The 2020 Rule 5 Draft was conducted via conference call on Thursday, with 18 players selected during the Major League phase. Pre-draft chatter was focused on whether more young, inexperienced players would be picked this year due to an anticipation of expanded rosters, and a few picks appeared to be made with that in mind. Here are my thoughts on all those selected, as well as some on those picked during the Minor League phase. Remember you can venture over to The Board for more info on several of these players.

But first, my annual refresher on the Rule 5 Draft’s complex rules. Players who signed their first pro contract at age 18 or younger are eligible for selection after five years of minor-league service if their parent club has not yet added them to the team’s 40-man roster. For players who signed at age 19 or older, the timeline is four years. Teams with the worst win/loss record from the previous season pick first, and those that select a player must not only (a) pay said player’s former club $100,000 ($24,000 in the Minor League phase), but also (b) keep the player on their 25-man active roster throughout the entirety of the following season, with a couple of exceptions, mostly involving the Injured List; players taken in the Minor League phase aren’t subject to roster restrictions. If a selected player doesn’t make his new team’s active roster, he is offered back to his former team for half of the initial fee. After the player’s first year on the roster, he can be optioned back to the minor leagues. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, the Seattle Mariners signed Chris Flexen to a two-year deal. The 26-year-old will earn $4.75 million in guaranteed money, with an option to make more if he hits certain innings thresholds. Per MLB Trade Rumors, the Mariners attached “a $4MM club option and, if Flexen throws 150 innings in 2022 or 300 frames from 2021-22, an $8MM vesting option.” The contract itself is a bit of a Dipoto special, as the Mariners used a similar structure when they extended Wade LeBlanc and amusingly tacked on three club options; none were picked up.

Getting back to Flexen, the right-hander spent 2020 in South Korea, but most fans will remember him from his time with the Mets. He last appeared on a prospect list back in 2017, when Eric Longenhagen hit the nail on the head with his scouting report:

“He sits 91-94, touching 96, with an average curveball and fringe change. He has a big, sturdy, inning-eating frame but has already had a surgery, and there are scouts who’d like to see if the fastball plays consistently at 96 out of the ‘pen. Others think he’s more of an up-and-down starter.”

While he debuted later that summer, the Mets ultimately rolled snake eyes on Flexen’s development. In 68 innings spread across three seasons, he posted ghastly numbers, running an ERA north of eight while walking more hitters than he struck out. It seems almost cruel to mention his home run problem at this point but, well, too late. Ineffective and out of options, Flexen faced a very uncertain future heading into 2020. Read the rest of this entry »

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2017 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.

A savant in the batter’s box, Manny Ramirez could be an idiot just about everywhere else — sometimes amusingly, sometimes much less so. The Dominican-born slugger, who grew up in the Washington Heights neighborhood of upper Manhattan, stands as one of the greatest hitters of all time, a power-hitting right-handed slugger who spent the better part of his 19 seasons (1993–2011) terrorizing pitchers. A 12-time All-Star, Ramirez bashed 555 home runs and helped the Indians and the Red Sox reach two World Series apiece, adding a record 29 postseason homers along the way. He was the World Series MVP for Boston in 2004, when the club won its first championship in 86 years.

For all of his prowess with the bat, Ramirez’s lapses — Manny Being Manny — both on and off the field are legendary. There was the time in 1997 that he “stole” first base, returning to the bag after a successful steal of second because he thought Jim Thome had fouled off a pitch… the time in 2004 that he inexplicably cut off center fielder Johnny Damon’s relay throw from about 30 feet away, leading to an inside-the-park home run… the time in 2005 when he disappeared mid-inning to relieve himself inside Fenway Park’s Green Monster… the time in 2008 that he high-fived a fan mid-play between catching a fly ball and doubling a runner off first… and so much more. 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 nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Milwaukee Brewers.

Batters

Milwaukee’s approach to replacing Yasmani Grandal (.848 OPS in 2019), Mike Moustakas (.845), and Eric Thames (.851) took the form of, well, nothing. That’s possibly a little too cruel, but it wasn’t reasonable to expect Justin Smoak, Avisaíl García, and Eric Sogard to make up for that production. Losing Lorenzo Cain due to his opt-out — and let’s be clear that nobody should fault him at all for this — caught the team by surprise as well, necessitating Garcia as the center fielder. Overall, from 2019 to ’20, the Brewers saw improved offense at one position (shortstop), held serve at a second (center), and lost ground everywhere else. Sum up everything, and the lineup combined for an 89 wRC+, the 10th-worst in team history and a 10-point drop from 2019. To put this into context, this was only slightly better than the Brew Crew did in their one season as the Seattle Pilots.

Thanks to 16 teams qualifying for the playoffs, that still wasn’t enough to prevent Milwaukee from October baseball. Like the rest of the NL Central, the Brewers were quietly dispatched in the wild-card round. With a 16-team playoff structure unlikely for 2021, a repeat performance would likely doom any quest for a postseason appearance.

Read the rest of this entry »

This fall, during the little bit of Instructional League ball to which I was personally privy, I saw a small school reliever who was taken on Day 2 of the 2019 draft. He was sitting 96-99 and threw several great sliders. We are about a year and a half removed from when Nick Robertson was drafted, and he’s turned into the sort of prospect who, with comparable stuff, would get a bonus close to a million dollars.

Because the 2020 Draft was only five rounds, there are literally hundreds of players who would have gone in rounds sixth through 10, as well a few dozen who would have gotten a bonus well over-slot on Day 3, who are now (or again) playing college ball (and will be for a while), while many have spilled over into junior colleges or have transferred. That’s a few hundred players who may make a leap in the same amount of time Robertson did.

The group of players who was supposed to be in the 2020 Draft class was deep with talent, and so the 2021 Draft class will be very deep, too, but the industry will be working with less information, or at the very least will have one hell of a time trying to acquire it. We’ll likely still be dealing with COVID-19 in February when the college season begins, and we have yet to see all the schools where college baseball programs will become collateral damage as a result of fewer football games being played. Also remember that both COVID and the operational budgets imposed upon MLB scouting staffs will likely discourage travel next spring, just as they did during the summer. So teams will lean on data, which, remember, now gets shared. More on that in a minute. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about “listening aggressively,” “progressing past just talking,” and other winter rumor terminology, contemplate what the “virtual Winter Meetings” look like, then break down several rumored or completed trades or signings, including Lance Lynn and Adam Eaton to the White Sox, Raisel Iglesias to the Angels, Carlos Santana and Mike Minor to the Royals, and James McCann to the Mets (touching on the competitive pictures for the Rangers, Royals, and Reds), plus a listener email about heckling José Bautista.

Audio intro: The Undertones, "Listening In"
Audio outro: Eric B. & Rakim, "Keep ‘Em Eager to Listen"

Link to Lindor report
Link to Springer report
Link to Sam on “drawing interest”
Link to FanGraphs Twitch happy hour
Link to Craig Edwards on the Lynn trade
Link to Ken Rosenthal report about Lynn
Link to Tony Wolfe on the Eaton signing
Link to Ben Clemens on the Santana signing
Link to Jay Jaffe on the Iglesias trade
Link to story about McCann’s framing makeover
Link to story about McCann’s improved framing
Link to Bautista video

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After beefing up their payroll to the point of setting a franchise record, the Reds made the playoffs for the first time since 2013, but thus far this winter, they’ve gone into cost-cutting mode. Not only do they appear likely to lose Trevor Bauer in free agency, but they non-tendered late-season pickup Archie Bradley, have let it be known that they’re listening to offers for Sonny Gray, and on Monday traded closer Raisel Iglesias to the Angels for reliever Noé Ramirez.

Quite clearly, for the Reds it’s money driving this particular move rather than talent. Iglesias, who turns 31 on January 4, has saved 100 games over the past four seasons and is coming off a strong campaign — if 23 innings can be called a campaign — in which his 1.1 WAR ranked second among NL relievers behind Rookie of the Year Devin Williams. He’s due to make $9.125 million in the final year of a three-year, $24.125 million extension that he signed in November 2018. By contrast Ramirez, who turns 31 on December 22, has compiled just 0.4 WAR in parts of six major league seasons, including 0.1 in his 21-inning season with the Angels. As a Super Two, he’s heading into his second year of arbitration eligibility but is under club control through 2023; if not for the pandemic, he would have made $900,000 in 2020 (all dollar figures in this piece are full-season salaries, not prorated).

The Reds are sending an undisclosed amount of cash to the Angels, and will receive “future considerations,” either a player to be named later or cash sometime down the road. At best, that’s a minimal sweetener to offset the apparent imbalance in talent. Perhaps there’s something that Reds pitching coach Derek Johnson — whose reunion with Gray, whom he coached at Vanderbilt, helped him regain form, while pitchers such as Luis Castillo, Anthony Desclafani, and Bauer improved on his watch as well — sees in Ramirez, but given his low velocity (an average of 88.8 mph on his four-seam fastball, putting him in the eighth percentile) and underwhelming numbers, its unclear what that might be.

In other words, this is clearly a salary dump. 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 nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Philadelphia Phillies.

Batters

Is this all there is? I imagine nearly everyone asks themselves that existential question at some point in their lives, and it’s definitely one the current version of the Phillies inspires. The Phillies started rebuilding in late-2015 in the midst of their third consecutive losing season, and while that was arguably a bit late, they went about it in earnest. In one of his final pieces at ESPN, our friend Sam Miller explored the ins-and-outs of Philly’s process in detail. Long story short, the Phillies and Braves reworked their rosters over roughly the same time frame but the Braves made the playoffs in three consecutive seasons, while the Phillies are still looking for their first campaign over the .500 mark.

It would be one thing if this was a team on the upswing, but looking at the projected lineup, the roster more closely resembles a club at the end of a cycle of success, not one that’s still working on completing its remodel. For a team that’s had J.T. Realmuto and Bryce Harper in the lineup for two years, the overall results have been quite underwhelming. In terms of WAR, the team’s position players finished 16th in baseball in 2020, just behind the Royals. 2019 wasn’t much better, with the Phillies ranking 15th, and this has been the high water mark in recent years; going backwards from 2019, they’ve finished 22nd, 27th, 29th, and 29th. With Realmuto a free agent, the Phillies rank 21st in our Depth Charts, which, as a reminder, are Steamer-based until the ZiPS run is complete in a few weeks. Read the rest of this entry »