Ben and Sam preview the prospect side of the Cubs’ season with Chris Crawford, and Sahadev talks to Daily Herald Cubs beat writer Bruce Miles about the big league club (at 31:43).
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Episode 538
Kiley McDaniel is the lead prospect analyst for FanGraphs and Eric Longenhagen is a different prospect analyst for FanGraphs. They’re the surprisingly reasonable guests on this edition of FanGraphs, recorded live and outdoors in Phoenix following a weekend game between Arizona State and Long Beach State.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 44 min play time.)
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Maybe the problem is on our end. Maybe the problem is the increasingly unrealistic expectation of health, establishing a psychological baseline no longer supported by the modern game. In this game, pitchers get hurt, and while pitchers have always gotten hurt, because pitching is a dangerous thing, the sense is things are getting worse, and we have to adjust to what that means. Maybe we just need to mentally brace ourselves for the seemingly inevitable blows. Last season, the elbow robbed us of Matt Harvey and Jose Fernandez, among so many others. Already this season, we came in nervous about Masahiro Tanaka, and now the elbow might have claimed Yu Darvish and Cliff Lee.
The two have different injuries. Darvish has a slight tear of the UCL, and the overwhelming likelihood is Tommy John surgery that’ll knock him out until into next season. Lee doesn’t seem to have a UCL problem, but he still might have a UCL problem, and even if he doesn’t, he’s dealing with the same discomfort that forced him to be shut down last summer, and if Lee requires a surgical fix, the estimate is a recovery of 6-8 months. Darvish might try to pitch through, but we know how that usually goes. Lee might try to pitch through, but in the best-case scenario, that means pitching through pain. We might not see Darvish until the middle of 2016. We might not see Lee ever again on a major-league mound. It’s too early to know anything for sure, except that the news of the last few days has changed the baseball landscape.
Earlier today, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Toronto Blue Jays. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not Toronto’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Jays’ system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.
Below are the top-five prospects in theToronto system by projected WAR. To assemble this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.
Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.
5. Dalton Pompey, OF (Profile)
| PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | wRC+ | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 550 | .235 | .291 | .356 | 80 | 0.3 |
A reasonable projection for a player with limited or no major-league experience requires the translation of that same minor leaguer’s stats to their major-league equivalents. There’s essentially a “penalty,” then, for numbers produced at Triple-A relative to the major leagues — and ever greater penalties for Double-A stats, High-A stats, etc. Pompey represents an interesting case insofar as he began the 2014 season at High-A Dunedin — indeed, remained there until the end of June — but ended it with the parent club. So, despite the fact that Pompey produced mostly competent lines in higher levels, a projection system like Steamer won’t ignore those 300-plus plate appearances in the Florida State League during which he produced very good, but also not unprecedented, numbers. If the projection appears muted relative to Pompey’s tools and/or late-season performance, this is the likely explanation.
Catchers are generally associated with stopping stolen bases on the defensive side. Last season, catchers stopped stealing bases on the offensive side as well. Russell Martin, Carlos Ruiz, and Jonathan Lucroy tied for the Major League Baseball lead for stolen bases by a catcher in 2014 with four. Catchers are not known for their prowess on the basepaths, but four is still an incredibly low number to lead MLB at the position. No catcher had topped his position with that low of a number since Stan Lopata in 1955, also with four stolen bases. A catcher has not topped double figures in steals since Yadier Molina’s 12 in 2012, and only Molina, Russell Martin, Jason Kendall, Ivan Rodriguez, and Joe Mauer have reached double-figures in the last ten years.
A dearth of speed at the catcher position does not cause alarm bells to ring, but whether 2014 was an anomaly or the result of a slow Molina-like progression on the bases is an interesting question. Since 1945, the career stolen base leaders for catcher have a lot of fairly recent names.
| Name | SB |
|---|---|
| Jason Kendall | 189 |
| B.J. Surhoff | 141 |
| Carlton Fisk | 128 |
| Ivan Rodriguez | 127 |
| John Wathan | 105 |
| Brad Ausmus | 102 |
| Russell Martin | 93 |
| John Stearns | 91 |
| Benito Santiago | 91 |
| Tony Pena | 80 |
Jason Kendall, Ivan Rodriguez, and Brad Ausmus were all playing just a few years ago. Russell Martin is still playing, and he is the only active player on the list. The active player leaderboard is not very impressive. Just 14 career stolen bases gets a player in the top ten.
Read the rest of this entry »
The FanGraphs Depth Chart Projections, compiled as a combination of Steamer and ZiPS, while using our depth charts for playing time are now available in a sortable format and on the player pages!
| 11:55 |
: Chat has started but I’m still not quite ready |
| 11:57 |
: |
| 11:58 |
Zips LOVES Lucas Duda to the point where he’s a late 2nd round player in a 5×5 OBP! Thoughts? |
| 11:59 |
: He may be an interesting sleeper in OBP leagues. Haven’t done my fantasy rankings yet |
| 11:59 |
Kind of a random question, but who do you trust to have a better season, Pujols or Carlos Santana? |
| 11:59 |
: Santana I think still has more upside left. |
“It’s great, I love it,” said a bright-eyed Chase Anderson about the overfull rotation in Arizona this spring. Maybe he can be a little more enthusiastic about it — his arsenal is maybe more complete than the other nine young pitchers he’s competing with in camp. That doesn’t mean that he isn’t working hard to improve, along side other fellow Baby ‘Backs Rubby de la Rosa, Allen Webster, and Archie Bradley.
Anderson has two changeups, a good curve, and already showed the ability to get strikeouts and limit walks at the major league level, so he has to be in the driver’s seat. He said this spring is about work on his two-seamer in particular, as he’d like to get more ground balls.
Teammate Rubby de la Rosa has an electric mid-90’s fastball and a changeup taught to him by a legend. “Pedro Martinez taught me this grip, he told me ‘practice it every day, and if you can have it come out at the right speed, it will be a strikeout pitch for you, I’m 100% sure it’ll be a great pitch for you,'” de la Rosa said after a bullpen in camp last week.
He may not get the same legendary drop that Pedro got from the same grip — de la Rosa laughed when asked about Pedro’s fingers and their flexability, saying he couldn’t do anything like that himself — but the new D-back has a good change. It’s above-average by drop and fade, and got 16% whiffs last year (average was 13%).
It’s the breaking balls that have eluded the 26-year-old righty so far. He hasn’t thrown many curves in games, and the slider hasn’t managed an average whiff rate yet. The pitcher talked before and after a bullpen about the keys for his slider. One key was just keeping his curve and slider from morphing into one slurve by focusing on his release point.
The other key for his slider was more complicated. “I’m trying to get that pitch perfect,” he said. “I almost have it, but my arm speed is a bit fast, maybe. I’m tying to slow motion my feet so that I can catch up to my arm.” During his bullpen, you could see him trying to slow down his body compared to what he’s been in the past. Take a look at the end of his bullpen session in camp last week.
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 Jays have had a steady strategy for amateur player acquisition: spend early and often and take risks. That obviously will lead to some busts, but GM Alex Anthopoulos has had a consistent vision in this regard for his six years running the team and the farm is now flush with talent. The Latin program has developed shortstop and power arms and has done a nice job turning low- and mid-level bonuses into real prospects. The gambles in the draft have also paid off with risky bets on Daniel Norris, Anthony Alford and Aaron Sanchez delivering in some form already while top 2014 pick Jeff Hoffman could be better than all of them if his rehab goes well.
It’s also worth noting that the 40 FV group on this list is filled with high upside talent. These prospects are ranked based on trade value, so they’re worth the same as the less exciting, lower upside, higher certainty 40 FV players on other lists, but this means the Jays have a wider range of possibilities in outcomes for their lower level prospects. With a strong development season, a half dozen of these prospects could take a step forward, and, with another strong year of signing amateur talent, could move a top 10-12 system another step forward.
Last week, I explored the rumor of Matt Harvey’s new curveball, and what it might mean in the future given his curve’s effectiveness in 2013. Despite the lowest movement in the league — both horizontally and vertically — Harvey had the 12th-most successful curveball in baseball by pitch run value that year, pointing to the incredible strength of his other pitches (especially his fastball) in setting up his curve. Today, we’re going to focus on more curveball news, this time coming from the man who opposed Harvey on Friday in the Grapefruit League.
