FanGraphs Baseball

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

Top 200 Prospects Content Index

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

Amateur Coverage: 2015 Draft Rankings, 2015 July 2 Top Prospects

I mentioned in some of the top 200 prospects content that this process inherently values the organizational approaches some teams have, while punishing others. The Tigers are a team that gets punished. The cutoff of a certain amount of big league playing time means that I’m ranking guys that Detroit sees as trade chips to help the big league team, whereas a team like Tampa Bay sees the farm as the only way they’ll be able to survive three years from now.

Of guys that would be on this list, the Tigers originally signed then traded RHP Jake Thompson 55 FV, Rangers), SS Willy Adames (50 FV, Rays), 2B Devon Travis (45+ FV, Blue Jays), RHP Corey Knebel (45+ FV, Brewers), RHP Jonathon Crawford (45 FV, Reds) and 2B Domingo Leyba (40+ FV, Diamondbacks), with White Sox RF Avisail Garcia, Rays LHP Drew Smyly and Reds SS Eugenio Suarez all recently traded and recently losing prospect status.

I point this out because the perception from casual fans via perennially low rankings of their farm system is that Detroit’s scouting and development people aren’t good. If the big league team’s strategy was to keep all their prospects and then add some here and there, they’d be somewhere around the middle of the pack in these rankings. Detroit has a clear type of player they like: big, physical power pitchers and up-the-middle type defenders with instincts and some feel to hit. Given that they don’t spend huge internationally but keep finding solid prospects and always draft in the back half of the first round, rarely with extra picks, I think Detroit’s system (for acquiring players) is underrated, even if the current prospect list is in the back third of the league, as usual.

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Kris Bryant is almost universally hailed as the best prospect in baseball, and for what absolute little spring stats count for, he’s got a 1.561 OPS in spring training. He destroyed Triple-A in a half season of play in 2014, just like he did at every level since he was drafted No. 2 overall in 2013, putting up a 194 (!) wRC+ in 860 minor league plate appearances. The Cubs traded incumbent third baseman Luis Valbuena to Houston this winter in an obvious move to make room for Bryant, even if they won’t admit it.

Bryant is unquestionably ready for the big leagues — all four of our projection systems have him for between a 129-132 wRC+ — and yet, there’s almost no chance that he’ll actually be on the Cubs’ Opening Day roster. Enjoy Mike Olt and Tommy La Stella for the first two weeks, Cubs fans. This is so, so dumb. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam preview the Rangers’ season with Russell Carleton, and Sahadev talks to FOX Sports Southwest reporter Anthony Andro (at 28:13).

Will Middlebrooks is between a rock and a hard place when it comes to explaining his unfulfilled potential in Boston. The 26-year-old third baseman is hesitant to blame injuries – no one wants to be seen as an excuse-maker — but there’s no denying his familiarity with the trainer’s table. Wrist, finger, leg, back – he’s been on the disabled list four times in three years, and on numerous occasions has played hurt.

Middlebrooks is a Padre now, having come to San Diego in exchange for Ryan Hanigan this past December. He’s also – at least for the moment – unencumbered by malady. I asked if injuries were the root cause of his uneven performances in a Red Sox uniform.

“No, of course not,” responded Middlebrooks. “That hasn’t been the only thing. There’s a big learning curve when you’re a young player. You’re learning pitching. There are guys adjusting to you and figuring out your weaknesses. It’s that cat-and-mouse game we always talk about.”

It’s hard for a cat to catch a mouse when he’s hobbled, and Middlebrooks has a plodding .695 OPS in 232 big-league games. He has the potential to do much more, particularly in the slugging department. Prior to his 2014 power outage – just two dingers — he had 32 home runs in 660 at bats. A mechanical adjustment may help him invigorate his long-ball stroke. Read the rest of this entry »

Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
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I’m always curious about what goes on inside a player’s head, post-game, when they’ve delivered a monster performance — but then their team ends up losing. Yeah, yeah: half-naked at the locker most every ballplayer will preach that none of it matters without that W. But, I mean, some of these individual performances are really good, and it takes some significant unraveling on the part of the other 24 players for the team to still end up with the L.

Here are profiles of the 10 best individual games in 2014, by WPA, that ended up in a loss. This time I’ll look at the five best pitching performances in a loss and next time I’ll look at the five best position player performances in a loss. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, the author published a post claiming to feature the top performances by (maybe) predictive stats from college baseball’s most competitive conferences.

What follows are the three weekend series — one from each relevant conference — likely to facilitate the greatest number of players whose names appeared within that post. KATOH+ and KATOH- are index metrics based on those (maybe) predictive stats and designed for batters and pitchers, respectively. In each case, 100 is average, while above 100 is better for batters and below 100 is better for pitchers. Read more about the author’s questionable methodology here.

North Carolina at Pittsburgh
Who It Features
A lot of pitchers who’ve been successful so far this season, including North Carolina sophomore right-hander Zac Gallen (16.0 IP, 77 KATOH-) and Pitt freshman right-hander T.J. Zeuch (27.1 IP, 78 KATOH-) in the Friday game. Probably right-handed Pitt sophomore Matt Pidich (12.2 IP, 77 KATOH-) in relief. And maybe also UNC senior right-hander Benton Moss (15.2 IP, 74 KATOH-), who’s exhibited a velocity spike but missed last week’s start with an injury.

When It’s On
Friday at 1:45pm ET
Saturday at 3:00pm ET
Sunday at 12:00pm ET

How to Watch It
College Sports Live (link).

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Yesterday, I went into the best bargain position players for 2015, using projected WAR and salary figures to find out who is likely to give teams the least cost per win. Today, we’re going to go over starting pitching, and see where the bargains can be found in the groups of pitchers both pre-and-post arbitration. Thanks to our awesome, ever-active commenters chipping in on the piece from yesterday (you guys are awesome), we’re also going to hone the calculation a bit to look at the surplus WAR value and get some of the low-priced bias out of the sample.

First of all, it should be noted that this is just going to pertain to starting pitching. Relief pitching is something to tackle for another day, as I believe it should be grouped separately from the starters in a study like this. As I did yesterday, I’ve taken contract data for the 2015 season, merged it with ZiPS WAR projections, and then calculated each player’s cost, in dollar value, per win.

Again, the sample is separated into two groups, those who have reached above-league minimum deals (generally through free agency or arbitration) and those who haven’t. For those who haven’t, I’ve simply set their contract as the league minimum, $507,500. This can vary slightly — each team deals with pre-arbitration pay raises differently, and always in a clandestine manner – but it’s a small enough change to barely influence the data. There is one exception for pre-arbitration players: if a player has negotiated a contract with their team above the league minimum (so they actually show up on the contract reports we have), they will show up in the first group. This didn’t come up often, but it’s best we’re all on the same page.

Let’s begin. First we’re going to look at the first group of starting pitchers — these are mostly the players who have reached free agency or arbitration. I’ll present these findings in both graph and table form: here’s the graph comparing salary vs. projected 2015 WAR for our top 30 starting pitchers:

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Kris Bryant hit two more home runs yesterday for the Chicago Cubs during the Will Ferrell extravaganza. He stands tall among prospects, ranking number one according to Kiley McDaniel. The FanGraphs Depth Charts have given him a conservative 100 games played, and he still manages to top 3 WAR. The ZiPS projections give him closer to a full season, and he tops four wins despite never having taken an at bat at the major league level. He is not even on the Cubs’ 40-man roster. Despite that inexperience, he is going to make the Cubs look very bad for sending him to the minor leagues to start the season. It brings back memories of the Los Angeles Angels in 2012 holding back Mike Trout in the minors to start the season, but Kris Bryant’s situation is very different from Mike Trout’s.

In 2012, Mike Trout, like Bryant today, was one of the very best prospects in all of baseball and likely ready to play in the majors, but the Angels sent him to Triple-A to start the season. The Angels started the season 6-14, recalled Trout from Salt Lake, went 83-59 the rest of the way, and missed the playoffs by four games. Looking back at Trout’s excellence now, it might be easy to draw the conclusion that the Angels likely make the playoffs with Trout for the entire season and that the Angels were manipulating Trout’s service time to save money. The former is impossible to determine, but the latter is highly unlikely.
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Ben and Sam preview the Padres’ season with Miles Wray, and Sahadev talks to MLB.com Padres writer Corey Brock (at 20:33).