Just to get this out of the way: I really have no idea if this gimmick is funny to all of you, and I don’t care. I think it’s funny, and so does Mike Baumann. The Orioles righthander and I have known of each other since he was playing at Jacksonville University and I was covering college baseball; I’d interviewed him twice for the Ringer MLB Show, once when he was drafted in 2017 and once more after he made his big league debut in September 2021. But both those interviews were done remotely; it wasn’t until this week that we met in person.
The Orioles just came to Philadelphia for a three-game series, so I made a point to go meet the other Michael Baumann. (I scanned the BBWAA badge list and didn’t spot any other current members who share a name with an active MLB player, but it’s possible I missed someone.)
So I put the following proposition to the other guy: I’d ask him a series of (more or less randomly ordered) questions covering everything from baseball technique to music to food. When there’s a major league reliever going around using your name, you want to look him in the eye and see what he’s all about. He agreed, and what follows is our conversation, lightly edited for clarity. Read the rest of this entry »
The Dodgers are getting at least some of the old band back together with Tuesday’s reacquisition of Enrique Hernández. The 32-year-old super-utilityman returns (along with cash considerations) via trade with the Red Sox in exchange for pitchers Nick Robertson and Justin Hagenman. Hernández, who signed a one-year, $10 million pact with Boston during the offseason, is hitting a career-worst .222/.279/.320 (60 wRC+). The Red Sox are picking up roughly $2.5 million of the deal’s remaining money to improve their return, receiving multiple polished, back-of-the-40-man arms in Hagenman and Robertson.
This season is the second consecutive year of declining offensive performance for Hernández, who has been a below-average hitter for most of the last five years. The decline is consistent across a variety of statistical categories, and there are no underlying signs that might indicate a bounce back or positive regression, but Hernández is still a capable defender at second base and (most importantly in this case) in center field. A June injury to Trayce Thompson eventually begat a deal for defensive specialist Jake Marisnick, whose recent hamstring injury again left the Dodgers thin in center. James Outman, whose hit tool has had a violent regression to the mean after a hot start, has seen the lion’s share of reps in center this year, while Jason Heyward and rookie Jonny Deluca have each played there a handful of times. All three are capable center field defenders but none of them is great, and you can make a coherent argument that Hernández is the best healthy center field defender on the Dodgers 40-man right now. Read the rest of this entry »
Today the Killers take a turn to the left side of the infield. While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — this year I have incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a look.
As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly when taken in the context of the rest of a team’s roster. I don’t expect every team to go out and track down an upgrade before the August 1 deadline, and I’m less concerned with the solutions – many of which have more moving parts involved than a single trade — than the problems. Unless otherwise indicated, all statistics are through Monday. Read the rest of this entry »
As the Orioles emerge from their long hibernation, it’s easy to see the things they’ve done well as an organization. They’re great at developing relief pitchers. They can walk through a public park and pluck a future star infielder from a tree. But starting pitching has not come as easily. The front end of the rotation lacks a pitcher like Gerrit Cole or Kevin Gausman, and they’ve had to bring in veterans like Cole Irvin and Kyle Gibson to carry some of the load. No doubt this is part of the reason they’re being linked to Shohei Ohtani, who for all the dinger sockin’ he does is still the best pitcher on the trade market at the deadline.
Members of the 2023 draft class are now on the pro side of The Board. You can see where freshly drafted and signed players stack up in their new organization’s farm system here. Graduates have also been pulled from The Board; their evaluations are now preserved on the 2023 Graduates tab. Players who exceed rookie playing time requirements between now and the end of the season will be moved from the 2023 Updated section of The Board to the Graduates section in real time, and those who graduate get a scouting update on their player page contrasting their evaluation with their performance at time of graduation. Note that the farm system rankings from prior to the graduates removal still exist here; live farm system rankings (for which the grads no longer count) exist here. These will shift and change as prospects move between now and the trade deadline.
Because the Top 100 grew and changed throughout the Prospect List cycle, readers should consider it live and up to date. I made some updates to Reds prospects (more on that in a second) and slid Diamondbacks outfielder Druw Jones, who succumbed to yet another injury between when the D-backs list published and now, but otherwise just pulled off the grads. There are only 89 players in the minors with a 50 FV grade or better right now because of the graduates being pulled off of the list. This is not unusual for this time of year; similar to the way the 50 FV cross section moved from 107 players to about 130 players during the last cycle, prospects who improve and advance will climb into that group.
Reds Update
Between now and the deadline, I’ll be reviewing the farm systems of a few key clubs likely to buy, something I’ve already done for the tippy top of the Reds system.
Lyon Richardson’s pitch grades have been altered to reflect that his changeup has become his best pitch. His innings count has been kept pretty conservative, and I’d really like to see him hold the 95–97 mph fastball he’s currently showing deeper into games before moving him into the 50 FV tier, but he looks really good. His command isn’t precise, but he has a mid-rotation starter’s mix and has been throwing hard since his return from TJ, just not while working a true starter’s innings load.
Cam Collier is struggling statistically, but the pro scouting reports from source clubs are still generally positive, and he is still very young for a full-season hitter. His swing is still pretty weird, but there’s just too much lefty power here to slide him so soon.
Noelvi Marte is not playing good defense right now. He’s hitting well enough that he’ll probably still be a quality big leaguer even if he has to move off of third base, but now that he is on the 40-man, he only has so long to find a position before he’s out of option years. Lurking on the horizon here is a scenario where he ends up with one or no options left and basically no position. It’s not his likeliest outcome, but because he’s looked pretty bad on defense for the last sixth months or so, this is now a conceivable outcome. I still think he will be a good big leaguer over time (he remains a 50 FV prospect on The Board), but were I a GM, I’d be apprehensive about making him the centerpiece of a trade return.
Christian Encarnacion-Strand moves up into the 45 FV tier as a power-hitting role player who’ll be a dangerous (but likely flawed) piece of this ascending Reds team. His Triple-A contact rate (72%) would be near the bottom of the MLB 1B position group (70%), and his chase rates (an eyebrow-raising 39%) were about 20% worse than big league average (32%) at the time he was called up. League-wide adjustment to his tendency to chase will make him streaky, but ultimately Encarnacion-Strand’s power is going to play in a big way because he’s incredibly strong, and his swing is geared to do big damage. There are warning signs here similar to what Elehuris Montero exhibited in the minors, even amid his awesome surface-level statistical performance, but CES is at a different level, physically.
Edwin Arroyo also slides from the 50 FV tier to the 45 FV tier. Again, he still projects to be a good big leaguer, just not a true everyday, omni-situational player in my eyes. He continues to have throwing issues that will likely funnel him to second base, which I suppose was already likely given the Elly/McLain combo ahead of him. He’s going to get to his power by virtue of his swing’s lift, but his bat-to-ball performance has regressed enough to reevaluate him in light of the new defensive projection and consider him more of a just-shy-of-average second baseman. Look at the kind of hit tool it takes to profile as an everyday second baseman. Arroyo’s performance has been fine, but not quite on that level.
You can see how punishing the De La Cruz, McLain, etc. graduations are to the Reds’ farm system ranking, but even if you consider that group to be untouchable, they have a ton of depth (nearly 50 ranked prospects) to leverage in trade discussions.
It was the third inning of the All-Star Game, and John Smoltz and Joe Davis were marveling at Freddie Freeman. That part’s not particularly surprising. Who among us hasn’t marveled at Freddie Freeman? The Dodger first baseman worked a full count off Sonny Gray, then resisted a tempting fastball at the letters for ball four.
As Freeman jogged to first, Smoltz shared some of the wisdom he picked up during his Hall of Fame career: “The biggest thing pitchers want to find out with all the information that’s given: Where is the guy more likely to chase? And rarely do they chase up and down. It’s usually down or up. And then you try to pitch accordingly to the strength. And where Sonny Gray’s strength is, is down. He’ll surprise you up, but he wants to get you out down.”
Whenever I hear Smoltz articulate a hypothesis about the game, I find myself torn. The man has seen an awful lot of baseball, and I don’t want to discount that experience, but he’s also made some pretty outlandish-seeming claims before. Best to be a bit skeptical and double check his math, as it were. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a J.P. France postgame quote and ballplayer clichés, the death of first overall pick Mike Ivie, and how Masataka Yoshida’s debut season stacks up to the MLB rookie years of other ex-NPB stars, answer emails (36:57) about Mike Trout’s and Shohei Ohtani’s futures, a Trout/Hunter Renfroe trade deadline scheme (with a bonus Meg movie pitch), undoing pre-pitch-clock time-saving measures, and batters catching pitches to knock pitchers out of games, plus Stat Blasts (1:19:13) about robot umps in Triple-A, the most top 100 prospects to debut for one team in a season (or a two-season span), and Immaculate Grid efficiency, followed by a Future Blast (1:47:08) from 2037.
Today, we turn our attention to the second base Killers. While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — this year I have incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a look.
As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly when taken in the context of the rest of a team’s roster. I don’t expect every team to go out and track down an upgrade before the August 1 deadline, and I’m less concerned with the solutions – many of which have more moving parts involved than a single trade — than the problems. Unless otherwise indicated, all statistics are through Sunday. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week, I published in rapid succession articles exploring the fascinating seasons of Spencer Strider (sort of) and Blake Snell. Both pitchers then went out and had outlier performances in their respective ensuing starts; Strider recorded 12 of his first 15 outs by strikeout, and Snell walked seven in just five innings but allowed merely a single run. So I joked on Twitter (I’m not using the new name, it’s silly) that if anyone wanted a pitcher to become newsworthy, pass along a name and I’d write about him.
The best kind of joke is the kind that lets you outsource coming up with ideas for posts, and sure enough, I encountered a reply that caught my attention.
Someone may have done it already, but Bailey Ober is pretty interesting in how uninteresting he is. Pretty much a lock for a quality start every time he pitches; nothing more, nothing less
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Jay Jaffe
