Let’s talk about free agent outfielders. Nearly every team could use one, either to serve in a starting role or to provide an upgrade over the players who are currently fourth or fifth on the depth chart. Unsurprisingly, reigning AL MVP Aaron Judge took home the largest contract of any outfielder this winter, but 11 inked average annual values of at least $10 million. Along with a variety of part-time and platoon players signed for smaller sums, nearly every big league-caliber outfielder has found a home for the season. Most of the remaining free agents, like Alex Dickerson and Jackie Bradley Jr., project to be around replacement level for 2023. But there’s an outlier, someone who just posted a career-best 2.5 WAR and was projected by our readers for a three-year, $30 million contract – Jurickson Profar. No other unsigned player is projected to earn even a third of that, but as teams start to finalize their rosters during spring training, Profar still doesn’t know what uniform he’ll be playing in come Opening Day.

Entering the offseason, we had Profar pegged as the 36th-best free agent in the class after his $10 million mutual option with the Padres was declined. Neighboring hitters on that list include Michael Brantley, Brandon Drury, and Josh Bell; all three have signed and will earn a combined $37 million in 2023. So what makes teams hesitant to add Profar to their roster?

Let’s compare him to the aforementioned trio of Brantley, Drury, and Bell. In fact, Profar is quite comparable to Brantley and Bell, who both play a position down the defensive spectrum. Both are also considerably better hitters than Profar. Brantley’s wRC+ hasn’t sat below 120 in five years, while Bell’s mark sits at 121 since the beginning of 2021. On the other hand, Profar’s 110 wRC+ last year was his highest in a full season, and his career mark of 94 is substantially worse than that of Brantley or Bell. Other outfielders like J.D. Martinez and Michael Conforto also signed in that price range. In other words, if a team was looking for an everyday left fielder who wouldn’t break the bank, Profar probably wouldn’t have been their first call. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes things just come together. On Wednesday, all the cosmic tumblers clicked into place at Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers, Florida. In the first inning of a spring training game between the Twins and the Phillies, all the big stories of the offseason seemed to collide in one at-bat.

It started with Andrew Painter, the player who has thus far been the talk of spring training. The 19-year-old right-hander ranks fifth on our Top 100 Prospects list. His ascent was so rapid that he wasn’t even on last year’s list (he did make last year’s end-of-season update as a 60 FV), and now baseball is abuzz with the possibility that he might break camp as the fifth starter for the reigning National League champs. Painter even managed to make headlines during live batting practice.

There’s a lot about Painter that seems improbable. 19-year-olds who stand 6-foot-7 don’t often have 50/60 command grades. They’re the guys who spend years in the minors piling up walks and strikeouts while they slowly figure out where exactly all those limbs are supposed to go. Painter shouldn’t be free and easy throwing 99 mph in the zone. He should be a gangly, awkward teen like Alfredo Linguini from Ratatouille. Instead, he’s a commanding, fireballing teen who just happens to look like a whole lot like Alfredo Linguini from Ratatouille:

Read the rest of this entry »

Ricky Tiedemann is one of the fastest-rising pitching prospects in the game. Drafted 91st overall by the Toronto Blue Jays in 2021 out of a Huntington Beach junior college, the 20-year-old southpaw not only finished last season in Double-A, he dominated at all three levels where he saw action. Over 78-and-two-thirds innings, Tiedemann logged a 2.15 ERA while fanning 117 batters and allowing just 39 hits. No. 24 on our recently released Top 100, he possesses, in the words of Tess Taruskin, “three potential plus pitches and front-end upside.”

Tiedemann discussed his M.O. on the mound and his power arsenal prior to Thursday’s spring training game in Dunedin.

———

David Laurila: How would you describe yourself as a pitcher? Give me a self-scouting report.

Ricky Tiedemann: “I like to use the fastball a lot — I work off of that — especially now that I’m throwing a little bit harder. Throwing a lot of strikes is my big thing, just keeping it in the zone, along with my slider and changeup. I also try not to keep a rhythm that guys can catch on to; I try to mix it up and work backwards sometimes, starting with a slider and then going fastball in. But I do work with my fastball more than my other pitches.” Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s take a look at the AL Central. (Audience turns away like a child in a high chair trying to avoid being fed creamed peas.) No, I’m serious. I don’t think the division is going to be good — quite the opposite, in fact. Teams like the Diamondbacks or Orioles, likely cursed to be no-hopers this year by the vicissitudes of geography, would be quite competitive in the AL Central.

But within that mediocrity comes unpredictability. We project the entire division to be covered by a spread of just 12 wins, the lowest total for any division. The top three teams are separated by just three projected wins, and each has its own particular idiosyncrasies that turn the division race into a truly intriguing game of rock, paper, scissors. This year’s AL Central race is like the 2006 action thriller Smokin’ Aces: Is it good? Not as such. But is it fun, with a loaded cast? Absolutely. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 1014

On this week’s show, we discuss the new rules on display in spring training before reacting to Manny Machado’s new extension.

Jay Jaffe is joined by Dan Szymborski as they welcome back baseball, now with a pitch clock and bigger bases. The pair discuss the effects of these changes, such as the clock’s impact on relievers vs. starters, as well as the challenges they can create when it comes to projections. Jay and Dan also consider whether Manny Machado has earned being called just “Manny,” and how big of a factor opt-outs played in his 11-year extension with San Diego. Finally, Jay and Dan consider Shohei Ohtani’s future in the context of the Hall of Fame and discuss how much they expect him to be paid in free agency.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximate 45 minute play time.)

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley begin with a little loose talk about Kiké Hernández’s revelation that he sharted during the 2020 NLDS, and pin down the precise instant of the accident with audio evidence. Then (23:59) they banter about whether it’s oxymoronic for MLB to have multiple “co-exclusive” official betting partners, MLB hiring local media execs to prepare for an RSN collapse (30:27), how the Blue Jays could make use of ex-Astros GM James Click (33:37), MLB lobbying state governments for exceptions to minimum-wage laws (39:51), a wave of injuries in spring training (44:30), and an umpire-less inning (48:06). After that (51:06), they answer listener emails about whether a Triple-A team in midseason form could defeat a pre-spring-training average MLB team or team of MLB all-stars, forgetting player handedness, the fluky debut of Livan Soto, whether Barry Bonds could still hit home runs, triple-digit uniform numbers, changing one’s mind about boycotting MLB, “hitter” vs. “position player,” the effects of starting separate unions for pitchers and hitters, and what a “partial shift” means in 2023, plus a Past Blast from 1975 (1:43:31) and a follow-up on the Past Blast from 1974 (1:46:37), featuring Gregg Trueman, son of sabermetric pioneer Richard E. (Dick) Trueman.

Audio intro: Billy Bragg, “Accident Waiting to Happen”
Audio outro: Monsters of Folk, “Ahead of the Curve”

Link to Red Sox Twitter video
Link to the instant of the shart
Link to 2020 NLDS G1 at B-Ref
Link to Meg on Bradley
Link to new “co-exclusive” press release
Link to 2021 “co-exclusive” press release
Link to MLB’s local media hirings
Link to Drellich on MLB and RSNs
Link to article on Click’s hiring
Link to article on Click and Crane
Link to Ben on front-office secrecy
Link to Seeking Rents on MLB lobbying
Link to Drellich on MLB lobbying
Link to EW on possible book bans
Link to Lux injury video
Link to thread on umpire-less baseball
Link to Handley’s framing
Link to MLB on the umpire-less inning
Link to ESPN on the umpire-less inning
Link to EW on unnecessary 9th innings
Link to EW listener emails database
Link to Soto/Bouchard leaderboard
Link to Voros’s Law
Link to Soto’s record on Stathead
Link to article about Bonds’s cycling
Link to Bonds on Strava
Link to 75-year-old Appling’s HR
Link to Adler on uniform numbers
Link to Neshek on SABRCast
Link to 2020 Keyser column
Link to revised MLBPA logo
Link to MLB on “strategic” shifts
Link to 1975 Past Blast source
Link to high school expanded DH
Link to “Ohtani rule”
Link to David Lewis’s Twitter
Link to David Lewis’s Substack
Link to 1974 Past Blast
Link to Trueman’s 1974 article
Link to Trueman’s 1959 article
Link to Pete Palmer wiki
Link to Earnshaw Cook wiki
Link to The Numbers Game
Link to 1964 SI article
Link to SABR’s Mills data
Link to Palmer on Player Win Averages
Link to Dick Trueman archive

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As Gavin Lux’s season-ending knee injury reminded us, the Dodgers had quite the free agent exodus during the offseason. Nearly two months ago, they led the pack when Ben Clemens examined which teams were at the extremes in terms of production lost and gained via free agency. With all but a few free agents of note now signed, I thought it would be worth circling back to those rankings before moving on to highlight some notable holes on contending teams, something of an offseason version of my Replacement Level Killers series.

When Ben checked in just after the New Year, the Dodgers were runaway leaders in terms of net WAR lost to free agency, having already parted ways with Tyler Anderson, Cody Bellinger, Justin Turner, Trea Turner and a dozen other players in an effort to trim payroll and lessen (if not eliminate) their Competitive Balance Tax burden. Towards that end, only two of their incoming free agents (J.D. Martinez and Noah Syndergaard) will make more than $10 million annually. To put it another way, the team won 111 games last year with a payroll just south of $270 million for CBT purposes, but after falling short of the National League Championship Series, they’re hoping to get as far or further by winning 80-something games and spending maybe $25 million less. Such are the vagaries of postseason baseball that it just might work. Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Dan Szymborski: It’s chat time, hopefully!

12:02

Dan Szymborski: I was a little late setting it up becasue I was giving my mom a ride to pick up her car from the mechanic

12:02

Dan Szymborski: Seems to be on the front page and I see questions, so cautiously optimistic!

12:04

Dan Szymborski: I haven’t seen anyone tackle this in a new way for quite a while, simply because the studies weren’t in the middle

12:05

Dan Szymborski: It was pretty clear that the protection that appears to exist is what’s called “Weak protection” meaning, that in extreme cases of difference in ability, intentional walks go up

Read the rest of this entry »

From a pure talent perspective, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is special. Only 10-15 players in any given season run a strikeout rate in the mid-teens while posting an ISO of .200 or better. Guerrero has done so in each of the last two seasons (his .290 ISO in 2021 was fifth among qualified hitters). I try to keep that context in mind when I analyze players of Guerrero’s caliber. While I think it’s fair to say that his 132 wRC+ in 2022 was underwhelming, that mark is still quite impressive — indeed, it ranked 29th among qualified hitters last season. He was still productive despite running a 52.1% groundball rate, a mark exceeded by just six qualified hitters, none of whom came close to matching his year at the plate. If he continues to hit like this for the rest of his career, he’ll be a perennial All-Star. Still, given his talent and the lingering expectations of his prospect pedigree, I suspect the Blue Jays are looking for ways to get Guerrero back to something resembling the superlative 2021 version of himself. So let’s do the same.

Now you may be thinking, “Esteban, we all know Vlad Jr.’s problems come when he gets too groundball happy. Why not just tell him to hit more fly balls?” That’s good advice, but I’m more interested in the finer details. For example, Guerrero’s increased groundball rate is the result, but his process has an effect on that outcome. Depending on the hitter, swinging at pitches in zones that don’t match up with their spectrum of swing planes can lead to a change in their batted ball profile. Alternatively, a hitter’s swing decisions could be roughly the same, but a slight mechanical change could alter their bat path. For the Blue Jays first baseman, I think there was a combination of both. Let’s start with how his batted ball profile changed from 2021 to 2022:

Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an evaluation of the prospects in the Arizona Diamondbacks farm system who readers should consider “imminent big leaguers,” players who can reasonably be expected to play in the majors at some point this year. This includes all prospects on the 40-man roster as well as those who have already established themselves in the upper levels of the minors but aren’t yet rostered. Any Top 100 prospects, regardless of their ETA, are also included on this list. Reports, tool grades, and scouting information for all of the prospects below can also be found on The Board.

This is not a top-to-bottom evaluation of the Diamondbacks farm system. I like to include what’s happening in minor league and extended spring training in my reports as much as possible, since scouting high concentrations of players in Arizona and Florida allows me to incorporate real-time, first-person information into the org lists. However, this approach has led to some situations where outdated analysis (or no analysis at all) was all that existed for players who had already debuted in the majors. Skimming the imminent big leaguers off the top of a farm system will allow this time-sensitive information to make its way onto the site more quickly, better preparing readers for the upcoming season, helping fantasy players as they draft, and building site literature on relevant prospects to facilitate transaction analysis in the event that trades or injuries foist these players into major league roles. There will still be a Diamondbacks prospect list that includes Deyvison De Los Santos, Yu-Min Lin, and all of the other prospects in the system who appear to be at least another season away. As such, today’s list includes no ordinal rankings. Readers are instead encouraged to focus on the players’ Future Value (FV) grades. Read the rest of this entry »