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

Durin O’Linger, RHP, Boston
Level: Short Season Age: 23   Org Rank: NR   Top 100: NR
Line: 4 IP, 3 H, 2 BB, 1 R, 6 K

Notes
O’Linger isn’t exactly a prospect — his fastball sits in the 86-88 range and he’ll flash an average changeup — but of note due to his recent, historic postseason run at Davidson during which the senior threw 502 pitches over six appearances in a 16-day span. Rest was not a priority for O’Linger, who was so sure he had no future in pro baseball that he was set to attend the University of Florida’s pharmacy school in the fall. The 23-year-old is pitching with house money in the New York-Penn League right now.

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The Effectively Wild podcast gets a good number of emails every day, and a recent one was sent along by Aidan Jackson-Evans. He was asking about a trend that he noticed, and wrote about several days ago. I’d like to point you to his post, at High Heat Stats. You should read it, because this thing is quickly just building off that. I wouldn’t have noticed this trend if not for the email, and he’s already done a lot of the work.

I’ll get to the heart of the matter. At FanGraphs, we have splits going back to 2002. That’s not very long, but it’s long enough for research purposes. In this plot, you simply see league wOBA by leadoff hitters, and overall league wOBA. Nothing complicated, at least if we’re all to the point where we no longer think of wOBA as being complicated.

Last year, leadoff hitters were better than average. The same was true the year before that, and the year before that. And so on. Nothing earth-shattering. This year, the numbers have been exactly equal. Here’s where things get cooler. In here, leadoff-hitter wOBAs, split by whether it’s the first plate appearance of the game, or a subsequent plate appearance.

Allow me to translate that! Between 2002 – 2015, leadoff hitters averaged a .323 wOBA in their first plate appearances. Over all the rest of their plate appearances, they averaged a .325 wOBA. Essentially the same. Nothing weird. But since the start of last season, leadoff hitters have averaged a .343 wOBA in their first plate appearances. Over all the rest of their plate appearances, they’ve averaged a .323 wOBA. Leadoff hitters, in other words, have started performing a lot better in the top and bottom of the first inning. This is what Jackson-Evans found.

So what’s going on? As with everything in baseball, the answer is presumably complex. Yet, using data from Baseball Savant, I bet I can simplify. Firstly, let’s look at the rate of pitches thrown within the Gameday strike zone. Here you see two rates: the league overall rate, and the rate for first plate appearances.

The first batter of the game sees more strikes. But this might not seem very dramatic. It’s not! This is dramatic. Here’s the same as above, but showing fastball rates instead:

Over the past decade, over all plate appearances, hitters have seen an average of about 57% fastballs. However, leadoff hitters in the first inning have seen an average of about 73% fastballs. The margin so far this season is 72% to 55%. It’s particularly extreme if you look at the first pitch of the first plate appearance, where pitchers routinely throw fastballs more than nine-tenths of the time. Pitchers have historically been aggressive to start off, trying to get into the flow of things. If the results are any indication, leadoff hitters have started to ambush more often. That is, instead of letting pitchers get away with free strikes, those leadoff hitters in the first inning are going up more prepared to take a swing or two. It’s as if the hitters are getting ready before the pitchers are.

It’s weird to see it happen so suddenly, but this is where we are after thousands upon thousands of plate appearances. It’ll be interesting to see if pitchers try to adjust by folding in more secondary stuff at the beginning. It’s the obvious apparent correction, but it might not make them feel very comfortable. Maybe they want or need to settle in with a few early fastballs. It’s something for all of us to try to monitor, I suppose. Kudos to Jackson-Evans for identifying this curiosity.

The Tampa Bay Rays are 40-38. Now, that isn’t fantastically good. The Rays are not fantastically good. But that record is good enough to sit just 2.5 games back in the American League East. That record is also good enough to sit just one single game back in the AL wild-card hunt. The Rays right now are playing through the absence of Kevin Kiermaier, but they’re very much competitive, and very much capable of winning another 45 or so times. So the Rays are interested in getting better today.

Enter Adeiny Hechavarria! Rumors started to swirl before the weekend that the Marlins wanted to ship Hechavarria to somebody else. It will not surprise you that the motivating factor here was shedding the salary. The Rays are picking up the salary, and also the player.

Deal is done: Hechavarria to Rays for two minor-leaguers, outfielder Braxton Lee and RHP Ethan Clark.

— clarkspencer (@clarkspencer) June 26, 2017

Braxton Lee is a talented baseball player, and I have nothing against him. Nor do I have anything against Ethan Clark, another talented baseball player. But the people who are supposed to know these things don’t think either one of those players will develop into an impact big-leaguer. We’ll see. Both these teams understand this is mostly a salary dump. The Marlins could get a lucky break, but for now, Hechavarria is the guy to talk about.

Let’s do that. He’s 28, and coming off a strained oblique. Although he’s been around for years, his career WAR is 1.7. If you know anything about Hechavarria, and you’re also a FanGraphs reader, you know the numbers have seldom liked him. But! Something did turn around for him a few seasons back. The Marlins always talked up Hechavarria’s raw defensive talent. In 2015, that talent turned into results. The performance kept up into 2016. Since the start of the 2015 season, 37 shortstops have played the position for at least 1,000 innings. Hechavarria’s been the seventh-best defender by DRS, and the fifth-best defender by UZR. He’s become a plus glove, and that’s the major reason why the Rays had interest here in the first place.

Yet Hechavarria has a career wRC+ of 70. To make matters worse, between his last two full seasons, he dropped from 87 to 56. His WAR, therefore, dropped from 3.1 to 0.4. One of those is good! One of those is not good. You could easily interpret him as a declining asset.

Here’s where Hechavarria gets kind of interesting. I mean, the defensive stuff is already interesting, but here’s what makes him more interesting still. Even in 2015, Hechavarria didn’t qualify as a good hitter. Then, by his results, his numbers tanked. But Baseball Savant also now hosts an expected wOBA statistic, based on Statcast inputs. In 2015, Hechavarria topped his expected wOBA by 26 points, which was one of the bigger gaps in the majors. Then, in 2016, Hechavarria undershot his expected wOBA by 30 points, which was one of the bigger gaps in the majors in the other direction. According to Statcast, 2016 Hechavarria was better. According to hard-hit rate, 2016 Hechavarria was better. It’s his actual numbers that went in the toilet. That’s neat, even if we don’t know quite what to do with it.

It seems like Hechavarria’s results are misleading. It seems like he went from overachieving to underachieving, and the Rays might figure the bat has just enough life. We don’t know expected wOBA well enough to say for sure, but it’s something to take a chance on. And if Hechavarria can hit enough, the Rays know he’ll be their best defensive shortstop in a while. Certainly better than Matt Duffy, who’s still recovering from an operation. This’ll be good for the infield.

And, ideally, good for the team. Hechavarria will have to be better than an offensive black hole. There’s reason to believe that’s well within his reach.

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

Thomas Szapucki, LHP, New York NL (Profile)
Level: Low-A  Age: 21   Org Rank: 7   Top 100: NR
Line: 6 IP, 2 H, 2 BB, 0 R, 10 K

Notes
Szapucki missed all of April and May with a shoulder injury. Sunday was his fourth start of the year and he worked more efficiently and missed more bats than he had in his previous three appearances. Szapucki already boasts a plus fastball/curveball combination and he’s a potential No. 3 starter if he can develop a changeup and/or plus command of his breaking ball. Should he fail to, then there’s some concern that Szapucki’s low-3/4 arm slot might be an issue against upper-level right-handed hitters and limit his effectiveness and role. He’s had a back and shoulder issue during his pro career and made many starts on extended rest. Sunday’s came with a full week between starts.

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