Current work on the team-by-team prospect lists is being complemented by lots of live looks in Arizona as we work on the West Valley cluster of teams (Reds/Guardians/Dodgers/White Sox), so the info in those lists is fresh out of the oven. As I’ve been targeting teams with West Valley facilities who come east and talked to scouts on my side of town, some players have popped up this spring from clubs whose prospect lists we’ve already done, and I’m not wasting time adding them to their org lists just because others aren’t finished. Those changes are noted beneath some notes on Daniel Espino and are indicated on The Board’s “Trend” column, as they’re the only players to have “up” arrows at this stage.
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This morning, Jay Jaffe covered the league’s first basemen. Now, Ben Clemens examines the state of the keystone.

Second base is deeper than ever this year. A logjam at shortstop — there were more talented free agent shortstops than there were teams that needed someone at the position — pushed talent over to second base. Indeed, two of the top three spots on this list are teams that signed marquee free agent shortstops and parked them at second. That’s part of a broader trend toward a widening of the talent pool that teams see as worthy of a starting job. Not only will you see shortstops like Trevor Story here, but also bat-first mashers like Max Muncy and elite defenders like Nicky Lopez. The old keystone archetype — a contact-first bat with serviceable defense but without the range or arm for short — still shows up in spades, too. Some diminutive second basemen have even started hitting for power — hi, Jose Altuve and Ozzie Albies. It’s a variegated group, but they all stand in the dirt between first and second — or, until next year, in short right field. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Meg Rowley introduced this year’s rankings, while Dan Szymborski examined the state of the league’s catchers. Today, we turn our attention to first and second basemen, starting with some first base thumpers.

First base is back, baby! Just two years ago in this space, I lamented that the position ain’t what it used to be, production-wise. Not only had the position’s big boppers from the previous few years fallen upon hard times, but in both 2018 and ’19, first basemen as a group had hit for just a 108 wRC+, their lowest mark since at least 2002 (as far back as our splits for this go). In 2021 however, first sackers combined to put together their best season since 2017, by multiple measures.

Such things tend to run in cycles, with turnover driving changes, and indeed, the overall leader in both wRC+ and WAR among first baseman last year was 22-year-old Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who in his first full season at the position made a run at the Triple Crown. Meanwhile, 27-year-old Matt Olson ranked second in both wRC+ and WAR; not coincidentally, he and Guerrero top the rankings here. But beyond that pair and the routinely excellent Freddie Freeman, the position’s resurgence was driven by the old guard, as Paul Goldschmidt and Joey Votto, two of the game’s best first basemen from 2015-18, rebounded to help provide some thump. Read the rest of this entry »

The free-agent signing bonanza might have come to an end, but that doesn’t mean that this compressed offseason doesn’t have anything left on the transaction front. On Sunday night, the Diamondbacks and Ketel Marte agreed to terms on a five-year extension worth $76 million that could keep him in Arizona through 2028 thanks to a team option.

Articles like this generally contemplate the player who just signed the extension, and we’ll definitely get to that, but the contract sounds so light on the surface that I think we should talk about that first. There’s one obvious reason that the total guarantee doesn’t jump off the page: Marte was already under contract through 2024 thanks to an extension he signed before the 2018 season. He signed that one only 1,000 plate appearances into his career, and it was quite team-friendly: five years and $24 million, with $11 million and $13 million team options tacked on to the end. He broke out in 2019 with a 7-WAR season, which made him one of the most underpaid players in the game.

Those club options are no more, because Arizona ripped them up to sign Marte’s new contract. He’ll receive the $8.4 million he was due this year and then another $76 million from ’23 to ’27. But since the Diamondbacks were certain to pick up those options, we can think of this deal as a three-year extension worth $52 million starting after the last option year.
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Earlier today, Meg Rowley introduced this year’s positional power rankings. As a quick refresher, all 30 teams are ranked based on the projected WAR from our Depth Charts. Our staff then endeavors to provide you with some illuminating commentary to put those rankings in context. We begin this year’s series at catcher.

In the era of modern analytics, we’ve deciphered a lot of baseball’s mysteries, but not all of them have been solved, and the catcher position remains one of the game’s most tantalizing unfinished puzzles. Shortstops all hit now and we can value relief pitchers using measures like the leverage index, but a lot of a catcher’s job is still difficult to quantify, even with the vast array of nifty data available in 2022. In some ways, that’s fine. A catcher dressed in full regalia kind of resembles an Arthurian knight, and it’s fun not to have all of our mythology replaced by science; J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t tie up all of his loose ends on purpose. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the 2022 positional power rankings! As is tradition, over the next week and a half, we’ll be ranking every team by position as we inch closer to Opening Day. This is always something of a funny exercise. You read FanGraphs regularly, after all — a fact for which we are very grateful — and are well-versed in the goings on of the offseason. You know that Carlos Correa signed with the Twins and that Kris Bryant now calls Denver home, and that the Mets remade part of their rotation and a good bit of their lineup. And yet after a protracted lockout and the subsequent frenetic conclusion to free agency, you’re still keen to know more about the game and what it might look like between now and October. The positional power rankings are our answer to that impulse.

This post serves as an explainer for our approach to the rankings. If you’re new to the exercise, I hope it helps to clarify how they are compiled and what you might expect from them. If you’re a FanGraphs stalwart, I hope it is a useful reminder of what we’re up to. If you have a bit of time, here is the introduction to last year’s series. You can use the navigation widget at the top of that post to get a sense of where things stood before Opening Day 2021, a year during which the projections were feeling the effects of 2020’s COVID-shortened slate.

Unlike a lot of sites’ season previews, we don’t arrange ours by team or division. That is a perfectly good way to organize a season preview, but we see a few advantages to the way we do it. First, ranking teams by position allows us to cover a team’s roster from top to bottom. Stars, everyday contributors, and role players alike receive some amount of examination, and those players (and the teams they play for) are placed in their proper league-wide context. By doing it this way, you can more easily see how teams stack up against each other, get a sense of the overall strength of a position across the game, and spot places where a well-constructed platoon may end up having a bigger impact than an everyday regular who is merely good. We think all of that context helps to create a richer understanding of the state of things and a clearer picture of the season ahead. Read the rest of this entry »

Toronto Blue Jays pitching prospect Hagen Danner is a converted catcher who gets good ride on his four-seam fastball, and he attributes that quality to his former position. Hearing that from the 23-year-old right-hander prompted me to ask Philadelphia Phillies manager Joe Girardi if what I was told made sense.

“I can definitely see that,” said Girardi, who caught for 15 big-league seasons. “But I don’t think it’s a guarantee; some [catchers] have a little tail to their ball when they throw. At times, I would have a little tail. But [Garrett] Stubbs really gets underneath it, really gets that spin. There are a lot of catchers who do. It’s how we’re taught to throw.”

Good ride typically comes with a four-seam grip, but unlike pitchers, a catcher isn’t standing on a mound with ample time to manipulate the baseball in his hand; he has to receive the ball, make the transfer, and get rid of it as quickly as possible. I asked the catcher-turned-manager about that as well.

“You don’t have time to get the grip, but ideally you want to throw it straight,” said Girardi. “And you can still throw it straight, pretty much, if you don’t have a perfect four-seam grip.”

Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch is likewise a former catcher, so I asked him the same questions I’d asked Girardi. Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday morning, the Blue Jays and Rockies agreed to a trade sending Randal Grichuk and cash considerations to Colorado, with Raimel Tapia and minor league infielder Adrian Pinto joining Toronto. Rob Gillies of The Associated Press reports that the amount of cash is just over $9.7 million, which accounts for nearly half of the remaining salary on Grichuk’s five-year contract. With this move, the Blue Jays get the left-handed outfielder they had been searching for, and the Rockies get another power hitter to plug into the middle of their lineup.

Grichuk signed that five-year extension (worth $52 million) after putting up 2.1 WAR in 2018, his first season in Toronto. He blasted 31 home runs the next year, but that power was the only positive aspect of his approach at the plate. Over the last three years, his offensive output has been nine percent below league average, and that’s despite an ISO that sits a hair above .200. His biggest issue has been getting on base at a regular clip. His walk rate has been remarkably consistent, sitting around 5.8% over the last six years, though it dipped to its lowest point since his rookie season last year. With a batted-ball profile focused on fly ball contact, his BABIP isn’t much better.

In the field, Grichuk has been a solid defender across all three outfield positions. Splitting his time between center and right field over the last few years, the advanced defensive metrics rate his work in the corner a little higher than up the middle. All three metrics were disappointed in his ability to cover enough ground in the field as the Blue Jays’ full-time center fielder in 2020. But moved over to right in ’21, he graded out as one of the better fielders at the position on a per-inning basis, accumulating 6 DRS and 5.5 UZR in just 330.1 innings. Read the rest of this entry »

Rhys Hoskins hits for power. The 29-year-old Philadelphia Phillies first baseman went deep 27 times last year in 443 plate appearances; his home run totals in his previous full seasons were 34 and 29 respectively. Moreover, the most notable digits in his career .241/.360/.502 slash line are those of his slugging percentage. And then there is his average exit velocity. Last year, Hoskins ranked in the 83rd percentile for that particular metric.

Slugger bona fides aside, he’s no mere masher. Hoskins is a student of the art of hitting, and he has been since his days at Sacramento State University. That’s where he learned to hunt the heater, an approach that — as the numbers attest — has served him well.

Hoskins discussed his evolution as a hitter, and the mindset that helps him flourish in the batter’s box, at the Phillies’ spring training site in Clearwater on Wednesday afternoon.

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David Laurila: How do you identify as a hitter?

Rhys Hoskins: “I think I’m a hitter with a pretty good understanding of the strike zone. High on-base guy. High power guy with always a chance to hit for more average. That’s the way I would describe myself.”

Laurila: Many people view you as a power hitter. Do you like that label?

Hoskins: “I feel like when you hear ‘power hitter,’ there’s a little bit of all-or-nothing attached to that. So I don’t know if I would necessarily say I’m a power hitter. I think I’d rather say that I’m a hitter with some power.”

Laurila: Where, and from whom, did you learn to hit? Read the rest of this entry »