Let’s start with a comp, courtesy of Connecticut Tigers pitching coach Ace Adams:

“He reminds me of Jonathan Papelbon, who I had for a couple of years with the Red Sox. The same type of arm action, the same type of delivery; the stature, the arm strength. There’s a lot of life on the four-seamer.”

The “he” in question is pitcher Matt Manning, whom Detroit drafted ninth-overall last year out of a Sacramento, California, high school. The 19-year-old right-hander — all six feet, six inches of him — is being tutored by the longtime pitching coach in short-season ball.

Papelbon was a starter before becoming a reliever, and if all goes as planned, Manning will remain in a rotation for the duration of his career. Adams feels he has a chance to be “pretty special,” and the scouting world pretty much agrees. Baseball America, MLB.com, and our own Eric Longenhagen all rank Manning as the top prospect in the Tigers’ system. Read the rest of this entry »

Jon Roegele is the leading authority on strike-zone changes, and I recommend you read his midseason update of the strike zone that was published at The Hardball Times yesterday.

There are a number of interesting findings and developments in the piece, but the headline is that the strike zone is contracting for a second consecutive season after it shrunk for the first time in the PITCHf/x era last season.

In 2015, the strike zone measured 475 square inches, according to Roegele, and 50 square inches in the area 21 inches above the ground and down (i.e. the bottom of the zone and below). It declined to 474 and 45 inches, respectively, last season, and to 464 and 43 square inches to date this season.

A smaller strike zone likely has played some role in the run-scoring surge of the last 48 months, and a smaller strike zone figures to have all sorts of consequences.

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the fifth installment of this year’s Trade Value series; you can find links to the previous four posts above. If you’re not familiar with this project, there’s an explanation of the process in the HM post, so that’s the best place to start.

As a reminder for those who don’t like clicking links, however, the five-year WAR projections are based on Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS forecasts, though the players aren’t ranked based on those projections; these figures are included merely as a piece of information to help round out the picture. The guaranteed-dollars line measures the amount of money the player is owed outside of team options or arbitration years; for most of these guys, team options are very likely to be exercised, and many of them will end up making more than the guaranteed-dollars number reports.

Now let’s turn our attention to today’s 10 players, as we get ever so close to the top 10.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the All-Star Game, then answer listener emails about more oddly configured fields, fouling balls straight back, non-standard batting stances, FanGraphs WAR vs. Baseball-Reference WAR, a career-earnings guessing game, All-Star Game accomplishments, knickers vs. pajama pants, stats vs. scouts, a Home Run Derby hypothetical, awarding home-run value based on defense, a tweak to ground rule doubles, and more.

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From a team perspective, one of the big stories of the first half has been the utter dominance of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Sure, most prognosticators thought they would be good, but this good? Their sheer dominance over the last couple months has been nothing short of historic, 1939 Yankees type stuff.

The identity of their lead dogs hasn’t been all that surprising. There’s Clayton Kershaw, the best of the best among starting pitchers — once again healthy and offering elite quality and quantity of contribution. Kenley Jansen is a human zero machine out of the bullpen. Occasionally, hitters even make contact against him. Corey Seager might still be a very young man, but his excellence has come to be expected. And while the immediacy and magnitude of Cody Bellinger’s production might be a bit surprising, he was almost unanimously considered an elite prospect.

We can talk (and have talked, just last week, about Kershaw) about those guys another time. Today, let’s turn toward three supporting players who have made surprisingly large contributions to the larger team effort. Third baseman Justin Turner is one of their core guys, but did you have him down for .377/.477/.583 at the break? Utilityman Chris Taylor is the least likely of the club’s six double-digit homer producers. And it’s Alex Wood, at 10-0 and with 1.67 ERA, who’s making a strong run at the Kershaw/Max Scherzer tandem for Cy Young honors.

How real are their first-half contributions? Let’s drill down into their plate-appearance-frequency and batted-ball-quality data to get a better feel.

In the two tables below, such data is provided for all three players.

The first table lists each players’ K and BB rates, as well as the breakdown of all of their BIP by category type. For this table, color-coding is used to note significant divergence from league average. Red cells indicate values that are over two full standard deviations higher than league average. Orange cells are over one STD above, yellow cells over one-half-STD above, blue cells over one-half STD below, and black cells over one STD below league average. Ran out of colors at that point. Variation of over two full STD below league average will be addressed as necessary in the text below.

The second table includes each player’s Unadjusted Contact Score. This represents, on a scale where 100 equals league average, the actual production level recorded/allowed by each player on balls in play. Basically, it’s their actual performance with the Ks and BBs removed. Their Unadjusted and Adjusted Contact Scores for each BIP category are then listed. Adjusted Contact Score represents the production level that each player “should have” recorded/allowed if every batted ball resulted in league-average production for its exit-speed/launch-angle “bucket.”

Finally, overall Adjusted Contact Score, and for hitters, actual wRC+ and Projected Production, and for pitchers, actual ERA-, FIP-, and “tru” ERA- are listed. Projected Production and “Tru” ERA add back the Ks and BBs to the Adjusted Contact Score data to give a better measure of each player’s true performance level.

Neither Chris Taylor nor Justin Turner was expected to become an offensive force at the major-league level. Each year, I compile my own list of minor-league position-player rankings, based on production and age relative to league and level. It basically serves as a follow list, a starting point from which traditional scouting takes place to tweak the order. Taylor qualified for this list four times, finishing progressively lower each season (Nos. 59, 71, 245, and 307 from 2013 to -16). Turner qualified twice, at No. 212 in 2007 and No. 253 in 2010. I was with the Mariners when we selected Taylor in the fifth round out of Virginia. We thought he was a big leaguer, for sure, but a big bat? Not quite.

Read the rest of this entry »

“He’s so quiet and simple… he looks like a contact hitter trapped in an ogre’s body.”

—Charlie Blackmon on Aaron Judge

No one hits the ball like Aaron Judge. If America had any lingering doubts, they were put to rest during Monday’s Home Run Derby.

A 500-foot home run, even in a batting practice setting, is rare. Judge reached that mark four times, including a 513-foot shot.

No batter has hit a 500-plus foot homer in game action since Adam Dunn in 2008 but Judge, who has a 496-foot homer this season — or perhaps Giancarlo Stanton — figure to breach that mark. And Judge might be the only person capable of of challenging Mickey Mantle’s estimated 565-foot homer.

The power is astounding. But it’s the ease with which Judge generates it that’s also so unusual. He didn’t fatigue during the Derby like Cody Bellinger. He doesn’t require max effort to produce a 400-foot batted ball.

What’s so remarkable about Judge isn’t just his 6-foot-7, 280-pound, NBA power-forward (or NFL tight-end) body, but rather — as Blackmon, one of Judge’s slack-jawed peers, noted on Monday — his swing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Justin Turner is one of the massively successful swing-change guys, which helps to explain why he didn’t have his offensive breakout until he was 29. Some players know what they’re supposed to do, and they keep trying to do it until they figure it out. Turner knew what he was supposed to do, but he didn’t know the right way to do it. Then he changed his entire batting foundation, and the big-league success followed. Plenty of players now have tried to change their swings. Few have managed what Turner has.

Even with many of the successful swing-changers, there was a problem hidden among the benefits. It was a common problem they shared with other fly-ball hitters. These were hitters geared to punish pitches down in the zone, so there was an area to exploit up top. It wasn’t the same for everyone, of course, but it’s something that could be frequently observed. Turner himself did the bulk of his damage below the thigh. Higher than that, he had some issues, but I guess most hitters have some kind of issue somewhere. Nobody’s perfect.

And yet! Turner’s seemingly gotten one step closer. I’ve held onto this theory that pitchers will ultimately have control over the swing-changers, because they can just throw more high fastballs. But, what if the hitters figured out how to adjust? Justin Turner has figured it out. Justin Turner is doing damage everywhere.

Read the rest of this entry »

 
Welcome to the fourth installment of this year’s Trade Value series; you can find links to the previous three posts above. If you’re not familiar with this project, there’s an explanation of the process in the HM post, so that’s the best place to start.

As a reminder for those who don’t like clicking links, however, the five-year WAR projections are based on Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS forecasts, though the players aren’t ranked based on those projections; these figures are included merely as a piece of information to help round out the picture. The guaranteed-dollars line measures the amount of money the player is owed outside of team options or arbitration years; for most of these guys, team options are very likely to be exercised, and many of them will end up making more than the guaranteed-dollars number reports.

Now let’s turn our attention to today’s 10 players.

If Jon Gray pitched in any other stadium in baseball, he’d probably be considered one of the game’s best young hurlers by now. With premium velocity and a very good slider, he profiles as a guy who can miss bats and manage contact well enough, and if his command takes a step forward, there’s ace potential here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Aaron Judge’s Home Run Derby performance, a subtle change in the way Rob Manfred talked about the baseball at the All-Star Game, and the Angels’ stats with and without Mike Trout. Then they make it two consecutive episodes of talking to a Glenn by bringing on UC Irvine professor and baseball researcher Glenn Healey to discuss the mechanics and implications of his new method of comparing pitchers based on their stuff.

Read the rest of this entry »

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