I know what you’re thinking: it’s a layup of a title. Harrison Bader is one of the best defensive outfielders in baseball. When he needs it, he can engage a little bit of turbo boost, turning his range from excellent to downright ludicrous:

Too easy, right? What a one-note title. We get it: he catches all the balls. If you thought that was what I had in store for you, gather around, because things are about to get exciting.

Bader, you see, collected Pokémon cards as a kid. Relevant? Not really. Unless you follow fantasy baseball forums and heard this whopper of a tale early in the season:

I’m not the first person to cover this story. Sami Alsado picked it up in May over at Pitcher List and wondered whether it should inform our opinion of Bader’s start. But it was still early in the year, and besides, Bader himself hadn’t said anything about it yet. Well, that surgery was real, and Bader is in the midst of a breakout offensive season. It’s speculation no longer — Harrison Bader is seeing clearly. Let’s see what removing some nasal polyps can do for you. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2021 Los Angeles Dodgers might be having one of the greatest disappointing seasons in MLB history. Despite being on a 97-win pace, an accomplishment that nearly every team in baseball would celebrate most seasons, they find themselves in second place in the National League West, four games behind the surprising San Francisco Giants. They’re even underperforming their preseason expectations, a notable feat considering how rare it is for projection systems to forecast a team to have more than 97 wins.

One of the primary components of this terrific-but-underwhelming paradox is Cody Bellinger, 2019’s NL MVP. Just 24 at the end of the 2019 season and sporting an ultra-spicy .305/.406/.629, 7.8 WAR line, Bellinger was quite rightly considered one of the best young players in baseball. A slugging first baseman who somehow converted into being a solid center fielder, little seemed out of reach in those salad days. Yet just two years later, at the ripe old age of 26, Bellinger is currently a platoon player.

Entering the season, ZiPS projected Bellinger for a 133 wRC+, a notable bounce-back from the decidedly middling 114 wRC+ he posted in the shortened 2020 season. And ZiPS was actually the grumpy one here; the other projections housed here at FanGraphs pegged him for a wRC+ of anywhere from 141 to 148. The results haven’t been in the same galaxy as those forecasts, or even his 2020 results. Bellinger’s 65 wRC+ is a shining beacon of misery. To put this in context, Chris Davis put up a 63 wRC+ from 2017-20 and a 60 the last time he got significant playing time in 2019. You don’t want history to rhyme, let alone repeat, when the comparison is Davis.

Of course, one mitigating factor is that Bellinger has suffered a string of injuries over the last year. First, there was a dislocated shoulder while celebrating a World Series dinger. Then this season, he’s missed time with a hairline fracture in his left fibula and a hamstring strain. We’ve seen players struggle while coming back from shoulder injuries in the past, and his maladies this season haven’t allowed for much of a run. So case closed, he’ll be fine? Not really. Read the rest of this entry »

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With the July 30 trade deadline come and gone and the August waiver trade deadline a relic of the past, teams are set for the stretch run. Perhaps that’s why the deadline was so frantic; all of the contenders and bubble teams had one last chance to upgrade their rosters before the final two months of the season. We’re only a week into August and the standings in the two eastern divisions have already been shaken up.

A quick refresher: my approach takes the three most important components of a team — their offense (wRC+), and their starting rotation and bullpen (50%/50% FIP- and RA9-) — and combines them to create an overall team quality metric. I add in a factor for “luck” — adjusting based on a team’s expected win-loss record — to produce a power ranking.

Even though the Dodgers added a ton of firepower to their roster at the end of July, the Giants have maintained their grip on both first place in the NL West and the best record in baseball. Getting Kris Bryant was a critical response to Los Angeles adding Trea Turner and Max Scherzer, and Bryant has had no problems settling in. He’s already played three different positions and has collected 10 hits in his first eight games as a Giant. They’ve won four straight series against the likes of the Dodgers, Astros, and Brewers.

Scherzer and Turner made their Dodger debuts this last week, giving the injury-wracked club a huge boost. The Dodgers lineup has gotten a lot healthier with the recent return of Corey Seager but the team still has 14 pitchers currently on the Injured List. The latest bad news was a setback in Clayton Kershaw’s rehab, pushing his timeline into September. They won’t have to worry about missing out on a playoff berth, but if they want to push the Giants for the NL West lead, they’ll need some help on the pitching front. They signed Cole Hamels last week but their most impactful reinforcements will be coming off the IL sometime in the next two months. Read the rest of this entry »

In late June, Chicago White Sox rookie and 2019 third overall pick Andrew Vaughn had a 13-game stretch where he struck out 31% of the time with a 15.1% swinging strike rate. This slump brought his season-long wRC+ down to 91 and his K-rate up to 27.2%. It was a disappointing start to the career of a prospect who was seen as having a great hit tool and had always had below-average strikeout rates in the minors. That stretch culminated in a three-game series against the Mariners that saw Vaughn strike out four times in eight plate appearances and wave through 20% of the pitches he saw:

The White Sox had a day off the next day and by the time their next series against the Twins started on June 29, Vaughn had snapped out of his funk. In fact, he didn’t whiff a single time in the series against Minnesota. When watching his swing in that series, you could notice an adjustment beginning to take shape. Focus on his hands, compared to the swings you saw above:

Vaughn’s ability to make contact has continued and since June 29, his swinging strike rate is an elite of 6.3% — that’s Juan Soto territory. Now that we are into August, Vaughn’s new hand load has solidified further, making it easier to see the difference compared to his early season swings. Here’s a better look at the adjustment:

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These are notes on prospects from Brendan Gawlowski. Read previous installments of the Daily Prospect Notes here.

Justin Steele, LHP, Chicago Cubs
Level & Affiliate: Triple-A Iowa Age: 26 Org Rank: 37 FV: 40

Notes
After a strong debut out of Chicago’s bullpen this spring, Steele has spent the last month in Triple-A getting stretched out in preparation to join the Cubs rotation. The southpaw dazzled in his 11 big league outings, striking out 37% of the hitters he faced while also generating a 70% groundball rate. Evaluators are split on whether he’s a reliever long-term, and with the Cubs going nowhere fast, this summer provides the team with the perfect opportunity to assess his chops as a starter.

Over his last two outings, he’s registered 13 strikeouts against just two walks in 10 innings of work. It’s a good sign that both his low-to-mid-90s fastball and slider didn’t lose much gas in the transition to the rotation. Watching him, I’m impressed with his ability to locate the slider against opposite handed hitters: he’s good at both back-dooring the pitch for a strike and can also spin one to a hitter’s back foot in search of a whiff. That utility takes a little pressure off the change, which he’s just now working back into his repertoire after not using it at all in the bigs. While the safe bet is that he’s still a reliever long-term, there are enough ingredients here to make this rotation experiment more than a blind shot in the dark. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last decade or so, I’ve noticed a trend I find intriguing, a pattern of fans building up a cult of personality around players on their favorite team who are, to put it politely, average at best. Now, before we dwell too much on the idea of a “bad” major leaguer, it’s worth noting that even the so-called “bad” players are still elite in terms of their ability to play the sport of baseball. To even make it to the big leagues means having proven yourself in the minors, often for years. They may not stack up compared to All-Star teammates and future Hall of Famers, but I want to emphasize that these players are still among the best in the world at what they do.

Still, even with that in context, there are players who fall into a utility or bench-player role, guys who likely don’t have sell-out jerseys in the team store or even earn the dreaded “Quad-A” moniker. Yet it’s these players who interest me most because for some reason, some of them become magnets for fan interest. Don Kelly, a utility player for the Detroit Tigers, hasn’t appeared on the field for the team since 2014; he has a career line of .230/.294/.334 over nine seasons, a career wRC+ of 72, and 0.2 career WAR. Yet to this day, Tigers fans will argue that it is Kelly, and not Don Mattingly, who is the true “Donnie Baseball.”

I posit there are two parts to what makes these players fan-favorites. The first thing that makes a “bad” player beloved is the positive feeling they create for an audience, be it as a generally likable individual or as a spark-plug who is watchable because you don’t know if they’ll crack a joke or beat the tar out of a Gatorade cooler on any given day. The feeling these players inspire in us, the GIFs and videos that hit Twitter as a result, is part of establishing a mythos that has nothing to do with their stat line. Who among us hasn’t seen a GIF of Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Brett Phillips in “airplane mode” after his unexpectedly clutch walk-off in Game Four of the 2020 World Series and smiled? Read the rest of this entry »

For the first time since 2006, candidates from the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues Black baseball are being considered for placement on a Hall of Fame ballot. While the 10-candidate slate to be voted upon later this year by the Early Baseball Era Committee has not yet been finalized, those who were previously shut out by baseball’s shameful color line, and then again by the Hall of Fame following the election of 17 players, managers, and executives by the Special Committee on the Negro Leagues in 2006, are eligible once again.

In a statement to FanGraphs, Jon Shestakofsky, the Hall’s vice president of communications and education, said, “The Hall of Fame’s Early Baseball Committee, which is scheduled to meet for the first time this December, will consider 10 candidates comprised of players, umpires, managers and executives/pioneers who made their greatest impacts in baseball prior to 1950. Negro Leagues candidates will be eligible for consideration as part of this ballot.” Shestakofsky later clarified that the eligibility applies to pre-Negro Leagues Black baseball candidates as well.

At a time when Major League Baseball is in the midst of a long-overdue reckoning with regards to Negro Leagues history, branding and symbolism, and the representation of Black Americans at all levels within the sport, this is good news. It comes a year after the Negro Leagues Centennial Celebration, which has helped to introduce new generations of fans and media members to some often-overlooked greats, an effort that has met with such success that Shohei Ohtani is drawing comparisons not just to Babe Ruth but to Bullet Rogan and Martín Dihigo. It stands to reason that the renewed spotlight on Black baseball would extend to Cooperstown. Read the rest of this entry »

Francisco Urbaez wasn’t sure what to expect when he reported to spring training. Signed by the Cincinnati Reds as a non-drafted free agent in June of last year, the 23-year-old infielder knew only that he was being given an opportunity. To say he’s made the most of it would be an understatement. In 275 plate appearances with the High-A Dayton Dragons, Urbaez is slashing an eyebrow-raising .332/420/.454.

A native of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Urbaez didn’t come to the United States solely to play baseball. The son of a mechanical engineer and a psychologist, he came to earn a degree.

“That was my family’s plan,” explained Urbaez, who spent two years at Chipola Junior College, and two more at Florida Atlantic University. “They were like, “Go to the States and play ball, and whatever happens happens, but you need an education first.”

Already fluent in English when he arrived in the U.S. at age 18, Urbaez was initially an Accounting major, but then changed to International Business, and ultimately to Business. And while baseball wasn’t the priority, it did serve as a catalyst. Former Toronto Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista is involved with a foundation that helps Latin American student-athletes come to the U.S. via scholarships, and Urbaez was one of the beneficiaries.

Unlike many Dominicans currently playing professional baseball, Urbaez hadn’t attracted a lot of attention while on the island. He received only one offer from an MLB organization, and that was after he’d committed to come Stateside to begin his studies. Teams didn’t exactly knock down his door during his JC tenure, either. It wasn’t until his junior year at FAU that scouts began to take notice. Prominent among them was Andrew Fabian, whose familiarity with Urbaez dated back to his time as a coach at Hillsborough Community College. Now an area scout with the Reds, Fabian saw potential in the under-the-radar second baseman. Read the rest of this entry »