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The reigning American League champion Cleveland Indians haven’t been quite as dominant so far in 2017 as last year. Lackluster production from their outfielders has been a big culprit. Michael Brantley is seemingly healthy and productive once again, but there’s been a void beyond him. Abraham Almonte, Brandon Guyer, and Austin Jackson have been varying degrees of unremarkable in limited playing time and have all found their way to the 10-day DL. Minor-league journeyman Daniel Robertson has been playing right field this week, while Lonnie Chisenhall has started 18 games in center this season.

The Indians were desperate for outfield help, and luckily they had an impact player waiting in the wings in the form of top prospect Bradley Zimmer. Zimmer has mashed Triple-A pitching this year to the tune of .294/.371/.532 and has stolen nine bases. Zimmer is a 6-foot-5 power hitter who also happens to be a speedy center fielder, which means Chisenhall can return to a corner where he belongs. Zimmer has also posted double-digit walk rates at most levels of the minors, which gives him yet another way to provide value. Very few prospects can get on base, hit for power, and play good defense at a premium position, making Zimmer a rare bird. On the downside, however, Zimmer has some serious contact issues that threaten to eat away at his offensive value. He struck out at a high-but-acceptable 30% clip this year, but was up over 37% in his first crack at Triple-A last year, when he hit .242 without any power.

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The Rangers are currently riding a six-game winning streak. That’s the longest active streak around! Now, to be fair, three of those wins came against the Padres, who are bad, and the other three came against the A’s, who are more bad than good. And even with the winning streak they’ve pulled off, the Rangers still have one more loss than they have wins. They’re under .500 and eight games out of first. Suffice to say, the Rangers haven’t come sprinting out of the gate.

But it would be easy to look at the Rangers and feel a little disappointed. What if we were to spin things in the other direction? It’s true that, yes, overall, the Rangers have failed to impress. Yet at the same time, it’s impressive that they’re even 19-20, given how things have gone. Rangers fans are probably already acutely aware of what I’m going to discuss, but, it’s time to talk about the top of the Rangers’ roster.

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Previously
Changeups: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Curveballs: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Cutters and Splitters: MLB Starters.
Four-Seamers: AL Starters / NL Starters.

Our series evaluating the individual pitch offerings of 2016 ERA qualifiers grinds on. Actually hoped to be finished by now, but I’ve been writing a little bit more over at ESPN Insider (shameless plug), slowing down my progress here. We’re going to double up today, and tackle both AL and NL two-seam fastballs.

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One of the more fascinating rollouts from Baseball Savant this season has been xwOBA, a metric that utilizes launch angle and exit velocity to assign a hit value (single, double, triple, home run, or out) to every batted ball and then translates the results to “expected” wOBA. Why does it matter? By stripping out the influence of luck and defense, it gets closer to something like a “deserved” hitting number.

Here’s what the glossary at MLB.com says about the metric:

xwOBA is more indicative of a player’s skill than regular wOBA, as xwOBA removes defense from the equation. Hitters, and likewise pitchers, are able to influence exit velocity and launch angle but have no control over what happens to a batted ball once it is put into play.

For instance, Tigers first baseman Miguel Cabrera produced a .399 wOBA in 2016. But based on the quality of his contact, his xwOBA was .459.

For the most part, those claims make sense. But that’s not to say xwOBA can’t be beaten. To understand how, let’s look a little bit at how wOBA compares to xwOBA. Let’s begin by looking at all players from last season who recorded at least 400 at bats and compared their wOBAs to their xwOBAs. The scatter plot looks like this.

There’s a pretty strong relationship there. Of the 183 players represented above, 150 had a disparity between wOBA and xwOBA under 30 points. That seems pretty conclusive.

So what are we to do with this data? We could look at the outliers on either end, presume that they were either unlucky or lucky when it came to batted balls, and then move on with the analysis. However, before we do that, we might want to look at other reasons for the potential disparity. To that end, I did an eye test of sorts. I took all players with at least 400 at bats in both 2015 and 2016 and looked at their xwOBA minus wOBA in both seasons. If a player had a negative number, he might be considered to have had some good luck. If the numbers were positive, he might have had some bad luck.

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Let’s take a look at the standings, shall we? The Diamondbacks are presently sitting in…okay, third place. But while they might be third place in the National League West, they’re also fifth place in the National League, overall, meaning they occupy a playoff spot. In other words, it’s been more of a good start than a bad one. And an encouraging start, given the organizational shake-up between years.

If you’ll remember, coming into the season, the Diamondbacks were defined by what you could call an intriguing post-hype pitching staff. It stood to reason that, if it was going to be a good year, they’d need those pitchers to deliver on the promise they’d had before. And, wouldn’t you know it, but according to the leaderboards, the Diamondbacks are fifth in baseball in pitching-staff WAR. They’re first among starting rotations. The effectiveness has been there, even despite Shelby Miller’s injury.

About that! Miller’s absence opened up a spot. One turn was given to Braden Shipley. The other three turns have gone to Zack Godley. Over three starts and 18.2 innings, Godley’s got 19 strikeouts, with four runs allowed. It’s not so much that Godley has been unhittable. It’s that he’s been good, and better than before. Godley, who’s never been a Baseball America top-10 organizational prospect. There’s a new exciting pitcher on the staff.

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A couple of weeks ago, I looked at the 10 hitting prospects who had most improved their KATOH+ projections over the season’s first few weeks. Now that we have a more meaningful sample of games to analyze and a new Baseball America top-100 list baked in, I’m repeating that exercise. It’s still early in the season, but not too early to start identifying players who are performing better than they have in the past. A reminder: a player’s KATOH forecast denotes his projected WAR total over the first six seasons of his major-league career.

Juan Soto, OF, Washington (Profile)

Preseason KATOH+ Projection: 4.0
Current KATOH+ Projection: 11.2

Soto topped this list two weeks ago and has only built on that performance since, though he’s sidelined with an ankle injury for now. His line now sits at .360/.427/.523. Baseball America also recognized Soto’s excellence by ranking him No. 59 on their updated top-100, which also nudges up his projection. Soto possesses a rare combination of power and contact skills and is very young for his level.

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You probably don’t need much of an introduction to Kyle Schwarber. His story has been told numerous times, and he gained legendary status through his late-season return from ACL surgery, hitting .412 in the World Series to help the Cubs end their 108-year World Series drought. Schwarber is probably one of the most well known young players in baseball.

Depending on how frequently you read FanGraphs, you may be aware of Aaron Altherr. Jeff wrote about him in March when he was having a strong spring, trying to earn more time than his slotted 4th outfielder job on the Phillies would give him, and I wrote about his breakout performance last week. But while Altherr has gotten some notice for his strong performance the last few weeks, he’s still a relatively obscure young outfielder.

But despite their significantly different levels of recognition, they may be more similar than their reputations would suggest. So today, I wanted to do something of a thought experiment, and gauge how our readership sees the pair, as of May 16th, 2017.

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Hunter Renfroe had a huge game last night. The Padres outfielder hammered a two-run double in the second inning and followed with a two-run homer in the 10th. The latter was a walk-off, giving San Diego a 6-5 win over the Milwaukee Brewers. The blast was his seventh on the season, tying him with Josh Bell and Cody Bellinger for the lead among NL rookies.

Renfroe’s overall numbers aren’t great — his slash line is .217/.273/.406 — but he’s showing signs of breaking out. Over his last six games, the 25-year-old former first-round pick is 6-for-18, and four of those safeties have gone for extra bases. Every bit as notable is the fact that he’s drawn seven free passes. Selectivity has never been a strong suit for the slugger, but given his ability to propel baseballs long distances, a more-discerning eye could very well be his ticket to stardom.

There’s no questioning his raw power. The Mississippi State product left the yard 30 times last year for Triple-A El Paso while capturing Pacific Coast League MVP honors. He added four more dingers after a late-September call-up. Six of the 11 home runs Renfroe has hit in a big-league uniform have traveled over 400 feet.

Renfroe discussed his power-laden gap-to-gap approach, and his views on launch-angle data, prior to the start of the regular season.

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Renfroe on launch-angle data: “I’m obviously aware of it, but the ball is moving. It’s not sitting on a tee, so you can’t stand in the box and think about things like launch angle when the ball is coming at you 98 mph. You hit it, and whatever it does… you know? Hopefully you hit it on the barrel at a good angle, and it makes it over the fence, or at least goes for a double, or even a single.

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