The 2017 MLB Draft kicks off tonight at 7 p.m. ET, and the Minnesota Twins will have the first pick from what is generally considered to be a pretty a mediocre class. And how the rest of the draft goes depends on how the Twins answer one pretty simple question: can a high-end MLB player really contribute as both a hitter and a pitcher?
Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric forefather Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game.
How are they calculated? Haphazardly, is how. An explanation of the components and formulae which produce these NERD scores is available here. All objections to the numbers here are probably justified, on account of how this entire endeavor is absurd.
Most Highly Rated Game
Minnesota at San Francisco | 16:05 ET
Turley (MLB Debut) vs. Cain (64.2 IP, 119 xFIP-)
After pitching brilliantly at both Double- and Triple-A this season, left-hander Nik Turley is expected to make his major-league debut this afternoon for the Minnesota Twins. Drafted originally by the Yankees in 2008, Turley has been employed by Boston, San Francisco, and Somerset (of the independent Atlantic League) in the meantime. Signed by the Twins as a minor-league free agent this past offseason, Turley has now recorded strikeout and walk rates of 41.2% and 7.4%, respectively, over roughly 50 innings. That performance has earned him a place atop the arbitrarily calculated Fringe Five Scoreboard curated by the present author.
If his minor-league starts are any indication, Turley will throw a combination of fastball and curveball almost exclusively. The former sits in the low 90s and he often works it to the top part of the zone to complement the latter one. Both sorts of pitches are featured in what follows — namely, video footage documenting some of Gleyber Torres’s whiffs against the Turley from last Tuesday.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.
Daniel Norris has no illusions of being Clayton Kershaw, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to emulate him. Who wouldn’t? Kershaw is arguably baseball’s best pitcher, and — according to the Detroit Tigers southpaw — they share important characteristics. For those reasons, Norris watches “almost all of Kershaw’s starts,” and has for some time.
“I like watching him pitch,” Norris told me on Friday. “And because we’re similar, I can learn from him. He’s the best in the world — he’s Kershaw — but he’s a lefty, he’s typically 93-95, he’s got a slider that’s 88-90, he’s got a curveball that’s 73-76, and he’s started throwing a changeup. That’s four pitches that I throw, as well. If I can pick up something from the way he maybe throws his slider down-and-in more often than he goes backdoor… stuff like that. I like how he attacks hitters.”
Norris also likes how Kershaw, despite being elite, continues to evolve. He pointed to how the Dodgers ace has not only started throwing more changeups, he’s also “kind of dropping down from time to time, to give hitters different angles.” Norris has noticed subtle “delivery adjustments” over the years, where Kershaw appeared to be “working on mechanical rhythms and tempos.”
Norris is currently doing exactly that. Consistency and command have been issues for the 24-year-old former Toronto Blue Jay, and he feels that a work-in-progress tweak may help solve those woes. He described it as “kind of a higher leg kick, and getting a stronger front side.” One of the goals is a freer and easier delivery. Rather than being out there “trying not to walk guys,” he feels he needs to “not think about anything, just let it go and trust my stuff.” Read the rest of this entry »
Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric forefather Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game.
How are they calculated? Haphazardly, is how. An explanation of the components and formulae which produce these NERD scores is available here. All objections to the numbers here are probably justified, on account of how this entire endeavor is absurd.
Most Highly Rated Game
Cincinnati at Los Angeles NL | 22:10 ET
Wojciechowski (14.0 IP, 122 xFIP-) vs. Wood (48.0 IP, 57 xFIP-)
Over just eight starts (and 10 appearances total), left-hander Alex Wood has already recorded the WAR figure (roughly two wins, whether calculated by FIP or ERA) one would expect from an average starter over the course of an entire season. If he performs at a similar level over the next two-thirds of the year, he’ll have supplied production equivalent to three average starting pitchers. Would it be right, in that case, to regard him as one man or three men? “Both,” is one possible answer.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Los Angeles NL Television.
Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about an odd Neifi Perez appearance, John McCain’s Diamondbacks mention, EW’s August eclipse event, and a questionable fun fact, then talk to Janell Wheaton, a left-handed catcher for the Florida Gators Women’s College World Series team, about why baseball is biased against left-handed catchers (and why it shouldn’t be). Lastly, Ben banters (with himself) about an ankle-injury hypothesis.
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Because of the basketball game, we’ve moved the Pitch Talks from Monday, June 12th, to September 18th. All previous tickets will carry over and we hope you’ll come see us then!
With the Giants taking a breather and stuck in limbo, it’s a great time to hear General Manager Bobby Evans thoughts on baseball and the future. Therese Vinal, with all of her great clubhouse experience and upbeat energy, and Alex Pavlovic, insider extraordinaire for NBC Sports Bay Area, will be able to tell us about the feeling on the ground. I’ll be there giving my in-between experience, and helping bridge to Grant Brisbee’s unique feel for analysis.
And though there’s a distinctly Giants feel to the whole thing, there should be something for everyone. I practically live in the visitor’s clubhouse anyway.
Tickets are $25, but using Homestand as the coupon code, you can get it down to just $20. The venue states this is a 21 and up show, so unfortunately, adults only at this one. I’ll come early if you want to have a beer by the bar.
Hope to see you guys in September.
Brilliance in small samples can be intoxicating. Case in point: in a poll conducted by ESPN this preseason, 41% of respondents predicted Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez would slug between 31-40 homers this year. Another 10% called for more than 40. For reference, of the 38 hitters who reached the 30-homer threshold in 2016, only one of them (Evan Gattis) did work as a catcher.
On the one hand, it’s not difficult to understand the reason for that sort of enthusiasm. Sanchez was excellent in 200-plus plate appearances for the Yankees last year, hitting 20 homers and recording just over three wins in a wonderful late-season burst. On the other hand, expecting a player to continue that kind of pace — especially a young catcher with limited exposure to major-league pitching — is probably unreasonable.
I attempted to warn everyone about the pitfalls of such expectations back in March. From that post:
In the fantasy baseball world, only Buster Posey is being drafted earlier at catcher. Generally conservative projection systems forecast that Sanchez will be a star this season. ZiPS pegs Sanchez for 27 homers, a 112 wRC+, and a 3.4 WAR season. PECOTA’s 70th percentile outlook has Sanchez recording 33 homers, a .504 slugging mark, and 4.8 wins. And the Fans’ average crowdsourced projection for Sanchez is a .274/.344/.488 slash line and 5.4 WAR season. The Fans believe, in other words, that Sanchez and Bryce Harper are going to produce similar value this season. …
Even in Yankee Stadium II, Sanchez wasn’t a good bet to repeat his 40% home-run rate on fly balls (HR/FB). In fact, his current mark, just shy of 27%, is still well above average. And while Sanchez could go on to produce a monster second half, the first third of the 2017 season has been a reminder not to draw too much from a small sample.
It’s not that Sanchez has been a poor player to date; quite the contrary, in fact. He’s been an above-average hitter (121 wRC+) at a position where we rarely see such offensive production. He’s having a really good year so far. He’s just not the superstar many expected him to be in his first full season. He’s still one of the more valuable young players in the game, and we know all about his potential. But his .256/.343/.471 slash line better resembles a career minor-league line (.275/.339/.461) produced over nearly 2,500 at-bats than his briefer showing last season.
Currently 5.5 games out of first place in the AL Central, it’s still unclear whether the Royals will go for it one last time with a number of the same pieces from their championship season, or if they’ll perform a massive sell-off of multiple potential free agents. Lorenzo Cain, Eric Hosmer, Jason Vargas are among those who could be moved. Perhaps Kelvin Herrera, just another season from free agency, could be gone as well. Mike Moustakas might not get the notoriety of some of his teammates, but whether the Royals go all-in or sell, it’s Moustakas who should play the most important role.
Just a few seasons ago, Moustakas was a part of a disappointing group of formerly heralded prospects on the Royals’ major-league club. In 2014, as the Royals shocked just about everyone with their run to the World Series, Moustakas finished the season with a line of .212/.271/.361, good for just a 75 wRC+. Even with solid defense, the result was a barely replacement-level season. Moustakas had a problem: he was a fly-ball hitter in a spacious park. In the 2014 postseason, Moustakas hit four homers in his first six games, but was mostly quiet the rest of the way.
That power from the 2014 postseason didn’t really carry over to 2015, but once the summer hit — around the same time baseballs began flying out of the park at a much greater rate — Moustakas surged. Due to a knee injury, he recorded only 113 plate appearances the next season, but the power showed up in limited time — and it has continued in a big way this season. The graph below shows Moustakas’ 15-game rolling ISO, allowing us to see where Moustakas took off.
In the first half of 2015, Moustakas had become a ground-ball hitter, and the 35% fly-ball rate he recorded over that period would have been the lowest of his career if it had continued. He was pairing those grounders with a very low 11% strikeout rate, .315 BABIP, and very little power. The result was a 115 wRC+ over the first half, not too bad for a guy with a career 82 wRC+ in nearly 2,000 plate appearances. As for the change in approach, maybe it was because he was slotted at the No. 2 spot in the lineup and felt he had a role to play. He hadn’t ever been a guy to run up a decent BABIP on account of all the fly balls, so it’s unclear whether this strategy of grounders was going to work long term. We’ve never had to find out.
Austin Sodders is building a groundswell of support among prospect followers. Ranking among the leaders in multiple Midwest League pitching categories has a way of doing that. In 10 starts for the West Michigan Whitecaps, the 22-year-old southpaw in the Detroit Tigers organization has a 1.39 ERA, a 0.98 WHIP, and is striking out a batter per inning. And while W-L records are to be taken with a large grain of salt, there’s certainly nothing wrong with being a perfect 6-0.
Sodders was selected in the seventh round of last year’s draft, so it’s fair to say that he’s exceeding expectations. At the same time, it’s not as though he came out of nowhere. The UC Riverside product passed up a chance to sign with the Pirates out of a junior college in 2015, and he comes from a baseball family. His father, Mike Sodders, is a former first-round pick by the Twins, and his older brother, Mike, Jr., had a stint in the Angels system.
Sodders wasn’t certain where he’d end up when last June’s draft rolled around. He knew the Tigers were among the teams interested in him, but they hadn’t — nor had anyone else — supplied him with any concrete expectations. They have, however, helped him build a more solid foundation since bringing him into the fold.
A retooled breaking ball has been a boon to his development. When I mentioned that the Baseball America Prospect Handbook says his slider will “morph into a small cutter at times,” he knew exactly what they meant. For that reason, the pitch is now in his rear-view.
