These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Adrian Hernandez, RHP, Toronto Blue Jays
Level & Affiliate: Low-A Dunedin  Age: 21   Org Rank: NR   FV: 35
Line: 3 IP (relief), 1 H, 1 BB, 0 R, 7 K

Notes
The 21-year-old Mexican righty induced 14 swings and misses last night, per BaseballSavant, by far the most in the game and an especially high number for someone who only pitched three innings. Of the 52 pitches Hernandez threw last night, a whopping 24 of them were changeups, which is how he garnered most of those whiffs. Interestingly, Hernandez’s changeup is of the high-spin variety and tends to finish to his glove side, which at first glance made me wonder if it was being labeled correctly by Savant, but this is indeed Hernandez’s changeup and it has been very effective. His strike-throwing has been a bit of an issue this season and there’s little body projection here, but Hernandez is a young-ish arm with an out pitch and viable arm strength, so he’s worth monitoring. Read the rest of this entry »

There are a lot of ways you can introduce a person. You can talk about their appearance, traits, maybe even their likes or dislikes. Tasked with breaking the ice on Marlins reliever Richard Bleier, though, this is how I would start. From 2016 to ’19, here’s his yearly strikeout rate versus the league average:

Bleier had been famous for not generating strikeouts, zigging when other prolific relievers were zagging. It makes sense when you consider his repertoire, which consisted mostly of a sinker, a cutter, and the occasional changeup or slider. The sinker led the charge, inducing a copious amount of grounders, while the other offerings were mixed in to throw hitters off-guard. The strategy worked, too. Bleier boasted a 1.97 ERA and 3.59 FIP in 119 innings between 2016 and ’18, and while his 2019 returned uncharacteristic results (a 5.32 ERA and 4.19 FIP), nothing suggested a fatal flaw. Sometimes, you have a bad year.

I’ve established Bleier as someone who thrives on weak contact. But you’ve read the title. One of the perks of being a baseball writer is getting to revisit the FanGraphs pages of players you’re fond of, as work. It’s like catching up with an old friend. I hadn’t paid attention to Bleier in a while, so imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon this development:

Weird, right? Most of the time, this type of breakout is the result of pitchers refining their already electric stuff, like Matt Barnes or Dustin May; their strikeout rates climb from average to great. But consider Bleier, whose dramatic increase has brought him just up to par, with a current strikeout rate of 24.3% that is a mere 0.1 points higher than the league average of 24.2%.

Read the rest of this entry »

In a rotation already stretched thin by injury, the last thing the Cardinals needed was to lose their top starter for an extended period. But that’s what happened on Monday night in Los Angeles as Jack Flaherty left his start against the Dodgers after five innings due to tightness in his left side and was placed on the injured list on Tuesday with an oblique strain that will likely sideline him for several weeks.

Matched up against Trevor Bauer, Flaherty allowed only two hits — back-to-back solo homers by Gavin Lux and Chris Taylor — while striking out nine and walking one over the course of five innings and 83 pitches. He reportedly felt some discomfort on his final pitches and then appeared to aggravate the injury while swinging the bat in the top of the sixth inning. Ain’t this single-season return of pitchers hitting great?

Flaherty didn’t take the bat off his shoulder after that 0–1 foul ball, striking out looking. He gave way to reliever Ryan Helsley in the bottom of the frame even as his teammates scored three runs off Bauer to take a 3–2 lead, but the Dodgers got their licks against Helsley and the rest of the Cardinals’ shaky bullpen and won 9–4.

Regarding Flaherty’s injury, manager Mike Shildt told reporters on Tuesday, “It’s not a minimal situation. It’s a real strain, tear, I don’t know which grade (they) want to call it. It’s significant that Jack is going to miss some time. And it’s going to be awhile. We’re still in the exploratory stage to determine how long.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Jacob deGrom‘s already microscopic ERA needs even a stronger microscope to spy it after his outing Monday, a six-inning shutout against the Arizona Diamondbacks that lowered his ERA to 0.71. We’re no longer in April, and we’re not even in May, so this new level of dominance can’t be easily ignored as the product of a small sample. Once performance of this magnitude reaches June intact — and 0.71 is deGrom’s second-highest seasonal ERA after the end of an outing — you have to seriously give at least a thought to the prospect of a pitcher making a run at Bob Gibson’s live-ball ERA record.

We had a chance at this happening last year, thanks to the asteriskesque 2020 season and its 60-game slate, shortened as a consequence of COVID-19. I talked about the possibility going into last season, with ZiPS projecting a one-in-four shot of someone catching Gibson’s 1.12. Nobody did it in the end, but Shane Bieber’s 1.63 was the one of the best ERAs for a qualifying pitcher since Gibson’s in 1968. Bieber and Trevor Bauer, the two pitchers who came closest, fell well short of Gibson but given the relatively high levels of league offense, their efforts were enough to get them the third and fourth spots on the all-time single-season ERA+ ranks.

Catching Gibson in a 60-game season would have been an accomplishment, but not really a full one. Records are naturally set in conditions that benefit players, and Gibson was no exception: 1968 was dubbed the Year of the Pitcher thanks to a league ERA of 2.98, nearly a half-run lower than any season since the spitball was banned. Gibson’s 258 ERA+, which takes into account league offense, still sits atop the leaderboard, but at least it doesn’t utterly wreck the recent field, which consists of Pedro Martinez (243, 1999), Roger Clemens (227, 1997), and Zack Greinke (227, 2015) among others.

But since 2021 is a full 162-game season, catching a 1.12 ERA would feel a lot less like sneaking in through a loophole. A significant drop-off in league offense (to a 4.02 ERA) could be credited for an assist, but it’s not a number that is unfair relative to baseball history. So, can he do it?

deGrom has missed a few starts so far in 2021, with no apparent ill results to his performance, and the Mets have been cautious with his pitch totals; he’s averaged fewer than 70 pitches in his last three starts. That’s beneficial to his chances, as no star pitcher has a long-term ability to keep their ERA that low, even Gibson; just clearing the one-inning-per-team-game requirement optimizes things. deGrom will likely end up with around 30 games started this season, so a good place to begin in gauging his odds is to see if anyone’s come close to 1.12 in a span of 30 games starts, crossing over seasons, since 1920. I’m only listing unique 30-game runs since there is naturally quite a bit of overlap in runs:

Gibson’s best 30-game span was even better than his 1.12 ERA, dipping under one. J.R. Richard’s presence on this list is especially cruel, as his 30-game span ended with the final game of his major league career. Before Richard’s next start, he suffered a stroke caused by a blood clot, and while he attempted a comeback a few years later in the minors, he was no longer the same pitcher.

Nobody catches 1.12 on this list, but many come close enough that the result is at least plausible. Jake Arrieta was only a run from accomplishing the feat. deGrom himself appears on this list, his 30-game span running from April 21, 2018, through April 3, 2019. His 1.40 ERA over 30 starts comes out to an ERA+ of 266 in a higher run environment (by about a tenth of a run) than 2021 so far. A tenth of a run isn’t a lot, but to break a record like this, every advantage helps. Yes, Mets fans, I see that 10-9 record for deGrom over that stretch.

To get an idea of deGrom’s probability of finishing with an ERA of 1.12 or better, I worked with a technique I’ve used in the past, which “simulates” a season using Monte Carlo algorithms and a smoothed model of a pitcher’s starts based on their projections and historical usage. At 189.2 innings (what he has in the bag, plus the 22 starts of 6.3 innings per start in his depth chart projections), he needs to allow 23 or fewer runs or a 1.23 ERA for the rest of the season. At 162 total innings, he’d have to maintain a 1.30 ERA the rest of the way.

deGrom’s no slam-dunk to catch Gibson, but he’s got a fighting chance, with my model estimating a 3.1% chance to beat a 1.12 ERA, or more precisely, Gibson’s 1.122538 (no cheating with rounding here!). That’s about 31-to-1, a little better than getting the exact number in roulette and roughly the probability of a 20-homer hitter getting a round-tripper in any given at-bat. In other words, it’s more likely than not that he falls short of the feat, but it’s definitely possible and firmly in the realm of plausibility.

Jacob deGrom is having the best run of his career and quickly developing a Hall of Fame case based on Koufax-levels of peak performance. Catching Bob Gibson would be a fantastic sentence on a plaque in Cooperstown. Hopefully, the Mets’ offense has the decency to give him more than 10 wins if it should come to pass!

Adbert Alzolay has been one of the few pleasant surprises for the Cubs this season. Through his first two major league stints across 2019 and ’20, he walked 15% of the batters he faced in 33.2 innings of work, most of which was in the starting rotation. Even when striking out 28.6% of opposing hitters, handing out free passes at such a high rate is not a sustainable way of working through a lineup and keeping runs off the scoreboard and without the aid of a .263 BABIP in those 33.2 innings, Alzolay’s results would have been even more concerning. Meanwhile the Cubs, after years of contending and struggling to develop pitchers internally, were bereft of exciting arms on the right side of the aging curve. This past offseason, ownership refused to spend in any meaningful way and the club was forced to ship out Cy Young candidate Yu Darvish for Zach Davies and a few prospects in the low minors. They did sign Jake Arrieta to a $6.5 million deal coming off a disappointing stint with the Phillies, but that signing represented Chicago’s most significant investment in pitching this offseason. These moves and circumstances meant that Alzolay would need to take a big step forward in 2021 if the Cubs wanted to remain competitive with the Cardinals and Brewers in what seemed to be a winnable AL Central.

But expecting Alzolay to make a substantial leap in terms of his control took some wishful thinking if you were scouting the statline. At his last stop in Triple-A in 2019, Alzolay walked 11% of batters in 65.1 innings. That figure is obviously better than the 15% he posted in his first innings in the majors, but it would still be a below average rate and that was while facing worse competition. For Alzolay to even have an average walk rate, he would have to cut his 2019 Triple-A rate by at least 20%, all while facing better competition. The odds were certainly not in his favor.

Miraculously, he has made the necessary adjustment. In 49.2 innings in 2021, Alzolay is now walking only 5.2% of batters in an environment where the league average is about 9%. Not only has he shaved his previous major-league rate by two thirds, but his 2021 mark now represents an elite figure, one that’s in the 88th percentile of all pitchers per Baseball Savant. Better yet, he has barely sacrificed any strikeouts. As I said in the introduction, Alzolay had a career 28.6% strikeout rate coming into 2021. This season, that rate is still a well-above average at 26.3%, especially relative to other starting pitchers. He has also increased the rate at which he induces groundballs (38.3% prior to this season, 45.7% in 2021), which should offset some of the strikeouts he has lost as he tries to hone his command. All of this has culminated in a 3.81 ERA through nine starts despite a bloated 20% HR/FB rate, the latter figure driving the massive difference between his FIP (4.21) and xFIP (a sterling 3.41). Read the rest of this entry »

Like many of you, I spent a good portion of Memorial Day watching baseball. I started with the Rays and Yankees, and was watching the YES Network feed when rookie shortstop Taylor Walls stepped to the plate. Immediately, the broadcast went to a graphic of who the Rays elected not to call up after they traded Willy Adames to the Brewers: Wander Franco, universally seen as the best prospect in the game, and the red-hot Vidal Bruján. It was a nice little troll, but while so much attention is deservedly paid to the Franco and Jarred Kelenic types before and after they debut, not every rookie has the same kind of prospect pedigree. With that in mind, here are nine prospects who aren’t getting the same kind of hype but are performing at a level that might earn them a big-league look this year. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Luis Urías, the zombie runner, and walk-off wins, a few other aspects of the Will Craig/Javier Báez play, a new stat called the “Boner,” MLB and NFTs, Theo Epstein’s recent comments about making changes to the game, Shohei Ohtani’s player-page traffic and the future of two-way players, the Rays and Rich Hill, how the aftermath of the spitball ban relates to the future of foreign substance use, the definition of a “generational talent,” whether to credit teams or players for positioning, and whether MLB should ban in-game analytics use (and coaching visits), plus a Stat Blast about Trey Mancini and players who’ve accrued the highest-ever percentages of their teams’ runs and RBI.

Audio intro: The Replacements, "Gary’s Got a Boner"
Audio outro: David Newberry, "The Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth"

Link to Brewers walk-off game story
Link to Craig’s comment about his boner
Link to Dan in Milwaukee’s field diagram
Link to story about Gehrig NFT
Link to story about Topps NFTs
Link to story about NFTs’ environmental impact
Link to Theo Epstein story
Link to Ben on Ohtani
Link to story about the spitball ban
Link to Pages from Baseball’s Past
Link to Servais “generational player” quote
Link to Tango on sports generations
Link to story about Joe West confiscating card
Link to “lasers in the outfield” story
Link to Stat Blast “Contribution Rate” data
Link to Ben Clemens on Lindor
Link to All-Star Game lawsuit story
Link to second All-Star Game lawsuit story
Link to listener David Newberry’s album

 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 Twitter Account
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS