Let’s continue the 2019 search for free talent with the pitching staff for the Ken Phelps All-Stars. The position players, split into two parts, can be found here and here.

Starting Pitcher 1: Justin Haley

A couple of years ago, David Laurila, in one of his fantastic Sunday notes columns, talked to Haley about his unique delivery.

Haley sets up on the third base side of the rubber, with his other foot straddling the rubber. With the ball in his glove raised in front of his face, he looks in for the sign with his pitching hand cocked at his waist, fingers dancing back and forth like Wyatt Earp ready to draw.

Haley is 27, right-handed, and despite being listed at 6-foot-5 and 220 pounds, is a relative soft-tosser with a fastball that struggles to top 90 mph consistently. Soft tossing, fastball-heavy righties aren’t exactly a hot commodity, and that explains why he’s yet to establish himself in the majors. If you remember him, it’s probably because he was a Rule 5 draft pick back in 2017; he spent all of 18 big league innings with the Twins before being shipped back to Boston. But there’s probably more here than you might think.

First of all, Haley has a very good curveball.

And Haley’s repertoire – slow fastball, curveball, and pinpoint command – is reminiscent of another big, soft-tossing righty who didn’t establish himself until his late 20s.

In fact, Haley actually led the International League in xFIP in 2018 (just ahead of Michael Kopech), finishing fourth in FIP, K-BB%, and K/BB, and with the eighth-best BB% in the league. Haley, in other words, had good command and missed bats (14th in the league in SwStr%) without really walking anybody, and that’s a really good combination.

Unfortunately for Haley, pitchers who can’t break a pane of glass with their fastballs aren’t often really prospects, despite his gaudy Triple-A numbers. As a result, Haley ended up signing with the KBO’s Samsung Lions this offseason. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if he ended up coming back.

Starting pitcher 2: Drew Gagnon

After years of struggling to control his low-nineties fastball and power breaking balls, Gagnon quietly broke out last year in – of all places – Triple-A Las Vegas, where pitching prospects go to die. He’d always had the ability – see, for example, his Adam Wainwright-like curveball.

But Gagnon walked more than 8.5% of the hitters he faced at every minor league assignment he had between 2014 and 2017 (including three stops with double-digit walk rates), torpedoing his value. Picked up by the Mets before the 2018 season, the 28-year-old former third rounder walked far fewer batters in Las Vegas, giving out free passes to just 6.7% of the batters he faced, while still striking out more than a quarter of opponents. All of a sudden, Gagnon had a 19.2% K-BB% and a 3.88 K/BB, with the latter being the best figure of Gagnon’s career. As a result, Gagnon shot up the Triple-A leaderboards, finishing fourth among all Triple-A pitchers (IL and PCL) in K%, 14th in BB%, and second in K-BB%. The showing was enough to land a brief cameo in Flushing, during which he didn’t distinguish himself.

Still, Gagnon’s progress is such that it’s worth seeing if he has actually turned a corner. In real life, he’s probably best suited for a middle-relief slot, and if his gains are for real, he could probably help a bullpen-needy team like the Angels. For us, we’ll see if he can consolidate his gains in the rotation, where he made 27 starts last year at Triple-A. For what it’s worth, Steamer loves Gagnon, projecting a mid-3’s ERA and FIP and better than a strikeout per inning.

Starting Pitcher 3: Onelki Garcia

Garcia might be the single most fascinating player on this list. Not only is he left-handed and breathing, he was once a prized prospect in the Dodgers’ system, with a deep arsenal and bright future. This is what Mike Newman said about Garcia back in 2012:

Listed at six-foot-three, the big-bodied Garcia boasts a power arsenal. The Cuban pitcher’s deception comes from staying tall in his delivery with a high release point. . . . Garcia features a 91-93 mph fastball, only with more consistent sinking action. In this appearance, he was wild in the zone which kept Jackson hitters off-balance. . . . Garcia’s primary off-speed pitch was an 83-85 mph “slurve” with 1 to 7 break. The pitch is a swing-and-miss offering at present — Flashing plus when down in the zone. His changeup also flashes potential and supports a starter profile should Garcia’s durability return after a long layoff.

It didn’t work out, of course; Garcia battled injuries – a bone spur in his elbow, meniscus tears in both knees – which limited him to just 162 innings across four seasons between 2013 and 2016, but he still flashed the plus stuff that had made him such a blue-chip prospect. But by the time he returned to the mound for good in 2017 in the Royals’ system, his effectiveness had cratered due to increasing command issues and a diminished arsenal; a 5.04 ERA for the Royals’ Triple-A affiliate in 2017 and disastrous six innings for the varsity club sealed Garcia’s fate, and he spent 2018 in Japan.

But once again healthy, Garcia found himself in NPB, tossing 168.2 innings for the Chuinichi Dragons – more than he’d thrown between 2013 and 2016 combined – en route to a 2.99 ERA while limiting both homers and hard contact. His command remained an enigma, as he walked an unacceptably high 73 hitters against 132 strikeouts. But the tantalizing stuff returned, with Garcia making multiple no-hit bids over the course of the season.

The Hanshin Tigers signed Garcia this offseason, but it was just a one-year deal, as the lefty still wants a shot at the big leagues. If Garcia could get his walks under control, it will be fascinating to see if a major league team takes a chance on him next offseason.

Starting Pitcher 3: Jake Paulson

If there were an exact baseball opposite to Onelki Garcia, Paulson is probably it. Unlike the power lefty, Paulson makes his hay with a heavy sinking fastball that he uses to induce ground balls. The sinkerballer induced grounders at a rate of at least 52% every year in the minors, including two stops above 60%, and has yet to allow even thirty percent of balls in play against him to be hit in the air to the outfield. More intriguingly, Paulson may have a skill inducing pop-ups, with a double-digit IFFB% every year since 2016.

Paulson achieves soft contact with his sinker, a fastball with ridiculous movement. Movement like this:

We’ve seen sinkerballers be effective mid-rotation starters before – Justin Masterson, Jake Westbrook, and Chien-Ming Wang come to mind. And like Wang, some sinkerballers can be late bloomers. So why is Paulson in the minors? For one thing, being a sinkerballer means relying on your defense – and in the minors, that can be a risky proposition. In 2016, he posted a 6.40 ERA despite a 3.38 FIP and 3.59 xFIP, and, owing to all the ground balls not fielded by his defenders, his LOB% didn’t even eclipse 70% until this year. In other words, Paulson got ground balls and his infield just didn’t field them, making the righty look worse than he actually was.

On the other hand, though Paulson was dominant for the Indians’ Double-A affiliate this year, he was supposed to dominate there; after all, he is already 26. And his sinker produced fewer ground balls this year; while still above 50%, he was routinely running ground ball rates above 60% in Hi-A.

Still, what evidence we have suggests that Paulson is closer to the pitcher he was at Double-A in terms of true talent and results. Paulson has consistently shown he can get ground balls without walking people, and that makes him interesting. He’ll probably struggle against lefties like many sinkerballers do, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t big league material. Also interesting is that his two-seam/curveball combination and 6-foot-7 build are reminiscent of early-career Charlie Morton.

Starting Pitcher 4: Enderson Franco

Franco, 26, has gone from interesting prospect to enigma to forgotten. Way back in 2014, right after Franco had been picked up by Tampa Bay from Houston in the minor league Rule 5 draft, Kiley McDaniel wrote that the youngster “has impressed, likely fitting in pen due to below average curveball, but with a fastball that sits 92-95, hitting 96 mph and a solid average changeup.” Since then, Franco has pitched in the minors for the Rays, Marlins, and Braves, flashing the same stuff that made him touted in 2014 but without the results to match.

Until, that is, 2018, when Franco impressed in his first taste of Double-A. Across 127.2 innings, Franco struck out better than a batter per inning (23.7% of hitters overall), on the back of that fastball.

More notably, Franco kept his walk rate to a manageable if not amazing 7.7%, good for a K/BB rate better than three to one and a K-BB% of 16.1%. And Franco kept one trait which he’s showed at every level: despite being a fly ball pitcher – his ground ball rate hasn’t been even 45% since A-ball – he kept the ball in the park, giving up less than a homer per nine for the eighth straight year, and generated pop-ups at a rate of 18%, a feat he’s accomplished or bettered every year since 2012.

Missing bats and generating pop-ups is an intriguing skill set for a starter, and he’s shown that he can withstand a starter’s workload. Franco is also relatively young; though he’s been laboring in obscurity for the past few years, he just turned 26. It makes sense to use those mid-90s bullets in the big leagues and see what Franco can do.

Starting Pitcher 5: William Cuevas

Cuevas, 28, has pitched for the Red Sox, Marlins, and Tigers organizations, but has seen just 22.1 innings at the big league level. In the minors, he’s functioned as organizational depth and a veteran innings eater, bouncing between the rotation and the bullpen depending on what “real” prospects that team had. But being in the rotation seems to agree with Cuevas; he’s flashed the ability to miss a few bats and limit walks and hard contact.

Cuevas does not throw hard – his fastball barely breaks 90 mph – but he features a cutter, sinker, changeup, and slider, and he’s shown an uncanny ability to paint the corners for strikes.

So what are Cuevas’ strengths? He generates weak contact, especially pop-ups; his IFFB% was a whopping 34.8% this year at Triple-A, and has never been below 17% at any level where he threw more than five innings. He has that fastball that he can run and sink. He’s not an ace, and probably never will be more than a depth starter. But he deserves a spot on a big league roster after the Red Sox released him this offseason, even if it’s as a middle reliever.

Relief Pitcher 1: Victor Payano

Victor Payano is a lefty with electric stuff. He can do this:

And then he can come back and do this:

Oh, by the way, that was his 13th strikeout of the night. In 2017, in the Marlins’ system, Payano struck out 38.2% of hitters he faced at Double-A (14.92 K/9), and 26.7% of hitters he faced at Triple-A (10.08 K/9). In 2018 in the Reds’ system, Payano struck out 32.1% of all hitters he faced at Double-A (12.66 K/9). Since 2016, at four minor league stops, his batting average against has looked like this: .175, .156, .197, .198. In other words, Payano is a strikeout machine who doesn’t give up hits.

So why is the big 6-foot-5 lefty still in the minors at 26? Because most nights, he really has no clue where the ball is going, and never has. In 2016, he walked 14% of hitters. In 2017 at Double-A, he walked 18.2% of hitters. In 2017 at Triple-A, he walked 14.5% of hitters. And in 2018 at Double-A, he walked 16.4% of hitters. Payano doesn’t give up hits and his swinging strike rate is fantastic, but he walks the world while he’s doing it.

The Marlins and Reds have spent the last couple of years bouncing him between the rotation and bullpen, but we’re going to put him in the bullpen full-time. We can do worse as a lefty specialist, and he may very well grow into more. Payano might be a left-handed Dellin Betances – he’ll always fight his mechanics and he’ll never have good command, but when you’re striking out 35% of the batters you’re facing, that becomes less important. At least you can guarantee he’ll never be a comfortable at-bat.

Reliever 2: D.J. Johnson

Johnson has a classic reliever’s profile: a high-octane, mid-90s fastball and a power breaking ball. He misses bats, striking out 35.7% of all hitters he faced this year for Triple-A Albuquerque and a third of all hitters he faced during a brief 6-inning cup of coffee with the Rockies. But like many relievers with this profile, he’s on this list because of longstanding struggles with control, walking more than 10% of all hitters he faced at Double-A between 2015 and 2016.

Quietly, though, Johnson flipped the script as Albuquerque’s closer last year. He walked just 6.4% of hitters he faced across 55.1 innings for the Isotopes, and appeared, at least, to keep those gains in his tiny big league cameo. He was also effective despite an altitude and PCL-driven .390 BABIP in 2018; the newfound lack of walks meant all those extra hits didn’t hurt him as much.

Johnson is another pitcher who generates lots of popups off of his fastball, and weak flyballs and swinging strikes are a good combination for a reliever. If Johnson’s command gains are real, he could have closer potential. If not, he’s still too good of a pitcher to be striking out minor leaguers by the bushel. He’s a perfect fit for the new era of power-driven bullpens.

Reliever 3: Brendan McCurry

If McCurry’s name is familiar, that’s because the Athletics traded him to the Astros for Jed Lowrie a few years back. At the time, Chris Mitchell took a look at McCurry and said this:

An undersized reliever, McCurry fell all the way to the 22nd round in 2014’s amateur draft, but his minor league performance has since lifted him to fringe prospect status. McCurry worked in relief at High-A and Double-A last season, where he pitched exceptionally well. He struck out 32% of his batters faced last season, and finished up with a 2.44 ERA.

McCurry’s numbers are excellent, but plenty of minor league relievers put up excellent numbers, especially in the lower levels. Throw in that he’s nearly 24, and he’s about as fringy as they come.

The thing is that nobody told McCurry that he was so fringy. Despite a relatively small stature – just 5-foot-10 and 170 pounds – the 26-year-old righty has spent the last three years obliterating minor league hitters. He’s yet to strike out fewer than 23% of all hitters he’s faced at any level, and he’s been above 26% the last two years. Each of the last two years, he’s posted a K-BB% of 20% or better and a K/BB of better than 4. Even in this extremely bad video, you can see the kind of off-balance swings he generates.

The Astros’ bullpen has no room for McCurry right now, but if Brad Peacock or Colin McHugh end up in the rotation, suddenly there might be room for a power reliever, regardless of size. McCurry is big-league ready and probably better than several members of the Angels’ and Orioles’ bullpens right now. It simply remains to be seen if he’ll get an opportunity, but we’ll make sure he gets one with us.

Relief Pitcher 4: Joe Broussard

Broussard, at least, looks the part of a late-inning reliever in the Dodgers’ organization; squint, and you might think you’re seeing Jonathan Broxton. But Broussard yet to see the mound for the big club, even after dominating the upper minors and leading some Dodgers fans to clamor for a call-up for the big righty. Broussard hasn’t struck out less than a batter per inning since A-ball; in 2018, he whiffed 26% of hitters he faced for the second year in a row and posted a K-BB% of 18% for the second year in a row, all in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League. In Double-A, he was even better, striking out nearly a third of all hitters with a K/BB better than 4 with a nasty fastball-curveball combination.

Broussard is buried by the Dodgers’ deep bullpen, but the big righty is ready for the Show.

Next time, we’ll project how this team might actually do if assembled.

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Oliver Drake‘s new (and also old) team, the Mets, Brodie Van Wagenen, and Keon Broxton, the Yankees signing Zach Britton, how data and technology have helped some free agents and hurt others, the state of free-agent spending and baseball’s economic past, present, and future, Scott Boras’s latest linguistic crime, the White Sox acquiring the friends and family of Manny Machado, Jonny Gomes getting hired as an unlikely coach, and Willians Astudillo’s winter league playoff performance, then answer listener emails about choosing which way to run the bases, televising winter leagues, scoring on defense, and the worst things for players to be the best at, plus a Stat Blast about the least and most consistent team winning percentages.

Audio intro: Nat King Cole, "Thou Swell"
Audio outro: Neil Young, "Sample and Hold"

Link to Drake interview
Link to Jeff’s post on Britton
Link to dolphin story
Link to Sam on Harrison’s pickle powers
Link to Ben’s article on the FA market

 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 Twitter Account
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Let me explain how I landed on Jose Alvarado. Alvarado is a reliever for the Rays. I actually wrote about him last June, but not because of his pitching.

Right. So why Alvarado, on today of all days? It’s not like he’s been showing up in trade rumors. Here’s the explanation: I’m a guy who loves looking at bullpens. I was also looking at the Twins last night, considering them as a possible sleeper. One guy they should be getting back is Michael Pineda. Another guy they already got back is Trevor May. May is going to pitch out of the Minnesota bullpen, and when he returned in 2018, he put up some encouraging numbers. I went into the leaderboards, to see how his numbers stacked up. That’s where I came across Alvarado. That’s what prompted all of this work.

Almost completely off the radar, Alvarado broke out late in the season. There’s no need to be complicated here. This is a very simple table:

That’s a list of some talented pitchers. Down the stretch, Alvarado struck out almost literally half of his opponents. He struck out the same rate of opponents as Edwin Diaz. I’ve written before about Ryan Pressly’s breakout. I’ve written before about Jose Leclerc’s breakout. What happened with Alvarado? Did anything happen with Alvarado? The answer is yes. He changed on the fly, and became something dominant.

Read the rest of this entry »

This year’s free agent class was supposed to be historic, but with Clayton Kershaw pitching only really well, Josh Donaldson and Andrew Miller hurt, David Price and Jason Heyward not performing well enough to opt out of their deals, and Matt Harvey taking a nosedive, this class only turned out to be pretty good. Manny Machado and Bryce Harper are two superstars hitting free agency in their mid-20s. Having one of the two would make for a great headliner; signing both would provide multiple teams with the opportunity to transform their franchise. After those two, we’ve seen starting pitchers do pretty well so far, and a bunch of relievers sign solid deals, but the talk of a slow offseason has returned.

Some of last winter’s slowness was mitigated by star players receiving contracts close to expectations. Yu Darvish, Eric Hosmer, J.D. Martinez, and Lorenzo Cain all signed deals that seemed fair as spring approached. Jake Arrieta didn’t come that far off when we consider his opt-out. Machado and Harper are still likely to sign very big contracts, while some in the middle might end up getting squeezed. But with this free agent class the supposed justification for teams saving their money on the heels of MLB payrolls going down despite soaring revenues, another slow winter is cause for concern for the players.

In examining the slow market, Ken Rosenthal recently called the system broken and floated some differing perspectives on the causes, effects, and solutions. One paragraph, in particular, caught my eye. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Here, in Part 2 of our series, we will crown the infielders for the 2019 Ken Phelps All-Star Team, a team of guys who, for whatever reason, have mastered the highest levels of the minors but are organizational depth at best, or forgotten entirely at worst, and yet have skills that might (might!) make them useful on a big-league team. Part 1, featuring the members of our outfield, can be found here. The pitchers will follow later.

Third Base: Damek Tomscha

For the second year in a row, our third baseman will be someone from the Philadelphia Phillies’ minor league system. Tomscha was a fiftieth-round pick (seriously!), declined to sign, and was drafted twice more before finally turning pro after being taken in the 17th round. In Dan Szymborski’s latest ZiPS projections for the Phils, Tomscha’s top comp was the immortal Brennan King.

Tomscha is already 27, but he’s done nothing but hit pretty much everywhere he’s gone. His wRC+ numbers between 2014 and 2018 at every level where he’s spent more than 100 plate appearances go like this: 126, 127, 131, 152, 123, 125. (His foray into Triple-A was less encouraging, good for a 60 wRC+ in 93 plate appearances.)

Now, to be fair, Tomscha has only ever shown power like that at Double-A Reading, a level somewhat legendary for inflating power numbers and turning players like Dylan Cozens and Darin Ruf into reincarnations of Babe Ruth. That said, Tomscha has been a good hitter even when he’s not hitting for power, even in the low minors, and has long shown off defensive skills as well.

And he’s a pretty good contact hitter too, with the 17.2% strikeout rate he posted in a small sample at Triple-A this year being the worst of his career.

So what is the package? A big, strong right-handed contact hitter, who doesn’t strike out much and might have some power potential. That’ll work for us at third base.

Shortstop: Arismendy Alcantara

Back in the day, Alcantara was a hot commodity as a prospect who flashed power and speed in the Cubs’ minor league system. It didn’t work out, though – in 459 major league plate appearances, the switch-hitter hit 11 homers and stole 14 bases, but struck out at a rate that would make Mark Reynolds blush, on his way to a .189/.235/.315 triple slash and 49 wRC+. A 1.9% walk rate and 35.2% strikeout rate with the Reds in 2017 – good for a 5 wRC+ (!!) – sealed his fate, and he hasn’t played in affiliated baseball since.

But something happened in 2018 when Alcantara spent three stints in the Mexican League: he started drawing walks. A lot of walks, especially by Alcantara’s standards. Despite being four years younger than the average player at his level – after all, Alcantara is still just 26 – he walked at a 9.5% rate or better at three different Mexican League stops. To put that in perspective, Alcantara’s 38 walks in 397 plate appearances was more than he’d had at any level since he was a 21-year-old at Double-A in 2013. The result was a .285/.353/.527 line with 18 homers and 15 steals, showing the tantalizing power-speed combination is still in there. But what’s also in there is this defense at shortstop.

Now, it’s entirely possible that Alcantara’s newfound plate discipline is a mirage, or that it won’t translate back to affiliated baseball. That said, the package is intriguing enough, and Alcantara is still young enough, that he may just be a late bloomer. Major league baseball might have given up on him, but we won’t.

Second Base: Jack Mayfield

Unlike Alcantara, here’s a name you might never have heard before. Mayfield, 28, is no one’s idea of a real prospect – he wasn’t even drafted. But during his time in the Astros’ farm system, he seems to have developed one tool that’s hard to fake: power.

The breakout came in 2016 at Double-A, when Mayfield obliterated opposing pitchers to the tune of a 132 wRC+ and a .288 ISO. Despite faltering in his first taste of Triple-A later that year, Mayfield rebounded and in 2018 proved he was in Fresno to stay, with a .270/.324/.457 triple slash, .341 wOBA, and .187 ISO, his second consecutive year at the level with an ISO above .185 and a wOBA above .340. And even more intriguingly, Mayfield can play defense. Here he is flashing the leather at third base:

And here he is at second base – adding a pretty awesome flip to shortstop:

Now, Mayfield isn’t without his warts – no one on this list is, after all. His plate discipline is lackluster, to put it mildly; he’s never posted a double-digit walk rate, and even in his second-best season, 2016, he struggled to reach a .300 OBP. Still, there have been signs of growth there as well. His BABIP in 2016 was unsustainably low (.226 at both Double- and Triple-A); he’s run BABIPs consistently above .300 both before and since. Mayfield may never walk more than 6% of the time in the big leagues, and he’ll probably strike out a ton. Still, the power and defense are real, and his profile is similar to another 5-foot-11, 190 pound infielder: Brandon Inge. Mayfield doesn’t have Inge’s upside, of course (when Inge was Mayfield’s age, he already had four big league seasons under his belt). But a poor man’s Brandon Inge still has some value, and given a full season’s worth of plate appearances, Mayfield might surprise.

First Base: Joey Meneses

Quick: who led the International League in home runs in 2018? If you guessed top Tigers prospect Christin Stewart, you’d only be half right, as Stewart shared the honor with Philadelphia Phillies minor leaguer Joey Meneses, 26. Another player who was never drafted, Meneses slashed an impressive .311/.360/.510 in 2018, good for a 143 wRC+ and .381 wOBA. Now, it would be easy to conclude that Meneses is a product of where Phillies’ minor leagues affiliates play – after all, Darin Ruf and Dylan Cozens both posted inflated numbers as a result of the hitter-friendly parks in the Phils’ system. But Meneses might be different. For one thing, while 2018 was his first year in the Phillies’ organization, he’s hit everywhere he’s gone. In 2016, while playing for the Carolina Mudcats, the Braves’ Hi-A affiliate, he hit .342/.401/.490 – offense which amounted to a 146 wRC+ and .401 wOBA. He struggled in his first taste of Double-A, but returned to his mashing ways in his second go-around in 2017, with a 124 wRC+ and a career-high walk rate (9.5%).

Now, given Meneses’ gaudy stats, the obvious question is why he isn’t a prospect, even at 26. The answer is that while he has always hit the ball hard, 2018 was the first time he’d shown consistent power. But there’s reason to hope he wasn’t just a Phillies’ minor league mirage. Here he is, hitting a long home run away from Lehigh Valley.

Do you notice the uppercut? Meneses is a swing-changer. Until 2018, the big right-handed first baseman had hit the ball primarily on the ground, with ground ball rates above 50% at every stop but one since 2014. But in 2018, he flipped the script, dropping his ground ball rate to 44.7%, a career low, and upping his flyball rate to 32.9%, his highest rate since rookie ball. That wasn’t Meneses’ only change; after being an all-fields hitter in 2016 and 2017, hitting at least 40% of his balls in play to right field, he started pulling the ball in 2018, hitting fewer balls to right field and more fly balls to left. The result was a career-high HR/FB%, and the second-highest pull rate of his minor-league career.

Of course, even launch-anglified Joey Meneses wasn’t going to displace burgeoning star Rhys Hoskins in Philadelphia, and so the Phillies released him at the end of the season after he received an offer to play in Japan for the Orix Buffaloes. Still, it looks like Meneses made some legitimate changes to his offensive game – changes that, while not likely to make him a star, certainly make him more interesting.

Infield: Corban Joseph

Joseph, 29, was immortalized as the Guy Who Took Over First Base from Chris Davis (TM) last year in Baltimore, a job that lasted all of 19 plate appearances. In reality, however, Joseph probably has something to offer a team that’s willing to look past the obvious flaws. Joseph has the ability to stand at every defensive position on the dirt except shortstop. And Joseph has plate discipline, contact ability, and a bit of pop, which has helped him rack up more than a thousand minor league hits. In a sense, that’s damning with faint praise; Joseph has been in the minors for more than a decade, but has a grand total of 26 major league plate appearances to his name.

In 2018 for Double-A Bowie, Joseph walked more (9.9%) than he struck out (8.2%) with a .185 ISO and 143 wRC+, his second consecutive year at Double-A with a wRC+ of 120 or higher on the back of that skillset. Oh well, you might say, he was a 29-year-old at Double-A; he’s supposed to do that. And that’s certainly true, but he has also shown the same ability at Triple-A – in 2016 for Norfolk, Joseph hit .305/.362/.435 with an 8.3% BB% and 10.2% K%, good for a 129 wRC+.

So what is Corban Joseph? The profile is a bit similar to John Jaso, minus the catching ability, of course. Still, though, Joseph might be better than some of the utility infielders entering 2019 with guaranteed jobs. And there’s an argument to be made Joseph is better than David Fletcher, who will, barring other moves, open 2019 with a starting job in the Angels’ infield. Joseph is probably good enough for a big league job somewhere; he’s just never gotten the opportunity.

Catcher: Beau Taylor

Here’s a guy who, given the state of catching in the major leagues, could probably have a major league job somewhere on opening day, even though he probably won’t. Taylor is 28 and a career member of the Oakland Athletics’ minor league system, where he has been since 2011. He’s also no one’s idea of a prospect, accruing just six major league plate appearances, all in 2018. Why? For one thing, he doesn’t hit for power; this was his last of just three home runs he hit in the A’s system in 2018, after he hit 5 in 2017, and 5 in 2016.

He doesn’t really hit for average, either; despite a .341 BABIP in 2018, he hit just .248 in 2018. And he doesn’t really control the running game, throwing out just 12 of 73 attempted baserunners in 2018.

So why is Taylor here? Because he has plate discipline. Indeed, quite good plate discipline. In 2018, he walked in 14% of his plate appearances at AAA. In 2017, he walked in better than 12% of his plate appearances. In fact, Taylor hasn’t had a walk rate below 10% since a 2014 half-season at Double-A, when he posted a 9.7% walk rate. And owing to all the walks, Taylor has posted a wRC+ above 90 at every stop but one since 2014.

Steamer doesn’t think much of Taylor, projecting just a 69 wRC+ for 2019 at the big league level. But Jonathan Lucroy just posted a 70 wRC+ for the Athletics, and at least Taylor might still have some upside.

Designated Hitter: Neftali Soto

Once upon a time, Neftali Soto was a big-time Reds prospect who, despite underwhelming numbers, possessed exciting tools. The good news is that Soto, now 29, mashed .310/.364/.644 in 2018 with 41 homers in just 459 plate appearances, fulfilling his longstanding prospect status. The bad news is that he posted those video game numbers in Japan, and went totally ignored stateside.

That’s a shame, because Soto’s transformation from failed prospect to power hitter began in 2017, when he (all together now) started hitting more fly balls. An increased fly ball rate – he went from just 16% in the White Sox organization in 2015 to 34.9% for the Nationals’ Triple-A affiliate in 2018 – led to a power surge, and across two levels of the Nats’ system he destroyed minor league pitching to the tune of a .311/.364/.528 triple-slash, and an ISO above .200 at both levels. Soto’s new look can be captured in this game for Syracuse, when he homered three times, one to each part of the outfield.

Despite his newfound power and contact abilities, the book on Soto remains below average plate discipline; his 29-to-100 strikeout to walk ratio last year in the NPB demonstrates that nicely. Still, bats with this kind of power have some value and could merit a major league opportunity. After all, it’s a safe bet Soto would outhit Chris Davis, and wouldn’t a rebuilding team like the Rangers be better off seeing what he could do with 550 at-bats than giving them to Ronald Guzman?

Next time, we’ll look at the Phelpses’ pitching staff.

Brian Anderson knows who he is as a hitter; he’s less sure of what kind of hitter he’ll be in the years to come. At 25 years of age with just 765 big-league plate appearances under his belt, the fourth-place finisher in last year’s NL Rookie of the Year balloting has a lot of growth in front of him.

Drafted by the Marlins out of the University of Arkansas in 2014, Anderson has displayed reliability, versatility, and a smooth right-handed stroke since arriving in Miami in September 2017. Manning both third base and right field, he finished the 2018 campaign with a .273/.357/.400 slash line and a team-high 34 doubles. Moreover, he was a mainstay in Don Mattingly’s lineup. Anderson was a spectator in just five games.

One thing he didn’t do often was leave the yard. Partly the result of playing in pitcher-friendly Marlins Park, Anderson homered a paltry 11 times. Which circles us back to the “what kind of hitter he’ll be in the years to come?” question. Anderson doesn’t lack raw power. It’s a matter of tapping into it more consistently as he continues to mature as a hitter.

Anderson discussed his gap-to-gap approach, as well as his long-ball potential, when the Marlins visited Fenway Park late last August.

———

Brian Anderson on hitting: “It’s about getting my pitches to hit. More specifically, getting good pitches within my approach and putting a good swing on them. It starts with my work in the cage, and then BP is for working on barreling the ball to all parts of the field. It’s for making sure that I’m hitting the ball the right way.

“Once I’m in the box, it kind of depends on the pitcher. Certain pitchers don’t throw to certain spots, and some pitchers are most vulnerable in certain spots. I like the ball more out over the plate. I like it more down in the zone and middle to middle away. That’s kind of the zone I try to lock in on, and I’ll try to drive that ball to right center. If I get hanging off-speed, or a heater in, then I’m (pulling the ball). Generally speaking, I’m more focused on the middle of the field. Read the rest of this entry »

Now with their fourth World Series ring since 2004, we can safely say that any remaining curse on the Boston Red Sox has been exorcised with extreme prejudice. Surprisingly, their 108-win, 2018 season was the first hundred-win season for the franchise since 1946, back when Julio Franco was about 35.

The Setup

This World Series-winning Red Sox team should probably considered part of a new dynasty, rather than as the final installment of the one that won three World Series championships in the 21st century. Obviously, the players are different; 14 years have passed, and even awesome players are subject to the ravages of time. But the front office also has a very different look.

Theo Epstein has now been gone for nearly a decade, but in the years after his departure — and the brief interregnum featuring a dashing escape from Fenway Park dressed in a gorilla suit — the front office had a distinct flavor of the Epsteinian dynasty, with Ben Cherington, Jed Hoyer, and Mike Hazen all having ties to Epstein.

When Dave Dombrowski took over as President of Baseball Operations at the end of 2015, the ultimate responsibility for the day-to-day decision-making shifted for the first time to someone without ties to the 2004 champions. The Epsteinians ended with less bloodshed than a lot of great dynasties; Hazen getting a job in Arizona is hardly comparable to the violent end of Andronikos I Komnenos. (I swear I’ll stop now before the rest of the article is just me comparing Red Sox transactions to Byzantine battles.)

It’s easy to forget in the wake of a trophy in 2013 — flags fly forever, yada yada yada — but that victory was sandwiched between three last-place finishes in the AL East. To find the last time the Red Sox had consecutive losing seasons, you’d have to look back to around the strike.

The 2016 roster looked very different than the 2013 one. Only two starting position players remained from 2013, Dustin Pedroia and David Ortiz, and the latter was in his grand farewell procession. The 2013 rotation was gone, except for Clay Buchholz, and of the main bullpenniérs, only Koji Uehara remained.

After adding David Price and Chris Sale in consecutive offseasons, the 2017-2018 winter had its own big highlight: the team’s re-signing of Mitch Moreland. OK, we all know that’s a lie; Boston successfully waited out a winter during which many of the other big market teams did little with their cash, and brought in J.D. Martinez on a six-year, $110 million contract. It was the rare signing of a star free agent on Martinez’s side of the defensive spectrum that ZiPS didn’t immediately start digitally laughing at.

With a young offensive core — 30-year-old J.D. Martinez was the old man of the valuable parts of the lineup — and a hopeful return to health and form from David Price, Boston rightly felt that they didn’t have to add too much else. Unlike some of those other high-revenue teams, Boston was on no quest to get under the luxury tax threshold for 2018, already having reset its penalties in 2017 (the Red Sox payroll resulted in a nearly $12 million luxury tax payment).

The Projection

ZiPS projected Boston to be in a close battle with the Yankees going into the season, with a two-win deficit that could evaporate by simply making a slightly different set of assumptions. The computer projected Boston to have a 78% chance of making the playoffs, far better than any projected runner-up, with the next-best being the St. Louis Cardinals at 53%.

ZiPS did see some weaknesses in the team, viewing the catching situation as a bit of a mess and believing Mitch Moreland and Hanley Ramirez to be rather unambitious choices at first base. ZiPS wasn’t super-confident about the depth at the back of the rotation, either, and was concerned the No. 4 and 5 starter situation could unravel very quickly with a few Nasty Surprises in the health department.

The Results

Well, they won 108 games and the World Series, so you could say that there was definitely some more-than-passable adequacy going on. The weird thing about the Red Sox season is that as 108-win teams go, it really wasn’t all sunshine, lollipops, and Mike Trout Everything.

Unusually, you could see a lot of what-ifs scenarios, none of which were all that crazy, in which Boston could have easily finished with even more wins. The catching Cerberus hit like a three-headed hot dog, Moreland and the released Ramirez were in fact rather mediocre at first (though Moreland, as usual, wore his surprise breakout costume for a couple of months), and the back of the rotation did in fact have a couple of Nasty Surprises. Rafael Devers growing from his rookie season instead of regressing from it could have added a couple more wins as well.

The contours of the Red Sox season weren’t surprising, but the magnitude of the good things were. The Twitter Baseballosphere all joked about a specific article written before the season, in which a Boston-area writer said Mookie Betts was as good as Mike Trout (I was one of the sarcastic quippers, naturally). But Betts actually was as good as Trout in 2018, as weird as that claim appeared at the time.

Betts and Martinez gave the team two MVP candidates and Chris Sale was, as usual, a legitimate Cy Young candidate. One could argue that the Boston Red Sox were a bit like a very sunny version of the Colorado Rockies, a team that also had two MVP candidates and a legitimate Cy Young candidate, but surrounded their core with an Ian Demond-Gerardo Parra Imagination Christmas.

Unlike Colorado, Boston never stopped trying to find opportunities to deal with their team’s limited weak spots. Steve Pearce gave the team a legitimate right-handed role player who could do at first base what Hanley proved too inept to accomplish. Ian Kinsler was brought in to patch the hole at second, even if the move failed to be all that profitable. And Nathan Eovaldi solidified the back of the rotation and finished the season having completely resurrected his career.

Boston’s regular-season pummeling of the league continued, with the team steamrolling over the Yankees, Astros, and Dodgers — the majority of the teams ZiPS that thought were better going into the season — and only dropping three games over the entire postseason.

And while he didn’t have a Cy Young-type season, it was nice to see Price eviscerate that laziest of baseball storylines, that of the postseason choke-artist. After a lousy start against the Yankees in the ALDS, Price only allowed seven runs over his remaining 24.1 innings. And after having to make an appearance in that crazy 18-inning Game 3, Price allowed just one run in seven innings, on one day’s rest filling in for Chris Sale, who was hospitalized with a stomach ailment.

What Comes Next?

Over the next few years, the Red Sox will likely have harder decisions to make than their eternal rivals, the New York Yankees. Chris Sale, Rick Porcello, and Xander Bogaerts are free agents after the 2019 season, and if he plays just as well as he did last season, Martinez may very well join them by using his 2019 or 2020 opt-outs. Mookie Betts hits free agency after the 2020 season as well.

That’s a lot of talent to see leave, and keeping that group together will be expensive; the team has already hinted that it will pose a great challenge to sign all of them. This team blew through the luxury tax threshold and that’s with Sale, Betts, and Bogaerts making under $30 million combined. If Martinez doesn’t opt-out, the Red Sox already have a hair under $110 million baked in the 2020 cake for just six players. If you bring back Sale for $30 million, and Bogaerts for $20 million, even with letting Porcello walk, that’s $159 million with 17 roster spots left to fill.

And those spots won’t be cheap to fill. Using the framework developed by Craig Edwards, and the pre-2018 prospect ranks of Kiley McDaniel and Eric Longenhagen, Boston had the second-least value in their farm system, ahead of only the Mariners. While the McDongenhagen analysis for this winter isn’t out yet, I daresay that there weren’t enough victories in the minors (Michael Chavis was suspended, Sam Travis was terrible, and Triston Casas can’t single-handedly turn around the farm system) to drastically change this ranking for the better.

As Boston sees its young core become expensive without easy answers from the farm, the team will have to be creative (or get much more comfortable with the luxury tax) in the coming years to not have a significant down turn in the franchise’s fortunes. Transitioning to the team’s next core without spending $300 million a year may be the biggest challenge for the dynasty of the Dombrowskii.

ZiPS Projection – Mookie Betts

Let’s just bask in the Mookie-y goodness and hail to whatever we find in the sunlight that surrounds him.

I asked ZiPS to give me all Betts’ remaining four-WAR seasons in the projections, and it returned a nice little collection of superstar seasons. All-told, ZIPS sees 52 WAR remaining for Betts, which puts him above 80 WAR, a definite Hall of Fame trajectory. Even if his defense doesn’t age as well as ZIPS thinks it will, knocking off ten runs a year from his defense starting in 2019 would still leave him at nearly 70 wins, and that’s way too harsh and adjustment.

That wraps up the Elegy for ’18 series; next year’s series will commence with the Orioles sometime in late March. Thanks for joining me in my final goodbyes to the 2018 season, even if they went week past when I’d intended!

The White Sox have made a series of minor moves this offseason to prepare themselves for contention at some point in the future; that might be as soon as next year, but it’s more likely in 2020 or later. The team added Ivan Nova from the Pirates to provide innings in the rotation. They added Alex Colome from the Mariners to help the pen. Chicago acquired Yonder Alonso from Cleveland to improve the offense and let Jose Abreu spend more time at designated hitter. If there was a $7 million to $10 million unwanted player, the White Sox have seemed willing to take on the salary in exchange for a fringe prospect. That strategy took on a different form today, as the team snapped up free agent reliever Kelvin Herrera on a two-year, $18 million deal with a vesting option, per Jeff Passan.

Herrera, not unlike many relievers, has had an inconsistent career. In 2012, 2014, and 2016, he put together very good seasons, with a sub-3.00 FIP and at least one win above replacement. In 2013 and 2015, he was closer to average. In 2017, when he took on closer duties in Kansas City, he just wasn’t very good. Last season, he put together a very good first half, which prompted Kansas City to trade him to Washington at just the right time. In DC, Herrera pitched poorly, and was sidelined with a rotator cuff injury and then a foot problem that ended his season. He’s missed time due to right arm injuries in 2014, 2017, and last year, also not uncommon for a reliever throwing in the high-90s. This is what his velocity looks like by season.

Velocity isn’t everything, and at 29 years old, Herrera is still young, but the drop is concerning. Here’s a similar graph showing his strikeout and walk rates.

Herrera’s walk rate has always been fine aided by a career 60% first strike rate, including 67% last year. It is interesting that his strikeout rate doesn’t necessarily correlate with his fastball velocity. He wasn’t striking out a lot of batters in 2014 and 2015, when he still had great velocity, and then when his velocity first dipped in 2016, he struck out batters at the highest rate of his career. In ranking the Top 50 free agents this offseason, Kiley McDaniel put Herrera 49th overall and 10th among relievers. McDaniel pegged Herrera for a one-year deal at nine million dollars, roughly half the guarantee he ended up receiving. Dan Szymborski wrote Herrera’s report in that post and came to a similar conclusion. Read the rest of this entry »