It feels like ages ago, but back when he was a high-level prospect, George Springer was absolutely fascinating. In Springer, the Astros had a phenomenal athlete with almost unparalleled bat speed. But Springer’s game also came with a lot of swinging and missing, whiffs to such a degree that there were real questions about how he’d be able to handle the bigs. You know how this has gone: Springer has established himself as a quality outfielder, after having dramatically improved his contact skills. Getting better at contact is not an easy thing to do, but Springer made himself an outlier, and now he’s a star.

Springer’s big gain came between 2014 and 2015, and this year he’s actually taken another step forward, in terms of getting the bat to the ball. As a rookie, Springer posted baseball’s very lowest contact rate. As a rookie himself, Joc Pederson posted baseball’s sixth-lowest contact rate. There’s long been concern about Pederson’s own ability to make consistent contact. His swings and misses could get exploited, but Springer demonstrated improvement could be possible. And now Pederson is following in Springer’s footsteps.

Read the rest of this entry »

Teoscar Hernandez has always possessed an enticing combination of power and speed. His primary flaw, however, has been his inability to make contact. In 2014, he belted 21 homers and stole 33 bags, but struck out 28% of the time. Last year, he posted 17 homers and 33 steals with a 24% strikeout rate. The end result was a .219/.275/.362 batting line. More often than not, hitters who strike out that frequently don’t carry their success over to the big leagues, and it wasn’t at all clear that Hernandez was ever going to make enough contact to make it work.

But a funny thing started happening this year: Hernandez has seemingly learned how to avoid the strikeout. He opened the year at the Double-A level, where he hit .305/.384/.437 with a 17% strikeout rate. Following a promotion to Triple-A, he slashed .313/.365/.500 with a 16% strikeout clip. Despite the added contact, he still managed 10 homers in just over 100 games — plus one more in Houston on Friday. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 675
Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen is the guest on this edition of the pod, during which he shares some notes from the Area Code Games on the top high-school prospects (including RHP Hunter Greene and OF Jo Adell and) of the 2017 draft; supplies a sort of prospect retrospective of Toronto second baseman Devon Travis, the former 13th-round selection who’s already produced two wins this season in limited time; and reluctantly answers a question about Tim Tebow’s future in baseball.

This episode of the program either is or isn’t sponsored by SeatGeek, which site removes both the work and also the hassle from the process of shopping for tickets.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 11 min play time.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Read the rest of this entry »

Just hours after Alex Rodriguez walked off the field following his final game (in pinstripes, at least), the Yankees made the following string of transactions.

And just hours after making those transactions, both Aaron Judge and Tyler Austin had already homered in the big leagues. Out with the old, in with the new.

Read the rest of this entry »

Each August, the best and brightest minds in the game come together in Boston for Saberseminar. Like the five conferences that preceded it, Saberseminar 6 was a fantastic weekend of friends and baseball research, and most importantly, raising money for cancer research.

We helped kick off the weekend with a Friday night event at Mead Hall in Cambridge. Anecdotally, it was the best attended pre-Saberseminar meetup yet, and it was wonderful to see so many new faces, as well as familiar ones.
Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

senpaisanto:

Read the rest of this entry »

“Does Zach Britton have a shot at the Cy Young this year?”

It’s a question I didn’t take seriously at first. It’s only happened once in the last 20 years, and Eric Gagne’s 2003 season is perhaps the greatest season in the history of the modern closer. It comes complete with major league records — 55 consecutive single-season saves and 63 consecutive saves spanning multiple seasons — that helped justify the voter’s decision. There existed both the utter dominance and the storyline. But the Cy Young Award is now almost universally a starter’s award, and it’s been fair to wonder all this time whether Gagne could be the last reliever to win it, but it also might be time to start wondering whether this is the year it should happen again.

Read the rest of this entry »

With 117 games in the books, the Miami Marlins are one measly half-game out of wild card position. Considering they’re just five games over .500 and four teams are within 2 1/2 games of that final wild card spot, I wouldn’t exactly go printing Marlins playoff tickets yet, but it’s impossible to deny that the theoretical scenario in which they reach the postseason is becoming increasingly possible. As a result, they are now reasonably in a position where it’s in their best interest to make decisions over the next 45 games that best give their current team a chance to win. Yesterday’s announcement that Giancarlo Stanton’s season is over naturally raised the following question: “Who should the Marlins add to help replace that production?” The initial rumored answer is the hilariously unsatisfying solution of newly minted free agent, Alex Rodriguez. On a visceral, gut level, this is a horrendous idea, but let’s move beyond that immediate reaction and take stock of the pros and the cons of this pairing.
Read the rest of this entry »

Please welcome Michelle Jay to FanGraphs. You’ll generally find Michelle behind any type of camera lens or social media app. No matter which hat she is wearing at a particular time, we are excited to have her on board.

Dear readers, allow me to introduce you to the latest ways to find content from across FanGraphs’s family of blogs. You may already follow us on Twitter (@fangraphs) or Facebook (/fangraphs). Through those channels, we’ve been providing you a stream of nearly every single article published as they are published to the site. We’ll still continue to do that. But, now you’ll see some extra content, things you’ll get only by following us on social media.
Read the rest of this entry »