FanGraphs Baseball

Carson Fulmer was perhaps the 2015 draft’s most polarizing prospect. He was, on one hand, a college prospect with a career-long track record of success (sub-2 ERAs as a sophomore and junior, 167 Ks in 127.2 IP in ’15) and objectively hellacious stuff, while, on the other hand, both inefficient and the owner of an ugly-duckling delivery that scared off many more scouts than just the usual cross section of xenophobes. Mostly, three camps formed: the group that thought Fulmer could start, the group who thought he’d end up in relief and was bothered enough by that to move him down their board, and the group that thought he’d end up in relief but didn’t care.

In an ironic twist best suited for baseball, Fulmer has essentially proven each camp right while simultaneously remaining difficult to project, even as he’s ascended to the majors. His stuff remains incredible, each offering in the four-pitch repertoire ready to miss major-league bats, but he’s walked 51 hitters in 87 innings this season.

I like, in these call-up pieces, to talk about things like pitch sequencing and pitch utility so we can have a deeper and more intricate understanding of how these guys are getting outs. With Fulmer, that’s not possible. Because Fulmer is just as likely to throw a strike with his fastball as he is with any other pitch, he’ll throw any of his four pitches in any count to both left- and right-handed hitters. This is strangely liberating. Fulmer’s fastball was 93-94 mph at the Futures Game and in his debut on Sunday. All the secondaries (cutter 89-91, curveball 77-81 with 11-5 movement, changeup 85-89 with arm-side run) are above-average to plus and could be coming at any time.

Fulmer’s delivery is paced like a hummingbird’s heart beat and lots of scouts think it’s the primary cause of his wildness. It’s also part of what makes him so unique and difficult to hit. It appears as though the White Sox plan on using Fulmer in an upscaled relief role, which is probably going to be good for (a) maximizing his impact on the club this year by frequently deploying him for more than three outs at a time and (b) giving him more opportunities to hone his command than he’d be getting as a standard, one-inning reliever. It’s hard to project better than 40 future control for Fulmer, but there is a chance he figures out how to throw an acceptable amount of strikes sometime during his mid-20s — the way it looks like Trevor Bauer has, for example — and makes it work as a starter. If he does his stuff is good enough to carry him to a #3 starter’s value despite his likely inefficiency.

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Let’s be clear about the reality of baseball trades. Despite all of the rumors and all of the posturing, every team has the same stance on just about every player: The player is available for trade, given a good-enough offer. That second part is where it gets complicated, because “good enough” can mean very different things. Not all teams value all players in the same way, so when you’re trading, you’re looking for guys who might be undervalued, or you’re looking to move guys who might be overvalued. Ultimately, though, all you need is a match. When you have a match, you have a trade, no matter what’s been said to the public.

What the Braves have said to the public is that they’re not real interested in trading Julio Teheran. They’ve said this on multiple occasions, in response to rumors that would have Teheran joining any number of current contenders. The point the Braves are effectively getting across is that they’re not motivated to move Teheran. They want other teams to know they value him highly. And, you know, they should! Good pitcher. Good contract. He shouldn’t be cheap to acquire, but at the same time, I don’t think the Braves should be that interested in holding steady. The present market circumstances might never repeat.

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You don’t often see GMs fired two weeks before the trade deadline, as this is a pretty busy time of year to be shaking up a front office. You don’t often see the Twins fire anyone, as organizational continuity has been a hallmark of their club, and why they’ve only had five GMs in their franchise history. But today, the Twins bucked both trends, relieving Terry Ryan of his duties, and replacing him on an interim basis with assistant GM Rob Antony.

Minnesota Twins announce GM Terry Ryan has been relieved of his duties. Assistant GM Rob Antony as Interim GM. pic.twitter.com/LF2iYotKZ9

— Minnesota Twins (@Twins) July 18, 2016

Ryan is well respected within the game, but this shows that even his leash was only so long; a GM with a lesser reputation would have likely been removed from the post a while ago, given the number of missteps the front office has made of late. The team’s investments in Ervin Santana and Ricky Nolasco haven’t paid off, and after finding a breakthrough with Phil Hughes, an early extension has turned him into a liability as well, after he went back to being Phil Hughes. Combine that with the Joe Mauer contract going south — which, to be fair, mostly had to do with Mauer’s concussion issues forcing a move off catcher, which couldn’t have really been predicted — and a team with a mid-level payroll was not getting much of a return on their significant financial investments.

That puts a lot of pressure on the team to develop a host of young stars, but Byron Buxton hasn’t yet lived up to the hype, Miguel Sano is too one dimensional to carry a team by himself, and young arms like Kyle Gibson have failed to turn into high-quality starters. With too many things going wrong, the Twins find themselves with the worst record in the American League, and not enough hope for the current roster that things are going to turn around any time soon. And so they decided to make a change.

That said, this should be a fairly attractive job for a younger candidate looking to make their mark in the game. Buxton isn’t a complete bust just yet, and with Sano around, there are a couple of potential cornerstone pieces in place, if the new regime can figure out how to maximize their abilities. The team also isn’t as bad as their record makes them look — their BaseRuns record is 40-51, still not great, but less disastrous — and could be in line for some improvement even without a lot of tinkering. Toss in a division that doesn’t have a traditional behemoth, and the Twins path back to contention could be shorter than some of the other jobs that have opened up lately.

The first sure-fire sign of any good, impending mid-season selling frenzy is upper-management coming out and insisting to the public, “Who, us? No, no way. We’re definitely not selling. Which, that’s fine. Makes sense. Job of upper-management is to make money, and letting all the fans know a month in advance that the team is throwing in the weol of the now for a towel of the future isn’t a great way to keep fannies in the seats, even while the team’s still intact. Despite those claims, though, word always gets out, and the second sure-fire sign of any good, impending mid-season selling frenzy is the resignation that, “Yeah, OK, you caught us; we’re probably sellers.” The third sign is the sale itself.

The New York Yankees have exhibited the first two symptoms of fire-sale fever. After dropping the first series out of the All-Star break to the Boston Red Sox, the Yankees are now 45-46, fourth place in the American League East, and owners of a 6.1% chance to make the postseason, according to our playoff odds. The last three days have represented the club’s lowest points of the season.

And, given the unique construction of the Yankees’ roster, the club seems poised for a rare sell-off, one that, if executed to the fullest extent, could have the second-half version of the team appearing unrecognizable to the first. It seems likely that very few players of the next good Yankees team currently exist on this one. The Yankees are going to make some moves. The question is: how many? Let’s take the lever and push it all the way up. Just for fun, let’s imagine what a complete Yankees teardown looks like.

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Episode 668
Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen is the guest on this edition of the pod, during which he discusses his observations — regarding St. Louis prospect Alex Reyes, for example — from the Futures Games; considers the projections versus scouting reports on Andrew Benintendi and Alex Bregman; plus also chronicles his transcontinental scouting trip.

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 2 min play time.)

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Miami at Philadelphia | 19:05 ET
Fernandez (107.1 IP, 57 xFIP-) vs. Nola (96.0 IP, 72 xFIP-)
If Benjamin Franklin didn’t say it expressly, then he certainly thought it once or twice: the key in this life is to budget one’s resources properly — not just money, but also one’s energy and one’s time. It’s imperative, this practice, to keeping the mind sana and the body sano.

Today, the author utilized almost the entirety of his alloted time for this post to composing the unwieldy description of NERD’s postseason adjustment, which appears below. As a result, there’s no discussion of today’s most highly rated game.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Philadelphia Radio.

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With Tyler Thornburg traded to Boston today, we’re re-featuring this post, since it is now relevant again.

We are now officially two weeks away from MLB’s non-waiver trade deadline, and one thing is clear: over the next 14 days, you’re going to see a lot of relievers on the move. The teams that are definitely selling don’t have many starting pitchers to move, and the crop of walk-year hitters isn’t so great either, but what these non-contenders do have an excess of are relief pitchers.

Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller from the Yankees. Alex Colome and Xavier Cedeno from the Rays. Tyler Clippard and Daniel Hudson from the Diamondbacks. Ryan Madson and John Axford from the A’s. Jeanmar Gomez from the Phillies and Joe Smith from the Angels will probably be on the move, and that isn’t even counting guys like Mark Melancon or Steve Cishek who could get moved if things go south for their teams over the next couple of weeks. With nearly every contender looking at bolstering their bullpen, there’s enough demand to clear the supply of available relievers, but we’re definitely not looking at a shortage at the position like there are at other spots this year.

But yet, if I was hunting for a relief pitcher over the next two weeks, my first call would be to the Milwaukee Brewers. They’ve been baseball’s most aggressive team in remaking their roster since David Stearns took over last year, and you know that front office is looking for any opportunity they can to add long-term value, knowing their chances at contention over the next few years are slim at best.

Jeremy Jeffress, the team’s closer, is already generating plenty of trade chatter, as you’d expect from a closer with 23 saves, a 2.35 ERA, and a 96 mph fastball, but he’s not the guy I’d be after. Will Smith would have been a really interesting name if he hadn’t blown out his knee in Spring Training, and while he’s recovered enough to get back on the mound, he doesn’t really look like his old self right now; missing velocity and strikeout rates lead me to guess that the Brewers hold onto Smith and hope he rebuilds some value as he gets further away from the injury, then look to move him over the winter or next summer.

No, the guy I’d want is Tyler Thornburg.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Baltimore at Tampa Bay | 13:10 ET
Bundy (38.0 IP, 116 xFIP-) vs. Odorizzi (104.2 IP, 101 xFIP-)
A lot hasn’t gone particularly well for Dylan Bundy over the last few years. After having been selected fourth overall in 2011 out of an Oklahoma high school and then promptly dispatching all manner of hitter up to Double-A as just a 19-year-old, Bundy experienced arm trouble which required surgery. Since then, he’s failed to reproduce the ecstatic promise of his first year — failed until this most recent month, that is. One wouldn’t necessarily notice it even by examining Bundy’s full-season numbers, but he’s been excellent recently.

Regard:

That’s Bundy over the most recent month (on bottom) compared to all of Bundy from before that. The difference is stark. More strikeouts, fewer walks, more ground balls — and he’s throwing harder. Which, perhaps that last variable is responsible for the first three: greater arm speed tends to have positive consequences beyond just a better fastball.

Of course, all that’s been in relief because all of Bundy’s career appearances have been in relief. This is his first start as a major leaguer. The point, though: Bundy appears more well prepared to handle a starting role now than the last couple years would lead one to suppose.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Tampa Bay Radio or Baltimore Television.

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