April stats camouflage the full-season lines, but here’s a glimpse of what could have been. Read the rest of this entry »

J.D. Martinez is one of the best hitters on the planet. Last year he posted a 170 wRC+ and 43 home runs, which is probably good. This year, he “only” has a 128 wRC+ and an obscenely-low-for-a-power-hitter 17.1% strikeout rate. When a .291/.373/.513 triple-slash means you’re having a “down” year, you’re either ridiculously good or your name is Mike Trout.

Martinez is not without problems, however. As Scott Holland explains for the Cook County Record:

A baseball agent has sued Merrill Lynch for allegedly conspiring to steer a superstar client to a rival agent Scott Boras just before the player landed a huge contract. . . . In a complaint filed May 10 in Cook County Circuit Court, agent Bob Garber, president of RMG Sports Group, sued Merrill Lynch; Pierce Fenner & Smith; and Bruce Lee, a financial adviser in Merrill Lynch’s Chicago office, alleging tortious interference with contractual relations.

Let’s break this down. Bob Garber is Martinez’s former agent. Days before he hit free agency, Martinez fired Garber and hired Scott Boras. Martinez and Boras then went on an offseason-long courtship with baseball before the slugger finally signed a five-year, $110-million contract with three opt-outs.

Now, whether Martinez would’ve been better off with Garber instead of Boras is anyone’s guess. It’s worth noting that Garber isn’t an inexperienced agent; his most notable negotiations include those for erstwhile Astros ace Roy Oswalt a 5-year, $73 million extension in 2006 and a five-year, $77 million deal between free agent southpaw C.J. Wilson and the Angels in 2011. More recently, Garber obtained a three-year, $38 million commitment for Tyler Chatwood from the Cubs. So Garber isn’t a neophyte, is the point, and that gives his lawsuit significantly more credence.

What is his lawsuit about? According to the complaint, which you can read here, Martinez was using a financial adviser at Merrill Lynch named Bruce Lee to manage his money. Garber alleges that he and Lee were friends, and that he referred his clients to Lee because he had personally invested with Lee himself. But, according to Garber, Lee told Martinez to drop Garber and hire Scott Boras, because Lee wanted to obtain a financial benefit from having Boras’ book of superstar clients invest with him. Garber is seeking the 5% commission that he would have received had he negotiated Martinez’s Red Sox contract himself. Read the rest of this entry »