FanGraphs Baseball

Adam Warren is quietly emerging as a reliable member of the Yankees’ rotation. The 27-year-old right-hander hasn’t been spectacular, but he’s pitched well enough for his team to have won four of his five starts. He was credited with two of those wins, and allowed just one earned run in his lone loss.

Warren worked out of the New York bullpen in 2013 and 2014, but his resume is that of a successful starter. He went 32-4 in four seasons at the University of North Carolina, and his ERA in 90 minor-league starts was 3.11. A fourth-round pick in the 2009 draft, Warren mixes and matches two- and four-seam fastballs, a slider, a curveball, and a change-up.

Warren, who will make his sixth start of the season tonight, talked about his evolution as a pitcher, and his approach on the mound, earlier this week.

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Warren on his development: “I’ve had the same pitches since I signed, but I’ve tightened them up. My change-up has gotten a lot better, and my slider has gotten a lot better. I have more feel with every pitch, and I can throw any pitch in any count. One of my strengths is that unpredictability of being able to throw any of them at any time. I’ve just gotten a little sharper. My mechanics, for the most part, have stayed the same. It’s just learning how to maybe tweak a grip, or getting more out in front with a pitch – just getting a feel for things. I’ve had a lot of good coaches help me with that.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam talk to Providence Journal Red Sox beat writer Brian MacPherson about the Red Sox rotation and the firing of Juan Nieves.

There’s nothing real surprising about what just happened. Pitching coach Juan Nieves was fired by the Red Sox, the organization citing the under-performance by the starting rotation. Said rotation has been under the microscope since the team went through the offseason without acquiring a front-line ace, and the ERA at this point is terrible. When ERAs are terrible, and when they’re terrible in higher-pressure situations, heads roll, and they frequently belong to pitching coaches. Or, they frequently belonged to pitching coaches. Anyway.

The news has primarily drawn two responses, related to one another. One is that, well, someone had to pay for the early-season disaster. It’s called accountability. Two, Nieves is being scapegoated. It’s not his fault the Red Sox never got around to adding an ace. Ben Cherington is just getting the performance he deserved. Absolutely, it’s true that Nieves isn’t to blame for the lack of a higher-profile transaction. It’s not his fault Jon Lester’s in Chicago. But it wouldn’t be fair to put this on the front office, either. Blame gets spread around. Hell, maybe there’s no one to blame at all.

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Scapegoat is an often-used word when a manager or coach is fired. As the saying goes, “You can’t fire the players,” and the person responsible for putting together the roster is rarely let go during the season. That puts a select few in the cross hairs when things aren’t going as expected. Or, in some cases, what many predicted comes to fruition.

The Red Sox fired their pitching coach today, 28 games into a season where their beleaguered staff is living down to its expectations. Unable to magically turn the likes of Clay Buchholz, Joe Kelly and Justin Masterson into more than what they are, Juan Nieves is now unemployed.

Somewhat surprisingly, Nieves’ replacement is not yet known. According to Ben Cherington, at least one internal candidate and one external candidate is being considered. The Boston GM did say “Nothing happened specifically, recently, that precipitated this.” Cherington said once the decision was reached, the right thing to do was make the move, even without a successor in place. Read the rest of this entry »

Before beginning in earnest, it’s essential or nearly essential for the reader to know that this post for FanGraphs.com on the internet relies on an improbable set of assumptions. One of those assumptions is this: that you (the reader) are a member of a major-league front office. Another is this: that you’ve solicited me, the author — a person who lives in rural New Hampshire and possesses only a basic reading-level command of Spanish — that you’ve solicited me to recommend some Mexican League players who might find some success in the majors. A third assumption is this: that you’re entirely comfortable with the knowledge that I’ve seen only a couple of these players in person — and even then it was at a spring-training game in Mexico City’s new facility while consuming a number of tall beers with British illustrator/dipsomaniac Craig Robinson.

Weirder things have probably happened than the scenario I’ve laid out above, but almost all of them have been confined to parties hosted by Silvio Berlusconi. What, then, is the purpose of this post? Mostly just to become acquainted with the most interesting (and generally young) talents in the Mexican League (or LMB).

It’s probably best to address first this question — namely, what sort of talent the LMB has produced in the past that has gone on to success in the American major leagues. The answer, broadly speaking, is that it has produced notable talent. Joakim Soria and Fernando Valenzuela, for example, both pitched in the LMB before ever making an appearance in the majors. Baseball’s current top pitching prospect, Julio Urias, was employed by the Diablos Rojos of Mexico City before that club and the Dodgers reached an agreement for him to move to the latter team. In a lower profile but still relevant instance, Houston acquired two other players from Mexico City: Japhet Amador and Leo Heras. The former was compelled to return to Mexico when his wife became ill, but Heras remains in the Astros system at the Double-A level, where he’s exhibited promising plate discipline and speed. These examples skew decidedly anecdotal, but the idea with them isn’t to supply anything like an exhaustive study, but rather merely to illustrate that a player from the LMB has ever once succeeded in the majors.

Always it’s best to complement any sort of endeavor such as this one with observational evidence. Owing to the author’s geographical constraints and also the paucity of video available for the LMB, however, that’s not really an option. In any case, one can reach some basic assumptions about a player’s talent level by considering certain relevant information and weighting it responsibly.

This sort of information, for example:

Age
Younger players are obviously more likely to improve — or at least not decline. Also, with regard to the LMB, specifically, one finds that the average age is on the older side — nearly 31 for batters and 29 for pitchers. For the purposes of this post, I’ve considered only those players who are 27 or younger.

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After taking a pitch on the hand Friday night, the Red Sox placed Ryan Hanigan on the DL with a broken finger. Hand injuries are always tricky for hitters, and this one appears to be rather serious, as it will require surgery. According to Red Sox skipper John Farrell, Hanigan’s recovery time will be “lengthy,” and he won’t return to action until after the All-Star break. The Red Sox will be without their starting catcher for a while.

Hanigan’s injury leaves the Red Sox thin at catcher. Really thin. Hanigan wasn’t even actually supposed to be Boston’s primary catcher — That distinction was slated to go to Christian Vazquez. However, Vazquez’s season came to an end before just before it started when he suffered an elbow tear in spring training.

To help fill the void behind the plate, the Red Sox called up top prospect Blake Swihart, who placed 9th on our pre-season top 200 list, higher than any other catching prospect. At the time of the call up, the switch-hitting catcher was hitting an empty but solid .338/.392/.382 in Triple-A Pawtucket. Still, despite his solid start, most felt he needed a little more seasoning before he was ready for the show. But the Sox had a gaping hole at catcher, and Swihart was next in line, so here we are. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam banter about Bryce Harper and Mike Trout and dissect several stats about the Astros’ season so far.

We have a Madison Bumgarner, right now. He just put a whole team on his shoulders and blew our minds last October, even. And with that Paul Bunyanesque workmanlike yet fiery demeanor, he seems a snowflake. Unique and alone. But maybe we have we seen pitchers like him before?

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Rehabbing a partially torn UCL with rest was an unconventional route for the Yankees and Masahiro Tanaka since the discovery of his injury last July, and there was always the possibility that it simply wouldn’t work, with the right-hander having to go under the knife at some point. While that exact situation has yet to be realized, here we are in early May with Tanaka on the indefinite-day DL due to forearm and wrist issues. As we know, forearm injuries are a big red flag, especially when your elbow is already a little balky.

Still, the Yankees have managed to cope without Tanaka so far, putting the 25-year-old Chase Whitley into the rotation: Whitley has a 0.75 ERA/1.53 FIP, 20.4 K-BB%, and 1.08 WHIP in two starts. That’s a tiny sample, and we would be remiss if we didn’t cast a lot of doubt on his ability to keep up anything near that sort of performance, but it now bears some looking into, as do the Yankees’ plans should they hit any other bumps in the road regarding their rotation (spoiler: they almost surely will).

How good has the Yankees rotation been so far this season? Great, actually. Here’s the ERA / FIP of the starters for all 30 clubs so far this season (mouse over the chart for interactivity):

The Yankees are fifth in FIP, showing how great a surprise they’ve been this year, driven mainly by Michael Pineda. As we’ll see, that level of success in the future is dependent on a lot of things lining up.

First, let’s take a look at Whitley. He couldn’t stick in the rotation last year, eventually moving to a relief role, but he has the arsenal of a starter: fastball, slider, and changeup. I’ll say this: more people would know Chase Whitley’s name if he had a fastball that matched his secondary stuff. His slider, always an average offering, is a little different this year (he’s taken almost four MPH off of it compared to 2014, and it has an inch more vertical drop), though it’s still a fly ball pitch with not a ton of depth. It’s been good this year, but the jury is still out on whether that can be sustained. His changeup is the real prize: last year, it would’ve placed in the top-10 of swinging strike rates among starters had he qualified. At its best, it looks like this:

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I’ve written many times in the past eight months that this draft class is pretty weak and that, combined with the bonus pools that limit each team’s draft spending, will make for an unpredictable draft day filled with below-slot deals. That talk has continued here and in other places but, in the last few weeks, teams’ plans have come into better focus and the question marks now start at the very top.

I called Orlando-area prep SS Brendan Rodgers the best prep player in the 2015 class a full two years ago and he’s held serve since then, standing today as the consensus top player in the whole draft for the industry and in my recent rankings.  The assumption for most of the spring was that the Diamondbacks would take Rodgers #1 as the consensus top player in a down class. Another reason this made sense is the embattled first seven months of the Dave Stewart/Tony La Russa regime in Arizona, which have gone about as bad as possible so far, so they don’t need another off-the-board, bucking-industry-consensus decision that could draw more bad PR.

I had heard in the last few weeks that Rodgers was out of the mix for the D’Backs at #1, but until I had heard who the target was, I didn’t feel comfortable reporting that, since it could just be misdirection for negotiating purposes. I had also heard the D’Backs weren’t at many of Rodgers’ games this spring, so that put more momentum behind that buzz being real.  hen, in the last few weeks, D’Backs GM Dave Stewart and VP of Baseball Ops DeJon Watson have been seen all over the country scouting amateur players, but not Rodgers.

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