I had a hard time writing the introduction for this article. Actually, strike that — I had one in mind the whole time, but I kept trying to come up with alternatives. Here’s the deal, though. I’m obsessed with Corbin Burnes (in a wholesome, “I love watching this guy pitch” kind of way), and I’ll use any excuse possible to write about him. His seeming transformation into a pitching demigod? Yeah, that certainly qualifies.

If you’re looking for the origins of both my Burnes obsession and his journey from prospect to ace, look no further than his first start of 2019. Burnes threw a gem, from a strikeout perspective at least, notching 12 K’s against a single walk. He also gave up three home runs and lasted only five innings — seems bad! The culprit was a fastball that spun ineffectively, some unholy blend of four-seamer and cutter that hitters had no trouble timing and obliterating.

Think “obliterating” is an extreme word choice? Burnes had an 8.82 ERA in 2019 and a 6.09 FIP. He gave up 17 homers in 49 innings, leading to a two-month trip to the minors. Batters barreled up 13.7% of the fastballs they put in play, which produced 10 of those homers. They whiffed on less than 20% of them, a poor result for such a hard, high-spin pitch. And he simply didn’t get the ride that four-seamers need, a prerequisite for missing bats. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Washington Nationals. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. As there was no minor league season in 2020, there are some instances where no new information was gleaned about a player. Players whose write-ups have not been meaningfully altered begin by telling you so. Each blurb ends with an indication of where the player played in 2020, which in turn likely informed the changes to their report if there were any. As always, we’ve leaned more heavily on sources from outside of a given org than those within for reasons of objectivity. Because outside scouts were not allowed at the alternate sites, we’ve primarily focused on data from there, and the context of that data, in our opinion, reduces how meaningful it is. Lastly, in an effort to more clearly indicate relievers’ anticipated roles, you’ll see two reliever designations, both on team lists and on The Board: MIRP, or multi-inning relief pitcher, and SIRP, or single-inning relief pitcher.

For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed, you can click here. For further explanation of Future Value’s merits and drawbacks, read Future Value.

All of the numbered prospects here also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It can be found here.

Prospect writers Kevin Goldstein and Eric Longenhagen will sometimes have enough player notes to compile a scouting post. This is one of those dispatches, a collection of thoughts after another weekend of college baseball, minor league spring training, and big league action. Remember, prospect rankings can be found on The Board.

Editor’s Note: This piece originally incorrectly stated Cole Winn had had a Tommy John surgery. It has been removed. FanGraphs regrets the error.

Eric’s Notes

Chase Walter, RHP, San Diego Padres

Most of the teams that ended up signing several non-drafted free agents for $20,000 bonuses last year were the ones with thinner farm systems, like the Reds or Nationals. But the Padres inked several as well, and the first one to pop up and look like a real steal, at least for me, is Western Carolina signee Chase Walter. Walter sat 96-98 out of the bullpen in a minor league spring training game late last week. His breaking ball shape varied pretty significantly, looking like a lateral slider sometimes and a power overhand curveball at others. Regardless of its shape, Walter’s breaking ball bent in at 84-87, and the ones that had more of a curveball look to them were plus. He looks like a potential quick-moving relief piece.

Asa Lacy, LHP, Kansas City Royals

Lacy’s first career pro outing against hitters from another org lasted two innings (the second of which was rolled), and was more of a check-in to see where he’s at rather than a look that should alter anyone’s opinion of him. I went into this look knowing that some scouts had seen him throw a live BP about a week and a half earlier and that Lacy was pretty wild during that outing, which is totally fine considering he’s just getting going for the year. He was a little wild in my look, too, and to my eye seemed to have a noticeably lower arm slot while throwing some of his sliders, even during warm-ups.

Lacy came out sitting 94-96 in his first inning of work and then was 95-98 in the second. He doesn’t need to have precise fastball command because his is the sort of fastball that has huge carry and can compete for swings and misses in the zone. Maybe it’s because of the arm slot variation stuff, or because it’s a developmental focus for him, or just because Lacy faced so many right-handed batters, but he ended up throwing many more changeups than anything else during this outing. They were often in the 85-88 mph range and some of them were quite good, while others were not. He broke off a single plus curveball (his curves were about 80-81) that froze a righty hitter and landed in the zone for a strike, while Lacy’s sliders (86-ish) often missed well below the zone but still garnered some awkward swings. Read the rest of this entry »

To no one’s surprise, the Rockies are bad: At 5–12, they own the worst record in baseball. Take a look back at the preseason standings and you’ll see that was the expectation all along: Colorado was projected to finish at roughly 65–97, sharing the title of worst team in the majors with Baltimore.

Those paths have diverged, slightly, about 10% of the way through the season. The Orioles, at 8–9, have been playing decently, relative to their bottom-dwelling expectations. You shouldn’t expect that to last, as their .421 projected full-season winning percentage is still the third-worst in the majors. But at least it’s been somewhat of a fun start for Baltimore.

Colorado, meanwhile, has sunk right to the bottom, almost like something you’d see in an elementary school science class when a teacher is attempting to explain density. “Do we think this will float?” they might ask the classroom. The Rockies are the baseball version of a resounding “no;” they did not manage to float, not even for just a few games.

Read the rest of this entry »

The strike zone doesn’t exist. Not physically, at least; it’s a rough boundary that varies based on how each umpire looks at it and how each batter stands. Catchers influence the shape, too; smooth hands can turn balls to called strikes, while cross-ups tend to do the opposite.

This year, the zone seems particularly amorphous — maybe it’s just my imagination, but I feel like I can’t turn on a broadcast without hearing about an inconsistent zone. Of course, hearing isn’t believing, and there are botched calls every year. Just because there have been some memorable ones this year doesn’t necessarily mean the overall rate of missed calls has changed. Let’s find out if it has, or if it’s merely imaginations running wild with the backdrop of fan noise.

For a rough idea of ball/strike accuracy, I went to Statcast data. For every pitch, Statcast records a top and bottom of the strike zone, as well as where the pitch crossed the plate. Armed with that data as well as some constants like the size of a baseball and the width of home plate, I measured how far out of (or into) the strike zone each pitch of the 2021 season was when it crossed the plate.

This data isn’t perfect. The top and bottom of the strike zone are approximated, and the plate isn’t a two-dimensional object, despite the fact that our data on it is represented that way. We aren’t considering framing. But we have previous years of the same data, which is great news. We can use the previous years to form a baseline, then see if this year’s data represents a meaningful change. And because we have a huge chunk of data, we can at least hope that framing comes out in the wash. Read the rest of this entry »

When Mario Mendoza played his last season in the majors in 1982, he appeared in just 12 games and batted a paltry .118/.118/.118; his wRC+ was -41. If all you know about the former shortstop is that his name has become synonymous with failure at the plate, those numbers likely aren’t all that surprising.

During Mendoza’s time with the Mariners in 1979 and ’80, he struggled to keep his average above .200, inspiring teammates Bruce Bochte and Tom Paciorek to tease him, dubbing the elusive mark “The Mendoza Line.” The joke might have ended there, but Royals slugger George Brett caught wind of the phrase when he got off to a sluggish start to the 1980 season, to the amusement of Bochte and Paciorek. According to Mendoza, his Seattle teammates told Brett, “Hey, man, you’re going to sink down below the Mendoza Line if you’re not careful.” Brett later mentioned it to ESPN’s Chris Berman from ESPN; it spread from there.

There’s a bit of a poetic twist to Brett being the one who helped popularize the expression. He started the season telling Berman, “The first thing I look for in the Sunday papers is who is below the Mendoza Line.” And while his early-season returns were below his lofty standards (he hit .245 in April, albeit with a 137 wRC+ and just a .245 BABIP), by mid-September he was hitting .394 ahead of a series against the Mariners, with a real chance to finish the season with an average above .400. Brett only went 2-for-11 that series, though, with three hits robbed by Mendoza himself; he ended the season at .390.

In terms of the actual statistic itself, the Mendoza Line is generally understood to be the .200 batting average the shortstop chased in 1979 (he ended the year hitting just .198). What it truly represents, however, is the point at which a player’s offense makes them a liability to their team, regardless of their defensive abilities.  Read the rest of this entry »

Lucas Giolito is a terrifying pitcher. His fastball looks like it was fired out of a gun, and it isn’t even his best pitch; his changeup is one of the best in the sport, and his slider induced whiffs on over half the swings hitters took against it last year. He had a 2.55 ERA in his first three starts of this season, and that undersold how good he’d been: He was boasting the majors’ ninth-best FIP, sixth-best xFIP, and eighth-highest strikeout percentage. He’s as likely to throw a no-hitter on any given day as any other pitcher in baseball. And on Monday, the Red Sox mindlessly swatted him away like a fly buzzing around their ear.

Giolito retired just three of the 13 hitters he faced that morning in Boston, allowing eight runs on eight hits, two walks and two homers. He induced a whiff on just five of 31 swings, did not strike out anyone, and was knocked out in the second inning of a game the Red Sox went on to win, 11–4.

If you’re looking at this game in a vacuum, Giolito just had a very bad day. His fastball was poker-straight, and he couldn’t persuade his changeup to dip below the hitters’ thighs. The result was a complete inability to put guys away: Each of the first four batters he faced picked up a hit in two-strike counts. But the Red Sox have been turning in offensive monsoons like this with regularity this year. After getting swept by the Orioles in three games to start the season, they rattled off nine straight victories and entered Tuesday’s off-day winners of 12 of their last 15 games. In that time, they have scored double-digit runs in a game three times and averaged over six runs per contest. Overall, their 127 wRC+ this season is the best in baseball, and their 12–6 record is tops in the American League.

Read the rest of this entry »

So far this season, injuries have been just about the only thing to put a damper on the Dodgers’ fun. Even with center fielder Cody Bellinger and second baseman Gavin Lux sidelined by various ailments, and Mookie Betts in and out of the lineup, the team has bolted from the gate with a 14-4 record, giving them the best record in the majors — admittedly, something they were projected to have — and producing a start that places them among the best in franchise history and among defending champions.

On Tuesday, Julio Urías rode the hybrid breaking ball that Ben Clemens wrote about to a career-high 11 strikeouts while allowing just one hit and one walk in seven shutout innings against the Mariners. A third-inning RBI single by Corey Seager gave him all the support he would need, helping the Dodgers to a 1-0 win that snapped a two-game losing streak and bought them another day towards better health.

With Bellinger already sidelined by a hairline fracture of his left fibula after being spiked in a play at first base on April 6, and Lux out due to soreness in his right wrist, the Dodgers were without Betts in the wake of a rather terrifying moment from Monday night. In the ninth inning of their 4-3 loss to the Mariners, Betts took a 95 mph fastball from Seattle’s Rafael Montero to the inside of his right forearm. Despite crumpling to the ground in obvious pain, he remained in the game — which ended two pitches later, on a double play — to run the bases. Thankfully, x-rays were negative, ruling out a fracture. Read the rest of this entry »