A year ago, Kris Bryant’s failure to make the Cubs Opening Day roster made a good deal of news because (a) Bryant, 23, had dominated the minors and was clearly ready for the majors, and (b) by holding him down for a couple weeks, the Cubs prevented Bryant from recording a full year of service time in 2015, which also prevented him from recording the necessary six years of service time for free agency before the end of the 2021 season. Bryant was the number-one prospect in baseball at the time, but he was not the only player kept in the minor leagues at least in part due to service time considerations. Carlos Correa, Maikel Franco, Francisco Lindor, Carlos Rodon, Addison Russell, and Noah Syndergaard all spent time in the minors last year before succeeding in the big leagues. There has been little uproar this year regarding service time shenanigans. While there is no Bryant-like player, the potential for some service-time manipulation is still there.

To identify players who are ripe for manipulation it’s best to begin with the very best prospects. Of the players mentioned above, six of seven appeared among Kiley McDaniel’s top-200 prospect list last year; only Franco appeared outside the top 20, down at 38 overall. Taking a look at Baseball America’s top 20 prospects this season, we can get a good start in identifying players.

Read the rest of this entry »

The White Sox beat the Blue Jays last night by a score of 10-1 (box). Comprehensive victory. Chris Sale won his fifth game, going a ho-hum 8 innings versus a lefty-destroying lineup in a hitter’s park. Southside hitters compiled 15 hits. They won on Monday in the first game of the series and five of the six games before that, too, and today they go for the sweep at the Rogers Centre — at which park the Blue Jays haven’t been swept since 2013. No one is saying that two games and the prospect of an early (and difficult) road sweep make a season, but the White Sox are one of two teams in baseball with 15 wins, and that merits some investigation. It would merit investigation no matter what team it was, but it especially merits investigation given where the White Sox were projected to finish this season.

At the beginning of the season, our projected American League Central standings looked like this:

There’s a lot of parity in the AL this season — not necessarily top-tier parity, but a solid, middle-of-the-road type where each of the division races could go down to the wire. The AL Central fits that mold, with the preseason projections telling us the Indians were clear favorites — though if the 2014-2015 Royals were any indication, we could expect the race to possibly be tighter. The Central was potentially seen as one of the more volatile divisions, with the possibility we could have a four-way race for the division. There was even the idea before the season started that even the Twins — with a little luck and a few breakouts — could be in the mix, but that seems less possible (to put it nicely) given their woeful start. Where do the playoff odds stack up for the Central now? Let’s take a look:

Read the rest of this entry »

We continue to find ourselves very much within the “it’s too early to care about this statistic” period of the 2016 Major League Baseball season. Does your favorite player have a good WAR? How’s that young starter’s ERA? These are some examples of questions you probably shouldn’t be asking after 25 days. The data isn’t really more or less relevant than any other 20-game stretch; it’s just awfully hard to find meaningful patterns within any set of 20 games.

This is especially true for relief pitchers who have generally thrown seven to 10 innings at this point in the season. Unless a guy’s stuff is noticeably different or they appear injured, you’re simply not going to be able to use this early-season data to update your player evaluations in a significant way. What you can do during the early days of a new season is look for harbingers of change. Basically, is a player trying something new? A few weeks is enough to notice things, even if it isn’t enough time to speak forcefully about their likely impact.

With the appropriate amount of skepticism attached, let’s notice a thing about Minnesota Twins pitcher Trevor May.

Read the rest of this entry »

This hasn’t been a particularly fun season for Twins fans. Not only do they have an abysmal 7-14 record, but their young players — who are supposed to usher in a new era of Twins baseball — haven’t been performing. Top prospect Byron Buxton has been all sorts of terrible, minor-league performer Max Kepler hasn’t been much better, and Miguel Sano has underwhelmed (with the exception of a walk-off single last night) due to an alarmingly high strikeout rate.

Things are about to get a bit more fun for Twins fans, however, as top pitching prospect Jose Berrios is set to debut tonight against the Indians. Based on minor-league performance, the Puerto Rican righty looks like he’s more than ready for the show. He’s been carving up minor-league hitters for a few years now, and has been especially dominant since Minnesota promoted him to Triple-A last July. In 15 starts over that span, he’s struck out 28% of opposing hitters and walked just 6%, resulting in a 2.33 ERA and 2.78 FIP. All that and he’s not even 22 yet. Berrios was a consensus top-30 prospect heading into the year. John Sickels (ninth overall) was the high man on Berrios, while Baseball America (28th overall) was the low man.

Unsurprisingly, KATOH loves it some Berrios. With a projected 10.0 WAR over the next six seasons, he appeared 12th overall on KATOH’s top-100 prospect list. Among pitchers, he ranked second behind teenage uber-prospect Julio Urias. With a ~30% strikeout rate, Berrios has missed plenty of bats in the minors. Since minor -eague strikeout rate tends to be very predictive of big-league success, this bodes well for Berrios’ long-term future.

Read the rest of this entry »

They say you can’t predict baseball, but that’s nonsense. You can’t predict all of baseball, but you can definitely predict some of baseball. One of those predictions that any one of us could’ve made: There was no way Trevor Story was going to keep that up. It was so obvious that even saying it would’ve been empty. Pointless. The prediction was essentially implied by the statistics, because the statistics were so absurd everybody recognized it.

Let’s talk about this. Hot starts like Story’s regress. We know that to be true, and regression takes place for a few reasons. Luck just evening out is one of them. Hot streaks are typically accompanied by good luck, and cold slumps are typically accompanied by bad luck. And then there are the adjustments. Adjustments! Our favorite genre. When you’re a hot hitter, you don’t keep getting the same at-bats over and over and over again. Opponents learn about you, and they put that information to use. Strengths are apparent, and so are anti-strengths, and that gets folded in to how a guy gets pitched. It’s a tale as old as baseball, even if it’s told a little differently these days.

Hot starts regress. Opponents adjust. Trevor Story had a hot start. Opponents adjusted. Welcome to the big leagues.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Going all the way back to the turn of the previous century, the worst team wRC+ was posted by the 1920 Philadelphia Athletics, who finished at 67. The worst mark in more modern baseball came from the 1963 Mets, who finished at 69, and then if you look at the more recent era, the 2013 Marlins finished at 73. Terrifically bad offenses, all. This year’s Braves are sitting at 57.

They won’t finish at 57, because the franchise would fold itself before it would let that happen. But the situation to this point has been absolutely dreadful, and it’s made a bit worse by the fact that the front office spent the offseason assuring people the team, and especially the lineup, would be better. This is from a mid-January Twitter takeover, in response to a fan asking why someone should bother even showing up at the park:

Better offense at every position, chance to see many impact prospects make MLB debut, last year of Turner Field https://t.co/CaJh0UXIdL

— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) January 14, 2016

You’ve probably seen some of what’s been going on. It’s been almost impossible to ignore. But let’s review anyway. Sometimes a few images can pack a bigger wallop than a table of statistics.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam banter about Matt Albers, Mike Trout, and front-office hiring trends, then discuss whether the Astros have answered the doubts about their rebuild.

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

The biggest news regarding this year’s draft broke a couple of weeks ago when we learned that Barnegat High School (N.J.) left-hander Jason Groome – a strong candidate to become the No. 1 overall selection in June – was temporarily suspended for violating a transfer rule.

The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association requires that any athlete who transfers schools without changing addresses must sit out the first 30 days of the season or half of the team’s total number of games. According to multiple media reports, the NJSIAA found Groome violated that rule when he transferred to Barnegat for his senior season after spending last year at IMG Academy in Florida. In other words, because his parents didn’t move with him to IMG – which is a boarding school – he didn’t provide the “bona fide change of residence” as outlined in the NJISAA’s bylaws. Because of the ineligibility ruling, Barnegat forfeited both games in which Groome has pitched, erasing the 19-strikeout no-hitter he threw on April 11. He’s eligible to return to action this week.

For a second, let’s not consider why parents would be expected to move with their children to a boarding school. Let’s also not consider how this transfer rule is in place to prevent the gaining of an athletic advantage, and that Groome was transferring back to the school where he played his freshman and sophomore years to play a final season with his hometown friends. And let’s also not question why the NJSIAA doesn’t allow an appeals hearing under the rule. You can find other media outlets exploring these issues at length, with the majority opinion coming down on the side of the player. Instead, let’s focus on the timing of the suspension, which is at least unfortunate, and at most suspicious.

Read the rest of this entry »