Where Is Mike Trout Going to Finish?

By now, you’ve probably heard of The Freeze. Although many would say he flopped in his All-Star Game appearance, The Freeze has nevertheless become a sensation in Atlanta. There’s a reason he was invited to the All-Star Game in the first place. The premise: Between innings, some lucky fan gets to try to run pole to pole, in the outfield. The fan is given a head start of several seconds, after which The Freeze gets to sprint after him. It’s a regular footrace, except that one of the contestants is some random individual with limited training, and the other is a world-class sprinter. Hence the head start. It tends not to matter. You’ve seen the footage, and, every damn time, it’s amazing. The closing speed is unfathomable.

On a related note, Mike Trout is back. Most importantly, that’s great news for Trout and for the Angels, but hereabouts, we don’t have a particular Angels lean. They’re one of 30 ballclubs, and it doesn’t make a real difference to me what they do. We’re people who love Trout and statistics, and, officially, Trout will have missed a month and a half with a tear in his thumb. Which means that, if Trout stays healthy the rest of the way, he’ll play three quarters of one season. The other top players should play four quarters of one season. Where is Trout going to finish in WAR?

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Effectively Wild Episode 1084: Leaving the Break Behind

EWFI

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Jose Quintana trade, an Aaron Judge anecdote, Dan Uggla’s disastrous 2008 All-Star Game appearance, and the significance of Ken Rosenthal being barred from writing by Fox, then discuss ways to spice up the All-Star Game with a skills competition that could actually work before closing with a question about Judge and Mike Trout.

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2017 Trade Value: #1 to #10

The comparisons to Alex Rodriguez are neither fair nor entirely misplaced.
(Photo: Arturo Pardavila III)

Welcome to the final installment of this year’s Trade Value series; you can find links to the previous five 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 top 10. In reality, this ended up being two groups of five, with plenty of room for movement within those two groups. And at the very top of the list was the toughest call I’ve ever had to make in putting this project together. The amount of great young talent in the game right now is simply remarkable.

Just as a note: I’ll be chatting about this list at 12 p.m. ET, so if you have any questions, feel free to swing by and I’ll answer as many as I can. Now, on to the top 10.

Team Control WAR Total +19.4
Guaranteed Dollars $23.5 M
Team Control Through 2021
Previous Rank #18
Year Age Projected WAR Contract Status
2018 32 +5.4 $10.5 M
2019 33 +5.0 $13.0 M
2020 34 +4.5 $13.5 M
2021 35 +4.5 $14.0 M
Team Option

Corey Kluber was already amazing. He might actually be getting better, though. His strikeout rate has jumped from 26% to 34%. His ground-ball rate is at a career high, but so is his infield-fly rate. He still throttles contact quality. With the way he’s pitching now, he’s in that next tier of non-Kershaw starters. He’s everything you want in an ace.

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The Astros Lineup Has Been Something Historic

It’s the All-Star break, and the Houston Astros have 60 wins. That’s more wins than they had in all of 2013. It’s more wins than they had in all of 2012. It’s more wins than they had in all of 2011. Now, those Astros teams were supposed to be bad, and this Astros team was supposed to be good. No one ever expected it to be this good. No baseball team is ever expected to be this good.

There’s credit to be spread all around, but this is a post that’s focusing on the hitters, so, let’s focus on the hitters. I pretty much always choose to eliminate pitcher hitting performance, so, keep that minor factor in mind. The Astros, in April, had a 106 wRC+. They scored 4.5 runs per game. In May, they had a 129 wRC+. They scored 6.2 runs per game. In June, they had a 131 wRC+. They scored 5.8 runs per game. And so far in July, they have a 191 wRC+, and that’s a 191, not any other number, like 181 or 171 — it is not a typographical error. They’ve scored 9.8 runs per game. Over the past 30 days, the Astros as a team have combined for a 153 wRC+, which is incidentally right where you find Paul Goldschmidt. It’s been a month of a team of Paul Goldschmidts.

These Astros hitters have been insane. In just a short few minutes, I’d like to provide you with some historical context.

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Cubs Accurately Rate Underrated Jose Quintana

There’s a fairly prevalent belief that teams should be reluctant to trade with other teams in the same city. Something to do with rivalries, or whatever. You don’t want to have a valuable former asset helping out some other club just a few miles away. Indeed, if you examine trading histories, these moves are fairly uncommon. Baseball has established a precedent by which intra-city ballclubs seldom come together for a swap. However, that’s stupid. The Cubs and White Sox realize that’s stupid, and so, as of Thursday morning, we’ve got ourselves a blockbuster.

Cubs get:

White Sox get:

It’s long been fairly obvious that Quintana was going to get moved. While he’s a long-term asset, he’s really a short-term asset under long-term control, and the White Sox probably would’ve liked to have moved him last winter. Seeing Quintana get dealt isn’t surprising. It’s also not surprising to see the Cubs jump on a cost-controlled, somewhat young starter. This has been the rumor for what feels like years. They developed their bats, and they’ve needed to acquire pitching. Quintana is said pitching. Everything about this makes sense, once you move beyond whatever shock you might feel about the two Chicago teams reaching an agreement. This is a sensible exchange. It’s also a total doozy.

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Dan Szymborski FanGraphs Chat – 7/13/17

2:01
Dan Szymborski: FanGraphs works today!

2:02
Dan Szymborski: And the thunderstorm hasn’t knocked out my power.

2:02
Dan Szymborski: So I’ve dodged all of Cistulli’s best weapons to get here today.

2:02
TimMorris: Zack Britton as a Dodger is highly unfair.

2:02
Dan Szymborski: I’m not sure the Orioles are truly motivated enough at this time to pull triggers for real.

2:02
Julio Pepper: Is a team that’s 41-39 one game over .500, or two games over .500?

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Blisters and the New Ball

Talk to pitchers on the record, and the links they’re willing to draw between an increase in blisters and what looks like a tighter baseball are minimal. That makes sense — and it’s doesn’t seem to be concern for politics or press relations that’s holding them back. There are so many confounding factors that it’s the probably the right way to approach the situation.

Talk to a few pitchers off the record, though, and another link emerges, one that might provide some insight into the relationship between seams and blisters.

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Cubs and White Sox Pull off Jose Quintana Blockbuster

It’s pretty rare these days when MLB teams get to announce a big transaction on their own, as most things leak out ahead of time, and we get a few days of speculation before a deal is finally complete. But this morning, the White Sox just threw out a shocker.

We were pretty sure the White Sox were going to trade Quintana, and it seemed pretty clear the Cubs needed another starting pitcher, but the presumption was that the Chicago teams wouldn’t strike a deal, given their history of not really making trades together. They hadn’t completed a trade between teams since 2006, when Neal Cotts was traded for David Aardsma, and before that, it was 1998’s Matt Karchner for Jon Garland deal.

But this time, apparently, the fit was too perfect to pass up just because they share a city. The White Sox wanted to continue to load up on future upside, and there are few prospects in the game with more long-term value than Jimenez, who Baseball America just ranked #5 overall in their midseason update. Eric Longenhagen put a 60 FV on him before the season began, and he’s gone on to hit .271/.351/.490 as a 20-year-old in high-A ball. He’s still several years from the big leagues, but he’s got some of the biggest power upside in the minors, and the White Sox have time to be patient.

Cease is a pretty nifty second piece himself, as a 21-year-old who can get his fastball into the high-90s and was destroying the Midwest League this year. Like Jimenez, he’s got a ways to go before he’s a big leaguer, but there’s plenty of potential here.

Rose and Flete are your typical add-ons in trades like this. Neither one even made the honorable mentions section of Eric’s Cubs list this spring, and it would take some unexpected development for either to become a contributor in the big leagues. This deal is about Jimenez and Cease.

As expected, Quintana didn’t bring back quite the return that Chris Sale did, but this looks like a very nice return for the White Sox. They continue to pick upside and long-term value over proximity to the Majors, and when you collect prospects like this, your success rate will naturally be lower. But if they hit on a few of the guys they’ve acquired over the last year, they’re going to find a franchise player or two to build around. With Moncada, Jimenez, Kopech, Cease, Giolito, and Lopez, the White Sox have six pretty interesting upside plays to hope on now.

Jeff will be around in a bit with a longer write-up on this deal, and will focus more on how this helps the Cubs. But they needed another good pitcher, and now they have one they can keep around for a few more years. The Dodgers and Nationals shouldn’t forget about the Cubs just yet.


Tigers Prospect Matt Manning Is an Ace in the Making

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 »


Another Way Robot Umps Would Help

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.

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