I first learned of the existence of Jonathan Loaisiga via the scouting service that is the Fringe Five, proudly produced by Carson Cistulli.

Entering 2018, very few non-baseball scouting professionals knew much of anything about Loaisiga, which is pronounced lo-AYE-siga. There’s been so much trouble with articulating his last name that Loaisigia is OK with “Johnny Lasagna” as a moniker.

Jonathan Loaisiga said that people call him "Lasagna" because they can't pronounce his last name. So Johnny Lasagna it is, Twitter.

— Bryan Hoch ?? (@BryanHoch) June 15, 2018

Loaisiga basically came out of nowhere. He was absent from all preseason top-100 prospect lists, though he did come in at No. 12 on Eric and Kiley’s Yankees preseason organizational list.

Read the rest of this entry »

Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Forrest Whitley, RHP, Houston Astros (Profile)
Level: Double-A   Age: 20   Org Rank: 7  FV: 60
Line: 4 IP, 2 H, 1 BB, 7 K, 0 R

Notes
This is the best pitching prospect in baseball, wielding ungodly stuff that spiked when he dropped about 60 pounds throughout his senior year of high school. He’s also on Driveline’s weighted-ball program. He’ll show your four plus or better pitches over the course of an outing. Whitley has yet to allow a run since returning from suspension. The suspension might be a blessing in disguise for Houston, who could now conceivably weave him into their playoff plans without fear of overworking Whitley’s innings count.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is Rahul Setty’s first post at FanGraphs. His work can also be found at SB Nation blog Halos Heaven. He is present at Twitter dot com.

When Shohei Ohtani was finally posted in early December, baseball fans in the States were formally introduced to his exploits. Selected first in the NPB’s 2012 draft by the Nippon Ham Fighters when he was 18, Ohtani quickly became the first player to start on the mound and in the field. As a teenager and young adult in a league that, on average, featured players between five and 10 years his senior, Ohtani slashed .286/.358/.500 and struck out in excess of 10 batters per nine innings for a 2.52 ERA. He also possessed an outstanding arm, jaw-dropping raw power, and top-of-the-line speed. And, as if all that wasn’t enough, Ohtani set a velocity record for all Japanese high schoolers at the age of 17 (99 mph) and then did the same, one-upping himself, in NPB play four years later (102.5 mph).

He doesn’t feel human.

By now, you have likely heard the news that Shohei Ohtani is immensely talented. Inviting comps to Babe Ruth, he has taken a no-hitter into the seventh inning and homered off of a reigning Cy Young winner. He owns the 11th-highest exit velocity (and 10th-highest hard-hit percentage) among batters with 50 batted balls or more. Ohtani’s 151 wRC+ places him in the 95th percentile (min. 100 PA), which is as remarkable as it is baffling given the notable adjustment he made so quickly.

You have also likely heard that Ohtani came down with a second blister on his throwing hand approximately two weeks ago, received an MRI, and found out he has a grade-2 sprain of his throwing UCL. The two-way unicorn has opted for plasma-rich platelet and stem-cell treatment in an effort to repair the ligament and avoid Tommy John surgery.

Read the rest of this entry »

Kirby Yates entered the 2018 season as one of the league’s most quietly interesting relievers.

He posted an elite 29.9-point K-BB% last year, ranking seventh among all pitchers who threw at least 40 innings. Only Craig Kimbrel, Kenley Jansen, and James Hoyt bettered his 17.4% swinging-strike rate last season.

Yates ranked 24th in whiff-per-swing rate on his four-seam, high-spin fastball (31.7%), according to the PITCHf/x leaderboards at Baseball Prospectus. His split-change (45.7%) and slider (44.0%) also produced above-average swing-and-miss rates per swing. Selected off waivers from the Angels last April, Yates was quite a find.

Entering the season, then, the Padres appeared to have another potential difference-making bullpen arm to complement Brad Hand. In fact, the Padres appeared to have the makings of one of the better bullpens in the game — and it has been one of the better bullpens in the game. San Diego ranks fourth in relief WAR (3.5), trailing only the Astros, Brewers, and Yankees.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Juan Soto‘s timeline-rearranging home run, Adrian Houser throwing up mid-game, Nick Markakis and Braves all-star voting, a Mets official’s donut metaphor, and Mike Trout’s continued excellence, then (17:35) talk to longtime MLB umpire and crew chief Dale Scott about miking up umpires, manager-umpire arguments, the Tom Hallion/Terry Collins clip and the expression “ass in the jackpot,” automated strike-calling, catcher framing, other factors that affect the strike zone, coming out as the first publicly gay MLB ump (and the possibility of a player coming out), replay reviews on slides, pace of play and time between pitches, how umps develop their punchouts, why balks are confusing, whether strikes have a sound, his history with concussions, and more, plus (1:12:59) follow-ups on the stumble play and other topics and closing banter about a bad baseball scene on Netflix and a Pablo Sandoval patience secret.

Audio intro: The Delgados, "Hate is All You Need"
Audio interstitial: The Posies, "I May Hate You Sometimes"
Audio outro: Porcupine Tree, "Don’t Hate Me"

Link to Adrian Houser throwing up
Link to Mike Trout fun-fact-a-thon
Link to article about Dale Scott coming out
Link to Dale Scott’s punchout
Link to Ben’s ALDS Game 5 oral history
Link to list of players who appeared in a suspended game “before” their MLB debut
Link to article about Steven Brault’s national-anthem debut
Link to baseball scene from Set it Up

 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

One could argue that, during the 2015-16 offseason, Jason Heyward was my hill. If that’s the case, I am now mostly dead. After producing almost six wins in his final campaign with the Cardinals, the outfielder recorded just a lone win in each of his first two seasons with Chicago.

I say mostly dead, though, because Heyward’s bat is showing some signs of life: since coming off the disabled list a month ago, he’s hitting .307/.347/.489 with a 124 wRC+. While that represents a hot streak for the Cubs version of Heyward, it pretty closely approximates what the team probably expected from Heyward when they signed him. Whatever the case, it is the best run he has produced since the joining the team.

Heyward’s swing changes have been frequent over the past few years. He has altered his mechanics nearly every season of his career. The Cubs hoped to unlock more power out of Heyward after he posted a 121 wRC+ for the Cardinals in a 2015 campaign during which he took a bunch of walks, limited his strikeouts, ran the bases well, and exhibited slightly below-average power. The Cubs weren’t wrong to try and unearth that version of Heyward. With his defense, baserunning, batting eye, and contact skills, the addition of a bit more power might have made Heyward an MVP candidate.

Read the rest of this entry »

For the past week or so, I’ve been kicking around the idea of writing about Justin Miller. Miller is a 31-year-old reliever, and, by the way, he’s pitching for the Nationals. Though he’s allowed runs in each of his last two appearances, he’s faced 43 batters so far, and he’s struck out 22 of them, without one single walk. Miller, last year, was bad in Triple-A for the Angels. Now he looks like he could be one of the more dominant relievers around. It’s too early to go quite that far, but, well, you know how relievers are. They can emerge or decline in the blink of an eye.

It’s possible that, in Miller, the Nationals have found something. He might turn out to be one of the keys to their season. But Mike Rizzo is also no stranger to making midseason bullpen upgrades, and you don’t want to end up counting on Miller to keep up the miracle. And so, Monday, Rizzo has moved to beef up the depth in front of Sean Doolittle. In the current era of baseball, it’s almost impossible to have too many good relievers. The Nationals got a new one from the Royals.

Nationals get:

• Kelvin Herrera

Royals get:

• Kelvin Gutierrez
• Blake Perkins
• Yohanse Morel

I’m not sure there’s anything stunning here. Herrera was very obviously going to be available, as a contract-year closer on a terrible team. The Nationals are in the hunt, and the bullpen in front of Doolittle has sometimes been shaky. The prospect package seems to be light, but rentals generally don’t fetch a blockbuster. Herrera’s strikeout rate is only 23%. What surprises me more than anything is that this happened on June 18. It doesn’t surprise me that the Nationals would want Herrera for five or six extra weeks. It surprises me that, on so early a date, the Royals would settle.

Read the rest of this entry »

Been a long time since I ran a polling post. So, this is going to be one of those, where I ask you, the smart audience, to tell me what you think about certain questions. Typically, these polling posts focus on teams. This time around, the focus is on ten specific hitters. These are ten hitters whose performances to this point don’t look very much like their preseason Steamer and ZiPS projections. I’ve selected five significant overachievers, and five significant underachievers. Their names!

• Max Muncy
• Brandon Nimmo
• Mookie Betts
• Matt Davidson
• Eddie Rosario
• Bryce Harper
• Jackie Bradley Jr.
• Giancarlo Stanton
• Dexter Fowler
• Chris Davis

We spend a lot of time writing about players who are in some way defying expectations. Players who might have reached or sunk to a new level. For example, I’ve written about Muncy a couple times lately, and Jay Jaffe recently wrote about Davis. It’s interesting when players don’t do what we think they’re going to do. Rarely, though, do we open things up to audience opinion. You all watch a lot of baseball, and you all are familiar with contemporary analysis. That’s why you’re here. But most of the time, all you get is a comment section. Consider this something like a midseason fan-projection project. How much do you believe in the success of the players above? Are you expecting positive or negative regression, or do you believe some of them have new true talents?

Everything that follows is simple. I’m not going to offer any analysis, beyond each player’s current wRC+, and projected rest-of-season wRC+. All I’m asking for each guy is what you think his wRC+ will be over the remainder of the season. When the results are in, we can see what the community thinks of each of the players. Doesn’t mean anything is conclusive or correct! It’s just nice to get other data points for a change. Thank you in advance for your participation. You don’t have to vote in every poll if you don’t want to. You don’t have to do anything here if you don’t want to. You wouldn’t believe how completely voluntary this is!

Read the rest of this entry »

A little more than two months ago, I noted that the Mariners’ bullpen had been — through that point in the season — among the most improved in the game, relative to preseason expectations. Before the 2018 season began, we projected Seattle relievers to strike out 9.1 batters per nine innings and walk 3.5.

A couple weeks into the season, they weren’t doing that. They were performing much better than that, actually. At the time I wrote that first article, Mariners relievers had struck out 10.7 batters per nine innings and walked just 1.5, both of which were tremendously good numbers and perhaps merited further investigation at the time. But it was still early, so I kept the article general and cautioned that we shouldn’t necessarily expect the men in teal to keep up their early-season performance too much longer.

Well, we’re now more than a third of the way through the major-league schedule, and the Seattle bullpen has stayed improved. In fact, the Seattle bullpen has been among the top three or four in the game, no matter which way you slice it, but this piece is about improvement against expectations. Here’s an updated version of a chart I included in my original article, which plots each teams’ actual relief K/9 and BB/9 (adjusted so that positive figures are good in both cases), through games played on Friday, against our preseason expectations of the same:

Observant readers will note that there is another happy story to tell here about the Astros’ pen — featuring Héctor Rondón and Chris Devenski — and a sad one about the Orioles, featuring almost every Oriole. But, again, this article is about the Mariners, whose improvement relative to projections in both K/9 and BB/9 has been outstanding — and key to the club’s outrageous performance in one-run games, which was detailed here by my colleague Jay Jaffe. Maybe it’s finally time to dive a little bit deeper into what they’ve been doing and why it’s been successful.

Read the rest of this entry »