As FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron wrote Wednesday, we are seeing fewer “bewildering” transactions in baseball these days. Many teams are thinking in similar ways, hiring similar people, and using similar information to make decisions. While that makes for more efficient decision making, it also makes for fewer controversial and/or head-scratching decisions.

While relatively minor in scope, we were given an unusual transaction when the Pirates — who have fallen out of contention — elected to place Juan Nicasio on irrevocable outright waivers this week, not revocable waivers, which teams usually employ this time of year to pass players through waivers but are able to pull them back if claimed. Read the rest of this entry »

Touching base to let Fangraphs readers know that this is my last piece in this space.

Just got back from recharging my batteries with my family (including Biscuit, the Wonder Dog) at Brigantine, New Jersey, just north of Atlantic City. Plenty of time for thinking, reflecting, etc., and pondering the future. For me, it has become clear that I need to turn my full focus toward getting back into baseball, with a club, where I can best use my combination of scouting and analytical experience and expertise.

That is going to take time and my much more undivided attention. It has been extremely rewarding to put my thoughts and ideas into print here at FanGraphs over the last few years, but honestly, it’s not enough baseball for me. It’s time to go back to work.

Many thanks to David Appelman for giving me the opportunity to write under the FanGraphs banner. Dave Cameron, you were the guy who encouraged me from the very beginning; deepest thanks to you, as well. Carson Cistulli has been my primary editor and contact for the past couple of years. You always had time and a witty rejoinder for me. Paul Swydan was always there to pick up the ball in a tough spot. It has been a pleasure to work alongside the entire FanGraphs staff. Wherever the road takes me, I look forward to remaining in contact with my colleagues.

Lastly, and most importantly, to the readers. Thank you, from the heart. I have connected with many of you via email to discuss my articles, to thank you for pointing out the (hopefully) rare typos that slipped through the process. We are unified by our love for this great game of ours. The game, the way it is played, the way is it covered and analyzed, continually changes. But at its core, it will always hold us close. I’ll see you all down the road, hopefully soon. Be sure to say hello.

Tony

Fringe Five Scoreboards: 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013.

The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a few years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.

Central to the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion among the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above who (a) was omitted from the preseason prospect lists produced by Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com, John Sickels*, and (most importantly) lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen and also who (b) is currently absent from a major-league roster. Players appearing on any updated list — such as the revised and midseason lists released by Baseball America or BP’s recent midseason top-50 list or Longenhagen’s summer update — will also be excluded from eligibility.

*All 200 names!

In the final analysis, the basic idea is this: to recognize those prospects who are perhaps receiving less notoriety than their talents or performance might otherwise warrant.

Andres Machado, RHP, Kansas City (Profile)
After signing with Kansas City in December of 2010, the right-handed Machado had failed to establish himself as anything like a prospect as of last year, ending the 2016 season as a 23-year-old who’d never ascended above Rookie ball. Following a decent run with High-A Wilmington to begin the present campaign, however, Machado has now recorded a 25.5% strikeout rate in seven appearances (all starts) for Omaha.

A brief examination of the film reveals little in the way of secondary stuff. What else it reveals, though, is an impressive fastball with plus velocity.

The video below documents a series of six swinging strikes — all by way of the fastball — recorded by Machado in just the first inning of his August 22nd start at Rangers affiliate Round Rock (box).

It’s a profile that may be incomplete even for a major-league relief role at the moment. Given Machado’s lack of proximity to the major leagues at this same point last year, however, it’s impressive.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Detroit acquired a trio of prospects from Houston last night in exchange for Justin Verlander. Two of those prospects appeared on our updated Astros top-10 list and will likely occupy a similar place in Detroit’s improving system. Before we examine the state of the Tigers’ minor-league talent, however, let’s talk about the three young men who were just traded for one of this century’s best right-handed pitchers.

The centerpiece of this package is 19-year-old Venezuelan righty Franklin Perez. Perez began the year with three dominant starts in High-A before he was shelved for a month with knee soreness. His results have been mixed but generally positive since his late-May return. Despite a few hiccups, Perez was promoted to Double-A in July and has struggled with strike-throwing at times while missing fewer bats than he did in A-ball. But ultimately, we’re talking about a 19-year-old who, despite initially training in Venezuela as a third baseman, has already pitched his way to Double-A and who, when healthy and rested, shows an ability to locate and sequence four quality big-league offerings.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about their raffle for Hurricane Harvey relief, the Justin Upton trade, walk-off hit by pitches, the brief baseball career of Olympic javelin thrower Jan Zelezny, Rich Hill and pitcher bunting, the Pirates placing Juan Nicasio on outright waivers, and infield dirt, then talk to musician and artist Will Johnson about how he started doing his popular portraits of baseball players, why baseball lends itself to art, and the Mookie Wilson work that he’s auctioning off for the Houston Food Bank.

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A month ago, when the dust settled on the July 31st trade deadline, the Astros had added just left-hander Francisco Liriano, whose struggles were one of the main reasons the Blue Jays failed to contend in 2017. It was an underwhelming upgrade for a team headed for the postseason, and the fact that the team thought they had a deal for Zach Britton was little solace to disappointed fans and players who hoped for more reinforcements.

Well, it took a month, but reinforcements are here, and this particular reinforcement throws really hard.

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Two things are simultaneously true about the American League wild-card race. One, none of the teams, outside of the Yankees, are particularly good. Even the Yankees have their own flaws, but the rest of the teams in the mix are even weaker. One could argue whether any of them will deserve to be playoff teams at all. Two, there will be playoff teams. There will be, probably, the Yankees and someone else. No matter what you might think about team quality, playoff positions are at stake, and a playoff spot, for any club, holds considerable value. We don’t actually know how the playoffs will ever go. The biggest thing is just making it there. Plenty of AL teams are trying to make it there.

It’s with this year’s playoff race in mind that we’ve got the following trade:

Angels get

• Justin Upton
• moderate 2017 salary relief

Tigers get

• Grayson Long
• a player to be named later

The Angels are not a good baseball team, relative to other baseball teams. However, they don’t need to be good — rather, they just need to be good enough. Upton could well make them good enough, and because this trade was made official today, Upton, of course, would be eligible for the playoff roster. Upton’s contract does have another four years, but this trade is very much about today, tomorrow, and the weeks a little after that.

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This is Ashley MacLennan’s sixth and final piece as part of her August residency at FanGraphs. Ashley is a staff writer for Bless You Boys, the SB Nation blog dedicated to the Detroit Tigers, and runs her own site at 90 Feet From Home. She can also be found on Twitter. Read the work of all our residents here.

“You gotta take care of your teammates sometimes. With me, if hitting a guy in the leg is what I have to do, then that’s what I did… I take care of my teammates and protect them.” Those were the words of Tigers relief pitcher Alex Wilson in the immediate aftermath of one of the most absurd and raucous games of baseball in recent memory.

During the August 24th day game between the Tigers and Yankees, the benches cleared three times and eight people were ejected, including players, managers, and coaches. Multiple players on both teams were – intentionally or not – hit by pitches. An array of fines and suspensions followed.

It was, for lack of a better word, a disaster.

It was also an object lesson in one of baseball’s most notoriously silly and problematic unwritten rules. The unwritten rules — a subset of conventions that dictate baseball etiquette but don’t exist in any official capacity — are intended to mandate how players act on the field and to establish repercussions if those players fail to abide by the code. Grandstanding and bat flips are a no-no, as we saw when Texas Rangers second baseman Rougned Odor sucker-punched Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Jose Bautista as revenge for Bautista’s famous 2015 postseason bat flip. Punishment is usually swift for someone who breaks the rules, but grudges often carry over into subsequent seasons.

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