Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the New York Mets. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the second year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the numbered prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »
John Schreiber has been a find for the Red Sox. Claimed off waivers by Boston from the Detroit Tigers prior to last season, the 28-year-old sidewinder has come out of the bullpen 30 times this year and allowed just 12 hits and two earned runs over 29 innings. Schreiber has 35 strikeouts to go with three saves and a pair of wins in as many decisions.
He’s not the same pitcher who failed to distinguish himself in Detroit.
“I’d mainly been a four-seam/slider guy,” explained Schreiber, who logged a 6.28 ERA over parts of two seasons with the Tigers. “In college and for most of my pro-ball career, that’s all I threw. Two years ago I started working on a better changeup, and last year I started throwing my sinker. Paul Abbott is our Triple-A pitching coach, and he helped me work on a two-seam sinker. I’ve gotten really comfortable throwing that.”
Schreiber still features his old mix prominently — this year he’s thrown 35.3% four-seamers and 35.8% sliders — but his 22.5% sinker usage has added a whole new twist. The 2016, 15th-round draft pick out of the University of Northwestern Ohio is now far less predictable, and just as importantly, he’s better able to match up with hitters who do damage on high heaters. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Ben’s unfortunate Brussels sprouts incident, then answer listener emails about the ballparks with the most and least locations where a ball would be a home run only in that park, the Rays’ MLB-leading outs on the bases, the Orioles’ possibly improved pitcher development, a loaner-type trade where a player is his own player to be named later, how to define a comeback, “batters” vs. “hitters,” whether a team can really win without ever holding a lead, whether we’ll ever see another walk-off home run single, why a walk-off ground rule “double” is scored as a single, the legality of applying a tag with a piece of clothing instead of a glove, and a possible Ohtani rule loophole that could theoretically allow Shohei Ohtani to bat twice in a row, plus (1:18:32) a Past Blast from 1873.
Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, folks! Welcome to another edition of my Friday chats. Apologies that it’s been awhile — travel and holidays have gotten in the way.
Jay Jaffe: Also wanted to share this obituary of Dodgers superscout Mike Brito, who passed away yesterday at 87. Ubiquitous around Dodger Stadium with his radar gun and his Panama hat, he signed 32 future major leaguers including Fernando Valenzuela, Julio Urías, and Yasiel Puig https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/obituary-mike-brito-legendary-…
Took this picture of Mike Brito last year. He loved his @Dodgers World Series rings and took great pride in wearing them. Lock them in a safety box? Not for Mike Brito! Loved that he was so proud. RIP to a true baseball man and such a calm, friendly person.
Shohei Ohtani is doing remarkable things again. The reigning AL MVP has been on an exceptional run as a pitcher lately, not only making a bit of history but also bolstering his cases to start the All-Star Game and to win additional hardware. While his hitting was the more amazing of his two endeavors in 2021, his improvements on the mound have pushed him into new territory.
On Wednesday night, Ohtani threw seven innings of two-hit ball against the Marlins, striking out 10 and allowing just one unearned run. That run came in the first inning, as the fans in Miami (they do have those, right?) were still settling into their seats. Jon Berti reached on a throwing error by shortstop Luis Rengifo, took third on a Joey Wendle double, and scored on a Garrett Cooper sacrifice fly. The run ended Ohtani’s streak of scoreless innings at 21.2, the longest of his career, but from there he cruised. He didn’t allow a hit after giving up a one-out single in the second to Miguel Rojas and retired 15 straight batters from that point until he walked Jesús Sánchez with one out in the seventh. For good measure, Ohtani also drove in the go-ahead runs via a two-run single off Trevor Rogers and later walked, stole a base, and scored another run. Nobody has had a game like that in at least the last century.
With his 10 strikeouts, Ohtani reached double digits for the third game in a row, something he’d never done before in his stateside career, and something only one other pitcher (Corbin Burnes) has done this season; six pitchers did it last year, with two (Shane Bieber and Robbie Ray) putting together four-game streaks. Over his past four starts, Ohtani hasn’t allowed a single earned run and has struck out 40 batters, something only seven other pitchers have done (one of them twice) since 1913, the year that earned runs became an official stat:
40 Strikeouts and No Earned Runs in a 4-Start Span
That’s some pretty cool company, even if the list heavily skews towards the recent past thanks to ever-increasing strikeout rates — so much so that Ohtani required fewer innings to complete the feat than all but one pitcher (Sale). It’s also worth pointing out that none of the aforementioned hurlers were regularly taking their cuts as hitters on the days they weren’t pitching. Read the rest of this entry »
Last year, Patrick Sandoval broke out in a big way, posting career-bests in ERA, FIP, strikeout rate, called and swinging strike rate, and WAR. The foundation of his newfound success was a phenomenal changeup that was among the most effective pitches in all of baseball. This season, he’s lowered his ERA and FIP by more than half a run apiece, and has been the Angels second-most valuable starter behind Shohei Ohtani. Still, his strikeout rate has fallen by a couple of points even though his change has been as effective as it was last year. Looking past that one standout pitch, it’s clear Sandoval is being held back by another aspect of his arsenal: his fastballs.
Sandoval throws two different types of heaters and neither is all that effective. Last year, he allowed a cumulative .356 wOBA off his two fastballs; that mark is up to .408 this season. It’s a stark contrast to his three secondary offerings, which are all whiff machines. Here’s a look at his per pitch type results from this year:
Patrick Sandoval, Pitch Type Results
Pitch Type
Whiff%
GB%
Hard Hit%
wOBA
xwOBAcon
Four-seam
7.5%
39.1%
39.1%
.476
.447
Sinker
10.9%
51.9%
29.6%
.238
.285
Changeup
48.0%
47.6%
28.6%
.232
.433
Slider
38.5%
46.7%
31.7%
.217
.378
Curveball
39.1%
55.6%
22.2%
.461
.329
Among all four-seam fastballs thrown at least 100 times this year, Sandoval’s whiff rate of 7.5% is the second lowest in baseball. His sinker’s whiff rate is a little better at 10.9%, but still below average for that pitch type. On the other hand, his changeup and two separate breaking balls each have whiff rates no lower than 38.5%. For Sandoval, it’s feast or famine depending on which pitch in his arsenal he’s throwing. Read the rest of this entry »
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Houston Astros. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the second year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the numbered prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »
On this week’s episode of FanGraphs Audio, Ben Clemens and Dan Szymborski banter about recent baseball happenings before coming up with a new way to quantify how compelling players are to watch.
Dan recently ran his ZiPS midseason update for eachleague, inspiring him and Ben to talk about the Astros and red-hot Yankees having a chance to break the single-season win record, and contemplate how the rebuilding Tigers have been a disappointment even by their standards. The pair also discusses how ZiPS feels about a few intriguing players, including Isaac Paredes, Luis Arraez, Julio Rodríguez, and the ever-incredible Yordan Alvarez. On the subject of Alvarez, the duo spontaneously create the Science vs. Romance stat, which helps to identify batters who are especially fun to watch at the plate. Finally, we hear about Ben’s trip to an amusingly named wine country, which he is happy to recommend.
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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley rant and banter (ranter?) about MLB’s approach to promoting the Futures Game, then (17:33) discuss superheroes throwing baseballs, the latest exploits of the semi-superpowered Shohei Ohtani and Sandy Alcantara, and Ohtani’s chances against Aaron Judge (and others) in the AL MVP race, Stat Blast (39:03) about losing teams with two hyper-productive players and pitchers with the most even pitch-type distributions, entertain the idea (59:59) of adjusting WAR for quality of competition because of position-player pitchers, speculate about Judge’s free-agent contract, highlight Luis Arraez’s pursuit of Ted Williams, an Andrew Vaughn hidden-ball-trick attempt, Charlie Blackmon’s walk-up song, a fateful Rockies shift, observe (1:23:10) which teams’ playoff probabilities have risen or sunk the most in the last month and react to MLB’s asterisk-esque All-Star Game caps, and close (1:32:32) with a Past Blast from 1872.
As we reach the mathematical halfway point of the season and approach the trade deadline, this is an opportune moment to run an update of the ZiPS projected standings. The standings are based on projections from the most robust version of ZiPS rather than the simpler one, which is more practical to run daily during the regular season, implementing things like the Statcast-aided zStats and up-to-date minor league translations.
The process that ZiPS uses is the typical one, but I’ll run it down quickly for those who may be new to how these projections work. ZiPS starts with a modified version of our depth chart and applies a generalized probabilistic model of available playing time for the players listed. So instead of a team’s roster strength being a simple sum of everyone’s projected WAR pro-rated to a fixed expected number of plate appearances, we end up with a whole distribution of possible roster strength. As an example: While Jacob deGrom still has a median of 55 innings in the roster sims I run for each team, sometimes he’ll be at 65 or 70 innings, sometimes he’ll be at 30 or 45 innings, and occasionally, it’ll be much worse than that. ZiPS will then “fill in” playing time based on the next players available on the depth chart and their probabilistic measure of availability. Just to stay with the Mets: When the outfield is healthy, the depth chart is mostly Mark Canha, Brandon Nimmo, and Starling Marte. But on the particularly bad rolls, the team’s estimated roster strength will have a lot more Ender Inciarte, Nick Plummer, Mark Vientos, and even players like Daniel Palka and Terrance Gore.
After ZiPS gets a distribution of each team’s roster strength, it “draws” one each year and sims out the rest of the season, team versus team, a million times and sees what happens. Is this a perfect methodology? Absolutely not! But I think we get closer to our goal of trying to evaluate team uncertainty and team depth, something which is harder to do using a less time-consuming scheme.
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Jay Jaffe
man and such a calm, friendly person. 
