At the beginning of every season, each team has at least some kind of chance of eventually making playoffs. At the start of the present season, for example, the Orioles featured about a 5% probability of making the postseason in some form.

Those odds aren’t great. That said, there’s recent precedent for club’s succeeding from that modest starting point. Last season, the Rockies started their campaign with about a 10% shot at October. The Arizona Diamondbacks, meanwhile, were at 8%, while the Minnesota Twins begin with about a 5% probability of reaching the playoffs, just like this season’s Orioles. The Rockies and Diamondbacks got off to hot starts and jumped their chances up to around one-in-three within a few weeks. The Twins hung around .500 for a while. keeping their odds steady for a time. When no other challenger emerged for the second Wild Card, they claimed it almost by default.

The Orioles, on the other hand, are following a different trajectory. They’ve begun the season 6-17 and have lost whatever margin for error they possessed. And while the calendar hasn’t even flipped to May, it’s likely time for them to look ahead at the long-term health of the club. That means finding the best possible package for superstar Manny Machado.

Before we get to Machado, specifically, let’s consider Baltimore’s place in the standings a bit more thoroughly. The Orioles started off this season with a reasonable shot at the playoffs. As noted, however, they’ve gotten off to an awful start. That awful start has already rendered their long-ish playoff odds essentially non-existent. Here’s what their playoff-odds graph looks like since the beginning of the season.

It’s possible that graph doesn’t really do the odds justice, so here is another graph showing the odds as their chances of making it to the playoffs. For example, at the beginning of the year, the Orioles had a 5% chance of making the playoffs, which we will say is a 1-in-20. If they had a 2% chance, we’d say that is a 1-in-50 shot. Here’s how the graph has changed since the beginning of the season.

The Orioles’ chances of making the playoffs are down to about 1 in 1,000. If you prefer to look at things in terms of wins, you’d find that Baltimore is currently projected to win about 45% of the rest of their games — equivalent to about 63 more victories — to get them up to 69 for the season. Needless to say, that won’t be enough to make the playoffs. We don’t know what is enough for the playoffs, but if we give the AL East to the Red Sox, the Central to Cleveland, and the West to the Astros, that still leaves the Angels, Blue Jays, and Yankees as viable candidates for the Wild Card — with the Twins not too far behind. Given the talent and relatively positive starts from those teams, it seems like 87-89 wins will be necessary to take the second Wild Card spot. That means the Orioles — expected to play like a 74-win team (out of 162) the rest of the way — would need to play like a 94-win team to make the postseason.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Toronto Blue Jays. 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 the numbered prospects here also appear on THE BOARD, a new feature at the site that offers sortable scouting information for every organization. Click here to visit THE BOARD.

65 FV Prospects

Guerrero was identified as an elite talent years before the Jays signed him at age 16, exhibiting an advanced feel for hitting and raw power like his father. Unlike the elder Guerrero, Vlad Jr. has generally developed earlier — already looking too big for third base as a teenager and polishing his tools at a very young stage. Whether Vlad Jr. settles as a fringey third baseman or a first basemen/designated hitter is up for debate, but his easy plus hit and power tools (with ceiling for more) are not and will make his ascent to the big leagues a quick one.

60 FV Prospects

Bichette was a well-known prospect in high school due to his bloodlines (father Dante and older brother Dante Jr., who was a first-round pick by the Yankees in 2011), his big tools (plus raw power), and his loud, max-effort swing. Many teams didn’t take him seriously as a top-two-round prospect, partly souring after his brother busted with a similar swing, but Bo has rare bat and body control along with good enough pitch selection to make his approach work, something his older brother did not.

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There are certain players who are made more interesting by the greater context. Why is Team X suddenly so successful? Credit should go to the surprising Player Y. Certain other players, though — with some guys, the context is almost irrelevant. They can’t help but be compelling, regardless of whether their team is great or terrible. Joey Gallo is one of these players. Gallo is fascinating, and the Rangers are 8-16. Gallo would be no more fascinating if the Rangers were 16-8. Gallo is forever interesting to me, and he is forever interesting to you, because he might well be baseball’s most extreme hitter. He’s a project, a test of a prospect model we’ve hardly ever seen.

In a sense, Gallo has already passed the test. In his first year as a full-time player, he was worth 3 WAR, with a low batting average but a strong batting line. It’s one thing for a player to succeed over a month or a month and a half, but for me, personally, I like to leave time for opponents to adjust. Opponents adjusted, and Gallo adjusted back. He was better in last year’s second half than he was in the first. Over the course of 2017, Gallo proved that he’s a big-league ballplayer. It was a triumphant season for his extraordinary skillset.

And yet it’s not as if Gallo is all through with his progress. What we’re seeing in this year’s early going is something incredible indeed. One of the core things that’s made Joey Gallo Joey Gallo is starting to go away. Every good hitter evolves, but Gallo was starting with a truly weird foundation.

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Rick Porcello was really good in 2016 when he won the Cy Young award. He had a very strong 3.40 FIP, an even better 3.15 ERA, and was worth 5.1 WAR. The race was close that year, with Porcello narrowly edging out Justin Verlander. Corey Kluber, Chris Sale, and even Zach Britton all also had decent arguments for the award. Any one of the starters could have won, but Porcello got the nod in what was presumably his career year.

It’s early, but so far Porcello is putting those presumptions to the test. Through four games, Porcello has 23 strikeouts against just one walk with a fantastic 1.74 FIP and 1.40 ERA. He’s never pitched quite this well before.

Even during his 2016 campaign, Porcello never put together a stretch as good as the one of which he’s in the midst. The graph below shows rolling four-game stretches since Porcello came to Boston.

We are currently at the low mark for both ERA and FIP during Porcello’s tenure in Boston. As to why Porcello is on such a great run, we can start with the lack of home runs. Since joining the Red Sox, Porcello has never produced a four-game stretch without allowing a homer until now. He had a couple per year back in his extreme pitch-to-contact ground-balling days in Detroit, where the park suppressed homers, but he had no such streaks during his first three seasons with the Red Sox. Some of that can be chalked up to good fortune, of course: he is obviously going to give up a dinger at some point this season. In addition to keeping the ball in the yard, though, there’s also that 23:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

So what’s the difference? Is there even one?

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Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In the fifth installment of this series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Max Fried, Tommy Kahnle, and John Smoltz — on how they learned and/or developed a specific pitch.

———

Max Fried (Braves) on His Curveball

“I learned my curveball when I was pretty young, maybe nine or 10. It started out as more of a knuckle curve, although I didn’t really spike it. I would kind of curl my pointer finger down on the ball.

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For most of his professional career, now in its 10th season, Christian Villanueva has been largely irrelevant.

He appeared on Baseball America’s top-100 list in 2012 — but as the last player on that list.

He was the “other guy” in the deal the that sent Kyle Hendricks — and Villanueva — from the Rangers to the Cubs for Ryan Dempster on July 31st, 2012.

While putting together a solid 2013 season in Double-A, he observed as the Cubs selected University of San Diego third baseman Kris Bryant with the second overall pick in the June draft. While Bryant was a level or two behind Villanueva in 2013 and 2014, the former soon passed the latter en route to the majors.

As Bryant was fashioning a Rookie of the Year campaign in 2015, Villanueva slashed .259/.313/.437 in Iowa with 18 home runs over 508 plate appearance as a 24-year-old in Triple-A. Not only was he blocked, but he wasn’t performing like someone who appeared to be a future regular. In 2016, he suffered a broken leg and missed the entire season.

At the end of the 2016 season, with seemingly no place for him in the Cubs’ infield or on their 40-man roster, Villanueva was granted free agency. He signed a minor-league deal 10 days later with the San Diego Padres.

At that point in time, Villanueva wasn’t particularly relevant in baseball circles. He wasn’t particularly relevant last season, either, when he slashed .296/.369/.528 with 20 homers in Triple-A, a trying year personally after his brother died in the spring.

He was a relative unknown for the first nine years of his professional career. That’s changed early this season.

A player with whom few were acquainted a month ago now leads baseball in wRC+ (236) among hitters with 70 or more plate appearances and is eighth in WAR (1.4) as the season approaches May.

He got our attention early with a three-homer game on April 3rd.

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Villanueva doesn’t have exceptional exit velocity like his teammate Franchy Cordero, the latter perhaps representing the greatest curiosity in the majors. He ranks 193rd in exit velocity on fly balls and line drives early this season, according to Baseball Savant.

But he is doing several things unusually well.

For starters, he’s been air-balling since before air-balling was a thing. The only time Villanueva hit more ground balls than fly balls at a professional stop was in Rookie ball in 2009. Villanueva has the 23rd-lowest ground-ball rate (29.3%) in the sport.

His average launch angle of 19.4 degrees ranks ranks 30th and his 11 launches between 20 to 30 degrees ranks 30th, as well.

And it’s not just that he’s putting balls in the air, it’s where he’s directing them: to his pull side and in an extreme way.

As you’ll notice in the above clips, he’s even been able to hook breaking balls on the outside part of the plate over the left-field wall in a Gary Sheffield sort of way. He’s covering the whole plate and with power.

Villanueva leads the majors in pull percentage on fly balls and line drives (62.1%) and that’s in large part why he ranks first in the majors with a 36.8% HR/FB rate.

Can he continue to pull fly balls and line drives at such a rate? It’s rare. Since 2007, only 37 batters have accomplished it, including the aforementioned Sheffield twice.

If he can, he’s interesting. This isn’t just a bat-only corner bat, it’s one that plays third and one with which the Padres have even considered experimenting at shortstop.

Might this be for real?

It’s a unique batted-ball profile, one that should lend itself to constant home-run power so long as he can make contact and pull air balls. Another key is that Padres manager Andy Green said Villanueva has tightened up his strike zone.

“It’s been great to see Villa make the adjustments he’s made,” Green said. “When he got to the point where he was swinging at everything, you know that’s not going to play well in the long run. Seeing him make that adjustment, be a bit more patient, means more to me than seeing him hit three homers in a game.”

Maybe Green is seeing something from dugout level, but Villanueva doesn’t seem patient by the numbers: he’s swinging at out-of-zone pitches at 40% rate. While he never had major contact issues in the minors, he’s striking out on 30% of his plate appearances thus far in the majors. He has a swinging strike rate of 17.4%.

While he’s crushing fastballs and changeups, he’s swinging through an awful lot of curveballs and sliders. He’s not going to continue to see fastballs at a 56% rate.

If there isn’t yet a book on Villanueva, one is being written by opponents as we speak. He’ll have to make some adjustments now that he’s no longer a secret, now that he’s no longer irrelevant.

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Cleveland Indians. 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 the numbered prospects here also appear on THE BOARD, a new feature at the site that offers sortable scouting information for every organization. Click here to visit THE BOARD.

60 FV Prospects

Mejia wasn’t/isn’t a lost cause as a defensive catching prospect, but his bat is almost ready for the big leagues. It’s that ability to hit that prompted a move to third base during the Arizona Fall League and, now, reps in left field to accelerate Mejia’s timetable to Cleveland. He certainly has the arm for wherever Cleveland wants to play him. It’s an 80-grade howitzer that elicited audible gasps from AFL crowds. His hands and footwork at third were predictably raw.

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Between injuries that sapped his speed, a monster contract that hasn’t aged well, and a reputation as a clubhouse problem (deserved or not) that has followed him from team to team, Matt Kemp has more often been considered a liability than an asset over the past few years. Improbably, the 33-year-old outfielder is now back where his major-league career began in Los Angeles, one of the hottest hitters on a team desperate for a big bat in the absence of Justin Turner.

Once upon a time, Kemp was a superstar, a homegrown lineup centerpiece on a club teeming with young talent. A sixth-round draft pick out of an Oklahoma high school in 2003, he was just 21 when he debuted with the Dodgers on May 28, 2006. He hit seven homers in his first 15 games before cooling off, and while he was limited to 98 games the next year by a season-opening return to Triple A and a two-month absence due to a right shoulder separation, he hit a sizzling .342/.373/.52. Once the Andruw Jones experiment ended, he took over the team’s center-field job in 2008, and in his first two full seasons, he totaled 44 homers, 69 steals, and 8.3 WAR while helping the team to back-to-back NLCS berths. He even won a Gold Glove in 2009, his only season in center after which both his DRS and UZR were in the black.

Kemp’s game fell apart in 2010, a time during which he later conceded he lost focus amid the temptations of Tinseltown. As the Baseball Prospectus 2011 annual summarized, “He incited the ire of Joe Torre and his staff by giving up at-bats, failing to hustle out of the batter’s box, blundering on the basepaths and in the field, and showing a general lack of intensity.” Then came a 2011 turnaround in which he more than lived up to the hype, with an NL-leading 39 homers and the league’s second-best wRC+; he fell one steal shy of the fifth 40-homer/40-steal season in history. He won another Gold Glove, finished second in the NL MVP voting, and in November of that year, signed an eight-year, $160 million extension — which, at the time, was the largest contract in NL history and the seventh-largest overall.

Then came injuries, an endless litany: both hamstrings, a torn labrum and rotator-cuff damage in his left shoulder, a severe left ankle sprain. And surgeries, too: two for the shoulder, plus one for the ankle, including a microfracture procedure. Over the 2102-13 seasons, he played just 179 games, and the Dodger outfield, which now included Yasiel Puig and (occasionally) Carl Crawford, as well as Andre Ethier, learned to get along fine without him. Though Kemp returned to hit .287/.346/.506 with 25 homers and 141 wRC+ in 2014, his defensive woes (-22 DRS, -13 UZR) spelled the end of his time in center field and limited him to 2.5 WAR.

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In an unwitting tribute to Brandon Belt’s 21-pitch plate appearance, Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about approximately 21 topics, including the Mariners’ awkward, self-imposed Ichiro situation, Dee Gordon’s outfield conversion, Franchy Cordero, the ineptitude of the Reds, Mike Trout leveling up (again), Sean Manaea’s no-hitter and the increasing frequency of near no-hitters, two more unwritten rules flareups, Josh Hader’s multi-inning dominance, a bad fun fact, the regression of last year’s breakout first basemen, Aaron Judge’s continued hot hitting, and more.

Audio intro: The Eagles, "Twenty-One"
Audio outro: Franz Ferdinand, "Michael"

Link to video of Brandon Belt’s 21-pitch PA
Link to video of Bartolo Colon racing Dee Gordon
Link to video of Baez blocking Lemahieu

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