There are so many good young shortstops in baseball these days that it’s easy to lose track. The oldest starter in the top 10 of our positional power rankings is Xander Bogaerts, and he hasn’t turned 30 yet. Eighteen of the top 20 shortstops are under 30. It can feel like every team has one of these guys. But that doesn’t mean they’re not valuable, and the Mariners clearly agree: they recently agreed to a contract extension with J.P. Crawford that will keep him in the Pacific Northwest through the 2026 season.

Crawford is, for lack of a better way to put it, an in-between Mariner. The team’s old guard – Félix Hernández and Kyle Seager, for example – is gone. The new guard – Jarred Kelenic, Julio Rodríguez, Logan Gilbert, et al. – are breaking in now. But Crawford debuted for Seattle in 2019, and saw his first major league action in 2017. He would have reached free agency after the 2024 season, awkwardly in the middle of what the Mariners hope will be their new core’s best years.

The solution seemed obvious, and the deal the two sides worked out fits the mold almost perfectly. The five-year, $51 million pact is straightforward; no options on either side, no escalators, and no buyouts. It will pay him $10 million in each of the first four seasons and $11 million in the last year. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week may have been highlighted by the start of the 2022 regular season, but it also featured a spate of contract extensions. Today I’m going to take a closer look at two such extensions, both involving glove-first outfielders entering their age-27 seasons.

We’ll begin with Myles Straw, the center fielder for the Cleveland Guardians, who signed a five-year, $25 million extension, according to Zack Meisel of The Athletic. The extension includes club options for the 2027 and ’28 seasons that would bring the total to $41.5 million over the next seven years. Remarkably, this is the Guardians’ third extension this month with the potential to keep a player in Cleveland through the 2028 season — the team also inked deals with star third baseman José Ramírez and closer Emmanuel Clase.

2021 was Straw’s first full season as an everyday player. He came over to Cleveland from the Astros at the trade deadline in exchange for Phil Maton and Yainer Diaz. After the trade, he continued to build on his breakout campaign. He ended the having posted stellar defense (11 OAA), great baserunning (30 steals in 36 attempts), and about league-average offense (98 wRC+). That well-rounded production quietly placed him among the best center fielders in baseball last season, finishing sixth in WAR at the position with 3.7:

That chart does a good job of showing how unusual Straw’s profile is compared to his peers’, as he’s the only center fielder on the list without a clearly above-average bat. These offensive limitations mostly come from a lack of power, and it is a serious lack of power at that, with Straw posting an ISO, Barrel% and HardHit% all below the fifth percentile. His max exit velocity is actually above average, which could be a sign that more consistently hard contact is hidden away somewhere, but there’s just not a lot to suggest that he’ll be putting up double-digit home run totals anytime soon. Read the rest of this entry »

Flipping through the slate of big league games over the past week has felt a bit like walking through the halls of my high school on the first day of a new school year, quietly taking stock of what and who had changed since I was last there. Who is suddenly wearing colors I’ve never seen them in before? Who’s hanging with a new crowd, or won’t shut up about their camp friends? Who spent time in summer school, and was that stint enough for them to keep up with the rest of their class? And of course: Who’s the new kid?

Last week, the Royals’ Bobby Witt Jr., the Mariners’ Julio Rodríguez, and the Tigers’ Spencer Torkelson, all of whom rank within the top five of our preseason Top 100 Prospects list, made much-anticipated major league debuts, with each player surrounded by their own specific brand of pre-show buzz. And while it would be foolish to draw sweeping conclusions from a player’s performance in any one game or series, a big league debut seems as good a time as any to take a snapshot.

When Witt stepped up to the plate in the bottom of the eighth inning of the Royals’ home opener to face the Guardians’ Triston McKenzie, he’d yet to record a hit in the game, having flied out once and grounded out twice. He took McKenzie’s first offering – a 93 mph fastball, low and away – for a ball, then smashed the second pitch of the at-bat into left for a double, scoring Michael A. Taylor from second, a go-ahead run that would later become the game-winner:

Read the rest of this entry »

Robert Hassell III is a confident hitter, and for good reason. No. 50 on our 2022 Top 100 Prospects list, the 20-year-old outfielder — in the words of Eric Longenhagen — “arguably wielded the most advanced bat of the 2020 draft’s high school hitters.” Drafted eighth overall that summer by the San Diego Padres, he’s lived up to that billing. Playing last year at Low-A Lake Elsinore and High-A Fort Wayne, Hassell slashed .303/.393/.470, with his left-handed stroke responsible for 33 doubles, four triples, and 11 home runs. Moreover, he swiped 34 bases in 40 attempts.

Hassell — back at Fort Wayne to begin the current campaign — talked hitting prior to taking the field for the TinCaps opener last Friday.

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David Laurila: In your own words, who are you as a hitter?

Robert Hassell III: “Last season was the first time I played more than 50 games in a season — I played 110 — and after that, I definitely had a good idea — if I hadn’t already — of what I do consistently. It didn’t take me long. Even through last spring training, just getting in the daily reps, I knew that I was going to be a barrel guy [and] an on-base guy. That’s kind of what I’ve been my whole life, so it’s what I would self-identify as, for sure.”

Laurila: Define “barrel guy.”

Hassell: “I would say that a barrel guy isn’t a dude that can only hit fastballs, or only hit curveballs, or that he excels at one thing way more than the other. I wouldn’t consider that guy a ‘barrel guy.’ I see myself being able to hit every pitch, in any count. That’s what I mean by that.” Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite yearly preseason pieces is also my most dreaded: the breakout list. I’ve been doing this exercise since 2014, and while I’ve had the occasional triumph (hello, Christian Yelich), the low-probability nature of trying to project who will beat expectations means that for every time you look smart, you’re also bound to look dumb for some other reason. Yesterday, I highlighted my breakout candidates among the league’s hitters. Today, I consider the pitchers.

Let’s start things off with a brief look at last year’s breakout pitcher list and see how they fared:

• Jordan Montgomery: 3.83 ERA, 3.69 FIP, 3.3 WAR in 157.1 IP
• Joe Musgrove: 3.18 ERA, 3.70 FIP, 3.3 WAR in 181.1 IP
• Zach Eflin: 4.17 ERA, 3.68 FIP, 2.2 WAR in 105.2 IP
• John Means: 3.62 ERA, 4.62 FIP, 2.5 WAR in 146.2 IP
• Ryan Tepera: 2.79 ERA, 2.73 FIP, 1.6 WAR in 61.1 IP
• Julio Urías: 2.96 ERA, 3.13 FIP, 5.0 WAR in 185.2 IP
• Dylan Cease: 3.91 ERA, 3.65 FIP, 4.4 WAR in 165.2 IP
• Jeffrey Springs: 3.43 ERA, 3.91 FIP, 0.2 WAR in 44.2 IP

Seven of the eight players here either tied (Musgrove) or beat their previous career best in WAR, so it would be greedy to complain that Means only had a good bounce rather than finding a truly new plateau. While I’d like to attribute this showing to some brilliance on my part, I’d also call these results luckier than average and certainly above any reasonable mean expectation of my perceptiveness. Read the rest of this entry »

The Yankees and Aaron Judge found a way to bring extra drama to Opening Day. Even with an additional 24 hours of negotiations due to the postponement of their season opener against the Red Sox, the team did not reach an agreement on a contract extension with the slugger in time to meet his self-imposed deadline. Judge, who turns 30 on April 26, had said that once the 2022 season opened, all negotiations would cease, and he maintained that stance on Friday morning amid a flurry of reports detailing the Yankees’ offer, telling the assembled media, “First pitch is at 1:08 pm.”

His status did not change, and so on Friday night Judge told The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler, “At the end of the year, I’ll be a free agent. I’ll get to talk to 30 teams. The Yankees will be one of those 30.”

“I’m just disappointed because I think I’ve been vocal about — I want to be a Yankee for life, and bring a championship back to New York,” Judge told reporters after Friday’s 6-5 win. “I want to do it for the fans here. This is home for me, and not getting it done right now stings, but I’ve got a job to do on the field and I’ve got to shift my focus to that now and go play some ball.”

In a break from the way that the Yankees normally do business, general manager Brian Cashman laid out the offer to Judge “for transparency purposes” rather than rely on leaks to the media that he would have to confirm. According to Cashman, the team offered Judge seven years at $30.5 million per year, plus $17 million for this year, his final one before free agency, for a total package of $230.5 million. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite yearly preseason pieces is also my most dreaded: the breakout list. I’ve been doing this exercise since 2014, and while I’ve had the occasional triumph (hello, Christian Yelich), the low-probability nature of trying to project who will beat expectations means that for every time you look smart, you’re also bound to look dumb for some other reason.

Let’s start things off with a brief look at last year’s breakout hitter list and see how they fared.

• Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: .311/.401/.601, 166 wRC+, 6.7 WAR
• Alex Kirilloff: .251/.299/.423, 93 wRC+, 0.3 WAR
• Kyle Schwarber: .266/.374/.554, 145 wRC+, 3.1 WAR
• Gary Sánchez: .204/.307/.423, 99 wRC+, 1.5 WAR
• J.P. Crawford: .273/.338/.376, 103 wRC+, 3.1 WAR
• Nathaniel Lowe: .264/.357/.415, 115 wRC+, 1.6 WAR
• Ryan McMahon: .254/.331/.449, 95 wRC+, 2.5 WAR
• Luis Urías: .249/.345/.445, 111 wRC+, 2.7 WAR

On the plus side, nobody really embarrassed me. Alex Kirilloff came closest, but in his defense, he was playing with a wrist injury that eventually required surgery. Read the rest of this entry »

With the 2021-22 offseason in the books, it’s clear we’ll remember it, at least in part, for how the Twins of all teams took the reins and strengthened their roster. They flipped Mitch Garver for Isiah Kiner-Falefa, who then went to the Yankees along with Josh Donaldson in exchange for Gio Urshela and Gary Sánchez. It wasn’t much of a downgrade, and the move gave Minnesota the opportunity to sign Carlos Correa, the biggest free agent of the offseason.

And now, here’s the cherry on top. In an attempt to address the fragility of their rotation, the Twins had already traded for Sonny Gray. But one good pitcher can’t lift an entire staff, so they went ahead and acquired another starter. And as we’ll discuss later, there were several other intriguing players involved in the deal. A fairly complex trade on the morning of Opening Day? Don’t mind if I do. Here’s the basic breakdown:

Padres Get

• Taylor Rogers
• Brent Rooker
• Salary Relief ($6.6 million)

Twins Get

• Chris Paddack
• Emilio Pagán
• PTBNL

This started off as a discussion about the Twins, but let’s actually begin with the Padres’ return. Now, the bullpen down in San Diego was never projected to be an issue. If anything, it’s one of the league’s better ones, as evidenced by an 11th-place spot on this year’s positional power rankings. But it did lack a clear ninth inning stalwart after the departure of Mark Melancon, a problem made more obvious by last week’s Opening Day fiasco. With Rogers not yet with the team, Craig Stammen allowed a walk-off three-run bomb to Seth Beer (on National Beer Day, no less). Read the rest of this entry »

Carson Spiers has quietly thrived since being bypassed in the five-round 2020 draft. Signed that summer by a Cincinnati Reds team that at the time employed Kyle Boddy as their pitching coordinator, the 24-year-old right-hander has done so with a studious approach that he pairs with a bulldog attitude. Featuring a well-rounded pitch mix, Spiers is coming off a season where he logged a 3.55 ERA with 130 strikeouts in 111-and-two-thirds innings spent between Low-A Daytona and (primarily) High-A Dayton.

A senior-sign with a management degree from Clemson University, Spiers — currently on the roster of the Double-A Chattanooga Lookouts — is No. 15 on our newly-released Cincinnati Reds Top Prospects list. He discussed his development, and the debt he owes to Boddy, over the phone in mid-March.

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David Laurila: Who are you as a pitcher? How would you describe yourself?

Carson Spiers: “I’d say that I’m a competitive guy who likes to attack. I’ll fill the zone with four different pitches and let my arsenal work for me. I wouldn’t say I’m the most overpowering guy on the mound, but I have a good enough fastball to play at any level. I also have some pretty good off-speed that I can throw in any count; I can create swings and misses with those pitches, as well. But I’d say that my best trait is my competitive edge. I have a strong will to want to win.”

Laurila: What is your best pitch?

Spiers: “My best pitch is strike one, for sure. My slider and my changeup are definitely my out pitches, but ‘best pitch’ is tough to say, because I can throw all four in any count. I wouldn’t say I have a best.”

Laurila: Baseball America has called your changeup your best pitch… Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Cincinnati Reds. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our 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 »