FanGraphs Baseball

What follows does not constitute the most rigorous of statistical analyses. Rather, it’s designed to serve as a nearly responsible shorthand for people who, like the author, have considerably more enthusiasm for than actual knowledge of the collegiate game — a shorthand means, that is, towards detecting which players have produced the most excellent performances of the college season.

As in the first three editions of this same thing, what I’ve done is utilize principles recently introduced by Chris Mitchell on forecasting future major-league performance with minor-league stats.

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Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, D’Backs, Twins, Astros, Cubs, Reds, Phillies, Rays, Mets, Padres, Marlins, Nationals, Red Sox, White Sox, Orioles, Yankees, Braves, Athletics, Angels, Dodgers, Blue Jays, Tigers, Cardinals, Brewers, Indians, Mariners, Pirates, Royals & Giants

Top 200 Prospects Content Index

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

Draft Rankings: 2015, 2016 & 2017

International Coverage: 2015 July 2nd Parts One, Two & Three, 2016 July 2nd

The top of this list is muddled; I could see the top eight guys in almost any order by midseason and I predict I’ll be changing some of these 45 and 50 FV grades in-season. The Brewers haven’t had a great farm system in recent years, but the big league club had a mini-rebuild and the amateur talent acquisition has seem positive early returns from a more aggressive approach. Gilbert Lara is the consensus best player in last summer’s July 2nd crop and he took a notable step forward after signing with an impressive showing at instructs.

From the 2014 draft, I think 3B Jacob Gatewood is a little too risky for $1.83 million, but the early returns on CF Monte Harrison are excellent and there’s plenty to like about LHP Kodi Medeiros, even if he was a bit worn down after signing. All of these three were part of an aggressive approach, so I’d expect one to work out in a big way. The depth is drastically better now than the past few years and the arrow is pointing up in general.  There isn’t a super elite prospect in the system and this is still a system in the bottom third of baseball, but the Brew Crew are deep in that second tier of talent and there’s plenty of depth and upside here to see a higher ranking in next year’s list as a likelihood.

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Not every contract extension is a winner for both sides. Sometimes teams guarantee too much money without getting many prime seasons. Sometimes players give away too many free agent years. In Christian Yelich’s 7-year, $49.6 million contract (corrected from $51 million) — with a team option for an eighth year — the Marlins have secured Yelich’s services through his 20s and bought out three potential free agent seasons, which could bring significant savings down the line. However, $50 million is also a significant guarantee for Yelich, and this deal looks like a winner for both sides.

Signed out of high school five years ago for $1.7 million, Yelich made the minimum for part of a year in 2013 and all of 2014. He would have made the minimum again this season and next, meaning he was faced with earning under $2 million total for his first four seasons, and if he stayed healthy and productive over the next two seasons, his reward would have been an arbitration salary of around $5 million. If he played well and avoided major injury, he could earn $7 million for his first five seasons, with the bulk of that money still three years away. Yelich faced considerable risk with an eight-figure reward not anywhere in his short-term future.
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This past offseason was one of the most tumultuous in recent memory in terms of player movement. A wave of GM turnover triggered roster implosions from Atlanta to Los Angeles, and particularly to San Diego. Domino effects roiled almost all 30 franchises, with only the Indians, Twins, Mets, Phillies and Giants not undergoing at least somewhat significant change. Many teams fancied themselves clear contenders, others, clear rebuilders. Then there were the Oakland Athletics.

At first, it appeared they going the rebuilding route, as evidenced by the megadeal with Toronto involving Josh Donaldson. In the ensuing days and weeks, onlookers were left scratching their heads, wondering what Billy Beane was up to this time, as Billy Butler and Ben Zobrist, two players not exactly made of rebuilding cloth, were brought to town to complement the A’s newly more youthful nucleus. The Butler transaction was particularly curious; why would the A’s spend $30 million over three years on a pure DH coming off of a poor season? Was there, as there usually is, a method to Beane’s madness? Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees have a few question marks going into the 2015 season, the biggest of which is what to do with a certain third baseman/DH/elephant in the room. After that, it’s the structural integrity of Masahiro Tanaka’s elbow, and then a distant third is probably Mark Teixeira’s new gluten-free home run diet. However (or whoever) you think the Yankees will be on the field this year, there’s one fact that can’t be denied about this iteration of the team: the bullpen is going to throw really hard, and the odds are it will be very good if everyone stays healthy.

With all of the press the Royals received in 2014 for their cadre of power arms from the 7th to 9th inning in the form of Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis, and Greg Holland, the Yankees built a bullpen almost on their level this past offseason. The breakout of Dellin Betances in 2014, along with the acquisitions of Andrew Miller and David Carpenter, has created a back end with great strikeout ability and excellent peripherals. Add the improved Adam Warren (who may possibly start) to the mix, and you have the security blanket for a rotation with a lot of health concerns.

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With opening day just a few weeks away, fantasy baseball season is officially upon us. And while some fantasy participants play solely for the love of the game, many others enjoy wagering some money on their team(s) as well. However, because gambling is prohibited in a number of states, this raises the question: is your fantasy baseball league legal?

This is a tougher question to answer than one might initially assume. Not only are there a host of different federal and state gambling laws potentially applying to fantasy baseball, but differences in the type of league one participates in (season-long vs. partial-season competition, live vs. automated draft) may also result in varying legal treatment.

To begin, the primary federal gambling laws do not appear to apply to most fantasy baseball leagues. The Uniform Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), for instance, contains a specific carve-out for fantasy sports games in which the outcome is “determined predominantly by accumulated statistical results of the performance of individuals … in multiple real-world sporting events.”

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“Chester wouldn’t play baseball unless Wilson played, and they never swung at the first pitch or slid headfirst.” — Chester’s Way, by Kevin Henkes

Most of us have been taught that running through the bag is unequivocally faster than diving into it. Those who dive into first base are often ridiculed for doing so, risking injury to themselves while simultaneously making themselves less likely to beat the throw. However, a new way of thinking about the physical effects on the runner as he dives through the bag — pioneered by the father/son duo that make up “Baseball con Ciencia” — shows that the diving runner could close the distance to the first base bag at a faster rate. Theoretically.

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Ben and Sam preview the Giants’ season with Grant Brisbee, and Sahadev talks to CSN Bay Area Giants Insider Alex Pavlovic (at 32:06).

Adam Ottavino seems like a pretty awesome dude. Not only has he been excellent in relief for the Rockies the past two seasons, but he’s been an outspoken proponent of sabermetrics (and FanGraphs! Hi Adam!), and that’s refreshing to hear from a player.

He gave an incredible interview with Brian Kenny on MLB Now, where he admitted this Mike Petriello post from June caused him to change his approach. Then, this morning, David Laurila published a scintillating Q&A with Ottavino, in which he namedrops BrooksBaseball and PITCHf/x while talking about his three-in-one slider:

On his slider variations: “I throw sliders multiple ways. They all read the same – they read as sliders on PITCHf/x — but they are three different pitches. There’s more of an up-and-down, more of a slurve, and one with more of a straight lateral break. I do that with two different grips. As a pitcher who throws such a high percentage of breaking balls (47.3% in 2014), I don’t want to make them all exactly the same, Even if the hitter reads slider out of my hand, he can’t be totally sure where it will end up.”

The way Ottavino described the three sliders was fascinating, and I wanted to get a look at them for myself. I jumped into Ottavino’s PITCHf/x data, roughly identified the three different sliders based on horizontal and vertical movement and location, and split them into three buckets. (Update: I should note, that the usage numbers are super, super rough since I don’t know Ottavino’s intent behind each pitch and simply classified them by movement.)

In the numbers, you gain a sense of there being three different sliders within Ottavino’s one slider, but what good is getting a sense when you can actually see them for yourself?

Vertical

Slurve

Horizontal

Make sure you read the Q&A. It’s fascinating.