Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Chicago Cubs. 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 »

Graham Spraker will be available when this year’s lockout-postponed Rule 5 draft is eventually held. The 26-year-old right-hander wasn’t added to the Toronto Blue Jays 40-man roster prior to last month’s deadline. While this was not exactly a surprise — the former 31st-round draft pick out of a DII school has never graced our prospect rankings — Spraker is nonetheless coming off an eye-opening season. In 31 relief outings, all but one of them at Double-A New Hampshire, the erstwhile Quincy University Hawk logged a 2.62 ERA and fanned 65 batters in 46-and-two-thirds innings.

Spraker’s breakout culminated in an award-winning stint in the Arizona Fall League. Pitching for the Mesa Solar Sox, the righty threw 11-and-a-third scoreless innings, allowing just four hits and a pair of walks, with 17 strikeouts. He was named the AFL’s Reliever of the Year at the conclusion of the campaign.

All that aside, just who is Graham Spraker?

“I am who I am,” the righty responded when asked about his pitching M.O. “I’ve changed a lot every year. I’m a pretty adaptable player — that’s why I’ve had success — but I feel that I’ve found a good blueprint now. It’s something I’m going to try to stick to for the rest of my career.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the slow drip of baseball news during the lockout, why MLB’s competitive balance gets a bad rap, the Rays’ historic collective minor league winning percentage, and the difficulty of evaluating individual defense in the age of Statcast-based and non-Statcast-based metrics. Then (33:09) they continue their series of discussions of Korean baseball drama Stove League by breaking down Episodes 9–12. (Note: No spoilers beyond Episode 12.)

Audio intro: Superchunk, "Slow"
Audio outro: Michael Nesmith, "Propinquity (I’ve Just Begun to Care)"

Link to James Smyth’s parity thread
Link to Rob Mains on 2021 parity
Link to Ben on competitive balance
Link to Organization of the Year announcement
Link to story on record Rays winning percentage
Link to story about winning and player dev
Link to best minor league records of the 2010s
Link to story on Astros’ minor league winning
Link to Sam Miller on the best farm systems
Link to FanGraphs farm system rankings
Link to Effectively Wild Secret Santa
Link to The Rumor podcast
Link to first EW Stove League discussion
Link to second EW Stove League discussion
Link to basepaths bubble tunnel photo
Link to Stove League teaser video
Link to Stove League review
Link to stream Stove League via Kocowa
Link to stream Stove League via Viki

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2022 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2016 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Billy Wagner was the ultimate underdog. Undersized and from both a broken home and an impoverished rural background, he channeled his frustrations into throwing incredibly hard — with his left hand, despite being a natural righty, for he broke his right arm twice as a child. Scouts overlooked him because he wasn’t anywhere close to six feet tall, but they couldn’t disregard his dominance over collegiate hitters using a mid-90s fastball. The Astros made him a first-round pick, and once he was converted to a relief role, his velocity went even higher.

Thanks to outstanding lower-body strength, coordination, and extraordinary range of motion, the 5-foot-10 Wagner was able to reach 100 mph with consistency — 159 times in 2003, according to The Bill James Handbook. Using a hard slider learned from teammate Brad Lidge, he kept blowing the ball by hitters into his late 30s to such an extent that he owns the record for the highest strikeout rate of any pitcher with at least 800 innings. He was still dominant when he walked away from the game following the 2010 season, fresh off posting a career-best ERA. Read the rest of this entry »

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Cleveland Guardians.

Batters

The overlying theme here is a state of averageness, and that’s not so bad. For a number of years, Cleveland’s outfield situation has been rather bleak, generally toward the bottom of the league, with little investment to make it better. This is the first time in a while that ZiPS sees some hope there. No, the Guardians didn’t pull a 180 and sign Starling Marte and Michael Conforto, but the likely players manning the outfield have better projections than most of those used out there in recent years. The most notable are Myles Straw and Steven Kwan, both of whom get projections that, in an entire season, put them a skosh above average. ZiPS doesn’t think they likely get any surprise star performances, but it’s a better situation.

The two likely meaningful breakouts in the roster are Nolan Jones and George Valera. ZiPS is happy with the latter’s entrance into the high minors, but there is concern about the former; that ceiling gets a lot lower if he doesn’t improve on 2021 and an unexciting .787 OPS for Triple-A Columbus. One can’t blame the ankle injury that ended Jones’ season, either, which was significant enough that he couldn’t play through it.

The middle infield is a similar story as the outfield. ZiPS sees more upside remaining for Andrés Giménez, and Amed Rosario is far from a problem. First base is a weak spot, with the computer holding out little hope for Bobby Bradley. It was a lot easier to excuse his underwhelming numbers when he was 22, but he’ll be 26 next season, and he didn’t even hit Triple-A pitchers all that convincingly last year. Speaking of players with offense that displeased ZiPS, let’s just say “Austin Hedges” and leave it there.
Read the rest of this entry »

There’s no lockout on the podcast, which means Chin Music keeps going. This week I’m joined by returning co-host C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic and even without much baseball news, we find plenty to talk about. We begin with a non-update on the lockout and discuss how we’ve each gotten a bit more pessimistic about how this thing ends. Next, since the lockout means no Winter Meetings, we instead dip into our memory banks for a few fun stories from Meetings past, while sharing what we miss (and don’t) about the annual event. Finally, as there was Hall of Fame news this week, Jay Jaffe joins the show to discuss the six newly elected inductees, as well as some new faces on this year’s ballot. Then it’s your emails on minor league team purchases, the potential for an international draft, and domain squatting, followed by a few light-hearted and easy-on-the-brain Moments Of Culture.

As always, we hope you enjoy, and thank you for listening.

Music by Rid Of Me.

Have a question you’d like answered on the show? Ask us anything at chinmusic@fangraphs.com.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Warning One: While ostensibly a podcast about baseball, these conversations often veer into other subjects.

Warning Two: There is explicit language.

Run Time: 2:29:25

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Major league baseball remains in a holding pattern. There’s a lockout, the two sides are intermittently negotiating, and nothing can happen until they reach an agreement. That’s major league baseball, though, not all of baseball, and some interesting economic shenanigans are afoot across the minors.

As Baseball America’s J.J. Cooper reported last week, Endeavor Group Holdings is purchasing nine minor league baseball teams: the Gwinnett Stripers, Mississippi Braves, Rome Braves, Augusta GreenJackets, Iowa Cubs, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, Memphis Redbirds, Hudson Valley Renegades, and San Jose Giants; The Athletic’s Daniel Kaplan and Evan Drellich first reported the possibility in October. These transactions aren’t yet final, but they’re very likely to be approved, which will make Endeavor (via new subsidiary Diamond Baseball Holdings) the largest MiLB owner.

Endeavor, a publicly traded company partially owned by private equity group Silver Lake Partners, is already in the business of sports, though not specifically minor league baseball. They own a little bit of everything, from agencies to sports organizations. Their marquee holding is the UFC, but seriously, the list is endless: Professional Bull Riding, Euroleague Basketball, the IMG Academy that turns out baseball prospects, the Madrid Open, the William Morris Endeavor agency. It’s a broad portfolio, much of which is made up of directly-sports-related operations; an arm of the company also sells media rights for the Olympics.
Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 952

On this edition of the podcast, we engage in an important Hall of Fame discussion before chatting with a pitcher on the rise.

• At the top of the show, Jay Jaffe welcomes Sean Gibson, executive director of the Josh Gibson Foundation; Gary Gillette, baseball author, as well as the founder and chair of the Friends of Historic Hamtramck Stadium; and Ted Knorr, baseball historian and researcher. Together, they are the co-founders of the 42 for 21 Committee, which works to publicize deserving Negro Leagues and Black baseball players for induction into the Hall of Fame. The group discusses the recent election of Buck O’Neil, Bud Fowler, and Minnie Miñoso to the Hall, as well as the candidates on this year’s Era Committee ballots who deserved to get in but didn’t. We also hear about how the election process could be improved, how important it is to honor living players, and the movement to rename the MVP award after Josh Gibson. [2:52]
• After that, David Laurila is joined by Spencer Strider, a right-handed pitching prospect in Atlanta’s organization. A 2020 draftee, Strider jumped from Low-A to the majors this year thanks to some changes in his game, and he shares with David what’s gone into his recent success. We also hear about his memorable debut against the Mets, developing a major-league changeup, and the best advice he got for pitching high in the zone. [29:19]

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Audio after the jump. (Approximate 59 minute play time.)

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