In April of 2009, FanGraphs CEO David Appelman announced that his growing site would be adding two part-time writers effective immediately or something like immediately. Having produced some vaguely analytical work for my own weblog, I sent a collection of story ideas, a CV, and an overwrought cover letter to the email address provided in his announcement. In a turn of events that speaks both to Appelman’s discretion as a leader and his capacity for identifying talent, he made a decision that would benefit FanGraphs for some time — which is to say, he hired someone else.

As if to prove, however, that even the most towering intellects aren’t immune from errors in judgment, Appelman and his future managing editor Dave Cameron would undo their good work just a few months later. Acting on a recommendation from Jonah Keri, who’s culpability in this process can’t be overstated, Appelman and Cameron invited me, at the beginning of August 2009, to begin contributing twice a week to fangraphs dot com.

To suggest that my first posts at the site were met with a “mixed response” would be to make full use of the rhetorical device known as “euphemism.” While I received no actual threats of bodily harm to my person, that didn’t prevent my person from crawling into the fetal position and weeping like a child. And while the vigor with which some readers expressed their dissatisfaction was probably unnecessary, the basic gist of their comments — namely, that I was single-handedly ruining whatever goodwill FanGraphs had cultivated with the public — seemed, at times, to possess merit.

When I asked Appelman if I should stop, lest I topple his fledgling empire, he suggested I not do that. “Keep going,” in fact, was more or less the tenor of his message. And whether that was the soundest advice or not, it seems in retrospect to have worked out. I have kept going for over nine years, enjoying (like other FanGraphs writers) an editorial freedom and collaborative spirit that is rare for any publication. One of Appelman’s great strengths as this site’s guardian has been to trust his writers. It’s an ethic from which I’ve benefited as a contributor and which I’ve attempted to preserve as an editor.

Starting today, however, I will no longer serve as a writer or editor for this site. After a tenure that has lasted far beyond even my most optimistic projections, I’m leaving FanGraphs to become a member of the Toronto Blue Jays.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Willians Astudillo‘s current strikeout-less streak, a few more people who gave much more than 100 percent, and end-of-season-award voting, including Mike Trout’s showing in the AL MVP race, Jacob deGrom and pitchers as MVPs, and why Jeff voted for Justin Verlander for AL Cy Young over victor Blake Snell. Then (27:50) they talk to FanGraphs writers Eric Longenhagen and Craig Edwards about the site’s recent work on prospects and scouting, including how and why we put dollar values on prospects, the value of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., how scouting and player development are changing and making public prospect ranking harder, farm-system rankings and the big gaps between teams, what types of prospects public lists tend to overrate, whether the Padres system is historic, and more, plus the significance of MLB’s new national broadcast deal.

Audio intro: The Whigs, "Hundred / Million"
Audio interstitial: Guided By Voices, "Vote for Me Dummy"
Audio outro: The Replacements, "Love You Till Friday"

Link to Astudillo stats
Link to “one million percent” story
Link to Jeff’s Verlander post
Link to Craig’s prospect-valuation post
Link to Craig’s farm-system rankings
Link to Craig’s positional-bias post
Link to Eric and Kiley’s scouting primer post
Link to Sam’s romance-novel post
Link to EW Secret Santa sign-up

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Episode 843
Dayn Perry is a contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and the author of three books — one of them not very miserable. He’s also the safe pedestrian on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

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

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 5 min play time.)

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I submitted my American League Cy Young Award ballot at the very beginning of October. The results were just released yesterday, almost smack in the middle of November. A funny thing happens between the beginning of October and the middle of November: A lot of time passes, time that includes the entirety of the MLB playoffs. As I focused on other events, I mostly forgot about my selections. I was reminded yesterday that my own ballot read:

1. Justin Verlander
2. Blake Snell
3. Gerrit Cole
4. Blake Treinen
5. Corey Kluber

I was one of 13 voters to put Verlander in first. The other 17 voters, though, put Snell in first, and as such, Snell won, and Verlander was, once again, the runner-up. Clearly, it was a close race, and I think it should have been a close race. I don’t think that Verlander got robbed, and I don’t think that Snell is an undeserving winner or anything. But one of the perks of being an award voter is that voting grants you automatic editorial content. So on the off chance you care about my own thought process, allow me to quickly explain why Verlander was my first-place pick.

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This post is part of a series concerning the 2019 Today’s Game Era Committee ballot, covering executives, managers and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in Las Vegas on December 9. Use the tool above to read the introduction and other installments. For an introduction to JAWS, see here. Several profiles in this series are adapted from work previously published at SI.com and Baseball Prospectus. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Over the course of his 18-year career, Lee Arthur Smith was consistently considered to be one of the game’s top relievers. Physically intimidating — officially listed at 6-foot-5, 220 pounds but reported as big as 6-foot-6, 269 pounds — and mellifluously middle-named, Smith pitched for eight teams, earned All-Star honors seven times, led his league in saves four times (and finished as runner-up in four other seasons), and placed as high as second in the Cy Young voting. He passed Jeff Reardon on April 13, 1993, to grab the all-time saves record and held it at 478 until September 24, 2006, when Trevor Hoffman finally surpassed him.

When Smith retired in 1998, just two relievers had been elected to the Hall of Fame: Hoyt Wilhelm (1985) and Rollie Fingers (1992). Since then, that number has tripled via the elections of Dennis Eckersley (2004), Bruce Sutter (2006), Rich Gossage (2008), and Hoffman (2018), with Mariano Rivera poised to join them via the 2019 BBWAA ballot. Smith appeared to be on track to join that company, debuting on the 2003 ballot at 42.3% and inching his way to 50.6% by 2012, his 10th year of eligibility. But over his final five years of eligibility, he got lost in a deluge of polarizing, high-profile candidates whose continued presence on the ballot made it tough to find room for Smith. By 2014, his share of the vote was down to 29.9%, and he never got back to 35%.

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Earlier this week, I focused on creating objective measures by which to examine and value individual prospects and farm systems. Inherent in those objective measures is the knowledge that the rankings themselves are not. Prospect writers like our own Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel combine in-person scouting with their knowledge and experience of the game, information from industry sources, and statistical data to arrive at well-informed but still subjective rankings and grades. What follows is one study attempting to determine if there has been any historical bias based on the position of a player.

As with the prior studies, I’m using the Baseball America Top 100 rankings from 1996 to 2010. To get a sense of how players were ranked by position, here are the raw numbers for the number of players listed at any given position, with multi-position players listed at both positions.

It should come as no surprise to find pitchers and outfielders first given that they have more starting positions available to them. Generally, a pitcher isn’t going to make a prospect list if the person believes he will be a reliever because the value is less. That might be changing some now, but for the vast majority of Top-100 pitching prospects, the hope is that they will be starters. If we were to divide the pitchers by the five starting rotation slots and outfielders by the three starting spots, shortstops would then have the highest representation on prospect lists. After shortstops, we have pitchers and third basemen, with outfielders slotting in ahead of first basemen and catchers with second basemen way down the list. Conventional wisdom holds that ranking so many shortstops is acceptable because many will eventually slide down the defensive spectrum, taking up slots at third base or over at second, which makes up for the lack of prospects there. Read the rest of this entry »

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On Wednesday, Cleveland and Pittsburgh swapped a combination of big league role players and prospects in a five-player deal that looked like this:

Cleveland gets

OF Jordan Luplow
INF Max Moroff

Pittsburgh gets

INF Erik Gonzalez
RHP Tahnaj Thomas
RHP Dante Mendoza

Over the last two seasons, Luplow owns a .194/.274/.371 line across 190 sporadic career big league plate appearances, but he’s been a .300/.378/.479 hitter at Triple-A Indianapolis during that time. His inconsistent usage while in the majors is at least partly to blame for his small-sample struggles. Of all the players in this deal, the 26-year-old outfielder is the one most likely to have an immediate big league impact as Cleveland looks to fill gaps left by departing free agents. He’s a pull-only hitter with plus power who has also exhibited slightly above-average strikeout and walk rate throughout his minor league career. He quite comfortably projects as a corner outfield platoon bat in a Cleveland outfield that is very left-handed.

The 25-year-old Moroff’s departure from Pittsburgh clears a 40-man spot for the Pirates and presents Cleveland with upper-level depth. A patient switch-hitter capable of playing several infield positions, Moroff became a KATOH sleeper as he reached base at an above-average clip for several consecutive years in the minors. He suddenly started hitting for power in 2017 at Triple-A but regressed significantly in 2018. He could play a bench role in 2019 based on his approach and versatility.

For Pittsburgh, this deal adds arm talent to a farm system in which it is largely lacking. Aside from Mitch Keller, most of the Pirates’ upper-level pitching prospects have a backend starter/relief profile while several of the lower level arms have dealt with injury and been slow to develop. 19-year-old Bahamian shortstop convert Tahnaj Thomas immediately becomes one of Pittsburgh’s best pitching prospects. Ultra smooth and athletic, Thomas has a gorgeous delivery that generates mid-80s velocity (92-95 in my looks at him this year) that plays well in the upper part of the strike zone. He can also spin a good breaking ball and has some nascent changeup feel that, for someone so new to pitching, is very promising. This is a prototypical teenage arm and, though that demographic of prospect has concerning attrition rates, Thomas has a good chance to be the best player in this deal one day.

The Pirates also acquired a big league piece in shortstop Erik Gonzalez, who has been blocked by two of the best players in baseball for the last several years. Gonzalez’s prodigious physical abilities have long been undermined by his lack of patience (3% walk rate) and complete inability to hit the ball in the air. He saw time at all four infield positions in 2018 and is capable at all of them (plus hands, plus arm, average range), which means Gonzalez could play any number of roles for the Pirates in 2019. He could compete for the starting shortstop role with Kevin Newman or platoon at third base with Colin Moran or at second base with Kevin Kramer.

There’s enough raw thump here that Gonzalez could have a breakout if Pittsburgh can tweak his swing. The change of scenery makes this more likely to occur than it would have been in Cleveland, where they’ve struggled to get Gonzalez and Yandy Diaz to lift the ball. But at age 27, it’s probably not happening.

For Pittsburgh, this deal also clears the runway for 2B/3B/OF Pablo Reyes, whose strong September — .293/.349/.483 — is supported by his underlying batted ball data. Both Reyes (Licey) and Gonzalez (Escogido) are playing in the Dominican Winter League right now.

The final piece of the deal is 19-year-old righty Dante Mendoza, a 12th round high school draftee in 2017 who spent 2018 in the AZL. At 6-foot-5, Mendoza joins a system full of huge-framed pitching prospects. He has been up to 93 but sits 87-90 with the fastball and has an advanced changeup and breaking ball. There’s a strong possibility that Mendoza’s stuff ticks up as his body matures and he turns into a good big league pitcher of some kind.

After a few years without dedicated complex-level coverage, the Pirates had multiple scouts scouring backfields in Florida and Arizona again this year. This deal is the first farm-system fruit from that labor. It also marks the second time in five months that Cleveland has traded away one of their very promising group of teenage prospects who began their pro careers in Arizona this year. In both cases, the outfielders are likely to play a big league role fairly soon (they traded teenage outfielder Jhon Torres for upper-level outfielder Oscar Mercado at the deadline) in anticipation of this offseason’s departures.