Effectively Wild Episode 1103: The Wildest Card

EWFI

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the AL wild card race, whether the Dodgers are doing anything wrong by using the 10-day DL liberally, then answer listener emails about packaging Pujols with Trout, Gio Gonzalez’s league-leading (but also not league-leading) WAR, the pitfalls of Statcast for pitchers, Steven Souza and home-run imbalance by handedness, an especially silly save, how many major leaguers are being missed, baseball’s hidden superheroes, and more.

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Arizona Fall League Roster Highlights

The Arizona Fall League just announced its rosters for the 2017 season. These are subject to change for any number of reasons, and a combination of promotions, injuries, and trades will likely impact who arrives and who doesn’t between now and October 10th, when the Fall League’s seven-week season gets underway.

For the uninitiated, the Arizona Fall League is a developmental league featuring six teams, each of which are assigned players from five parent MLB clubs. This league has been a fleeting but well-lit stage for many of MLB’s top talents, including Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Gerrit Cole and dozens others. The league is heavily scouted and players sent here often debut in the majors the following season. With that as introduction, below are my thoughts on the prominent/interesting prospects headed to the desert in October.

Glendale Desert Dogs
(CLE, CHW, LAD, PHI, PIT)

Glendale’s pitching staff has a few notable names, led by Pirates RHP Mitch Keller, who’ll pick up the summer innings he dropped in June due to a back strain. Keller has one of the best fastball/curveball combinations in the minors, but the changeup might be his developmental focus here in Arizona. Also on Glendale’s staff is hard-throwing Pirates LHP Taylor Hearn who came to Pittsburgh from Washington as part of last year’s package for Mark Melancon. He hasn’t thrown since July 13th, when he struck out a career-high 10 hitters in 4.2 innings for High-A Bradenton. He was put on the disabled list with an oblique strain two days later. Hearn has had several injuries throughout his career. He suffered from a strained UCL in high school and had a screw put in his elbow as a college freshman after suffering two humeral fractures. When healthy, Hearn sits 94-97 and throws a hard slider. Phillies lefty Elniery Garcia, whose velocity spiked into the mid-90s late last year and who was (coincidentally!?!) busted for Boldenone in April, missed 80 games this year. His fastball has been in the 89-93 range lately.

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The Last Time the Royals Scored a Run Was Thursday

The Royals last scored in the bottom of the second inning of their game against the Rockies last Thursday. Brandon Moss hit a home run, and the Royals went ahead 2-0. Since then, the Royals have played the better part of five games, and after the Moss dinger, the Royals as a team have been outscored 35-0. They lost the Rockies game, and of course they lost the subsequent four. The Royals offense has managed 43 straight scoreless innings. Is that bad? Jeffrey Flanagan and Bill Chastain have the facts.

The Royals, who lost their fifth straight, now have been shut out in 43 straight innings, the longest such streak in Major League Baseball since the mound was lowered after 1968. The previous mark was 42 by both the 1983 Phillies and the 1985 Astros. The ’79 Phillies were blanked in 39 innings. The all-time mark is 48 by the 1968 Cubs and the 1906 A’s.

We’re dealing with an active, modern-day baseball record. This is a developing era of offensive rejuvenation, powered by the league-wide resurgence of the home run. Within that context, the Royals haven’t scored in a long-ass time. It’s not even that the record is now 43. It’s that the record will be at least 43. The Royals play again tonight. You wouldn’t think they’d be blanked in a game started by Alex Cobb, but they’ve just been blanked in games started by Ryan Merritt and Austin Pruitt. Sometimes it’s not up to the pitcher.

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Eric Longenhagen Prospects Chat: Fall League Roster Release

3:00
Eric A Longenhagen: Hi everyone, Fall League roster reaction piece has been filed and hopefully I’ll have a link for you during this chat. Let’s get into it…

3:02
Tommy N.: What do you think of Enyel De Los Santos? He seems to get lost in the Padres’ stacked pitching group.

3:02
Eric A Longenhagen: I like him, well-rounded stuff and strike-throwing ability. #4/5 type of starter. Wrote him up here: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/instagraphs/daily-prospect-notes-725/

3:02
JT: What’s your take on Buxton’s recent surge?

3:02
Eric A Longenhagen: Told you so?

3:03
Eric A Longenhagen: I hope this surge is a sign of things to come for him, and that people will look to this as an example of why patience with prospects is important

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The Twins’ Other Dramatic Turnaround

Byron Buxton’s torrid August has been the primary reason the Twins have vaulted back into the Wild Card race this month, as the team’s center fielder is again showing why he was previously considered the best prospect in baseball. But while it’s very easy to draw a straight line between Buxton’s performance and the team’s 17-10 record in August, he isn’t doing this alone; there’s another guy on the roster whose performance has changed even more dramatically. And that guy is Matt Belisle.

After having a nice run with the Rockies in his early-30s, Belisle became the quintessential journeyman reliever the last few years, signing one year deals with the Cardinals, Nationals, and now the Twins. Those one year deals paid him between $1.25M and $3.5M per year, and despite running a 1.76 ERA with Washington last year, the Twins got him for just $2 million this past winter. As a pitch-to-contact 37-year-old, there just wasn’t much interest in Belisle despite last year’s shiny ERA.

And for the first three months of the year, the league looked prescient. When June came to a close, Belisle had a 6.53 ERA/5.17 FIP/5.53 xFIP. He was pitching himself out of baseball, as if the Twins released him, he might not get another chance, given his age and lack of ability to put batters away. An aging command guy with a 12% walk rate isn’t something many teams want.

But then, at the beginning of July, Belisle started doing something weird, for him; he started striking everyone out.

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Mike Pelfrey on His Post-Surgery Lack of Command

Chicago White Sox right-hander Mike Pelfrey is a survivor of Tommy John surgery, but only in the technical sense of having returned to a major-league mound after having undergone the procedure. Prior to going under the knife, the 6-foot-7 right-hander was a solid, midrotation starter for the New York Mets. Since surgery, however, he’s been a shell of his old self. Pitching for the Minnesota Twins, Detroit Tigers, and now the White Sox, Pelfrey is 18-47 with a 4.99 ERA over his last four-plus seasons.

Age-wise, he isn’t over the hill. The former first-round pick is still just 33 years old. And while his arm feels strong, it also feels… different. Pelfrey can’t quite put a finger on it, but ever since his ulnar collateral ligament — and subsequently an ulnar nerve — were repaired, something has been amiss. A dozen years — and countless pitches — into his big-league career, he has limited control over where the ball is going to go once it leaves his hand.

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Mike Pelfrey on his post-surgery command issues: “There’s been a little more adversity than I would like. Early in my career I was more of a power-sinker guy — I was about 75% fastballs — and my command was a lot better. In 2012, I ended up getting hurt. My elbow blew out after three starts, and I had Tommy John surgery. I’ve never been the same since. My command hasn’t quite been the same. Read the rest of this entry »


Should Zack Godley Throw the Changeup More?

Things are going well for Arizona starter Zack Godley. He’s among the top 25 of all pitchers this year no matter how you measure value, his team comfortably occupies the first Wild Card spot, and he’s outperforming expectations. Some of those expectations might have been muted because, at first glance, he looks like a run-of-the-mill sinker/breaking-ball pitcher without a sufficiently good changeup to battle lefties. But then you look at the results on his change and you’re tempted to tinker, to suggest he should throw it more. Dig a little deeper, though, and things aren’t as clear.

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Mikie Mahtook’s Surprise Season

This is Ashley MacLennan’s fifth 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. She’ll be contributing regularly here over the next month. Read the work of all our residents here.

When the Detroit Tigers acquired Mikie Mahtook from the Tampa Bay Rays in January for a player to be named later – a player who would be Drew Smith – there wasn’t a lot of expectation for the role he would play on the team. Mahtook, 27, had spent the bulk of his career to that point in the Rays’ minor-league system, seeing only limited major-league reps in 2015 and 2016.

The Tigers, who had traded everyday center fielder Cameron Maybin to the Los Angeles Angels during the offseason, needed some outfield depth and were looking for a player whom they could partner with Tyler Collins and potentially JaCoby Jones, the latter of whom had shown promise in spring training. Mahtook was never intended to become a full-time center fielder. Thanks to a subpar 2016, during which he posted a grim .195/.231/.292 in 65 games, expectations for his performance were low.

The new recruit did little to defy those expectation early in the season. His April was uninspiring, his May even worse. (He recorded a line of just .179/.179/.321 over 28 plate appearances in May.) Then, in June, everything started to change. His playing time doubled and he began hitting. He produced a .333/.333/.529 slash line that month; in July, he hit an even better .346/.422/.538.

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Sinking and Then Swimming with Byron Buxton

The Twins demoted a struggling Byron Buxton, once the consensus top prospect in the game, twice last season.

The first occasion was on April 25th, after 17 games and 13 starts. Buxton was batting .156. The Twins dispatched Buxton again to Rochester, N.Y., on August 6th after Buxton had played in 63 games — 59 starts — and was slashing .193/.247/.315.

On April 25th of this season, Buxton was again struggling mightily, batting .133.

After a strong finish last season, he had issues right out of the gate this season.

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Joey Votto Went 0-for-0 With Five Walks

In Sunday’s game against the Pirates, Joey Votto batted five times, without recording an official at-bat. He drew five walks, none of which were intentional. It wasn’t actually the only time Votto has drawn five walks in a game in his career. It wasn’t actually the only time a player has drawn five walks in a game this season. And it didn’t actually tie a single-game walk record, thanks to Jimmie Foxx. Five walks in five trips is rare and notable. This, though — this is what really put the Votto game over the top.

Joey Votto batted five times and walked five times while drawing 43 pitches. Now, most articles don’t want to begin by comparing some current player to D’Angelo Jimenez. That’s not exactly a one-way ticket to Traffictopia. But pitch-by-pitch data has existed for nearly three decades. Votto just equaled a modern-day record while notching a four-digit OBP. For this one day, more than any other, Joey Votto was exhausting.

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