Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Atlanta Braves. 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.

Between the fireworks shows put on by 21-year-olds Juan Soto and Fernando Tatis Jr., and the big numbers put up by teammates Freddie Freeman and Marcell Ozuna, Ronald Acuña Jr. didn’t command as much attention as his talents merited last year. A two-week stay on the injured list didn’t help, particularly when it came to posting eye-opening counting stats. Even so, and even in abbreviated form, Acuña turned in his third straight stellar campaign. As he heads into his age-23 season, his place among the game’s elite shouldn’t be ignored.

Acuña entered the 2020 season on a high note, following up his 2018 NL Rookie of the Year campaign with his first as an All-Star. Playing in 156 games in 2019, he hit .280/.365/.518 (126 wRC+), bashed 41 homers and stole a league-high 37 bases in 46 attempts; three more steals, and he would have joined Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco, Alex Rodriguez, and Alfonso Soriano as the only members of the 40–40 club. Back in the Baseball Abstract days, Bill James introduced a simple stat called Power-Speed number, which takes the harmonic mean of a player’s home run and stolen base totals. Acuña’s 2019 season is tied for 16th overall, and sixth among players 25 or under:

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Episode 915

On this edition of the podcast, we are joined by a major league broadcaster before we dig into the latest spring training happenings as we tick down to Opening Day.

• At the top of the show, David Laurila welcomes Robert Ford, radio voice of the Houston Astros. They discuss how important it is to get name pronunciations right in their respective lines of work, college basketball allegiances, the dearth of African American broadcasters in the majors, how important broadcasting is to the minor leagues, the future of Kyle Tucker, and more. Robert also explains the important difference between being critical and negative when covering baseball, and discusses working with Dusty Baker and Steve Sparks.[2:35]
• After that, Eric Longenhagen and Jason Martinez chat about the state of baseball as teams begin to make their final roster decisions. What will the White Sox do following Eloy Jiménez’s injury, and what is the plan in the Cardinals’ outfield? Eric also shares his thoughts about the side effects of a league changing rules in response to team behaviors. Finally, the pair look ahead to their staff predictions, with a particular eye on the American League West. [36:58]

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Yesterday, Kevin Goldstein and Brendan Gawlowski reviewed the state of things in left and center field across the majors. Today, Jay Jaffe turns his attention to right fielders.

It’s not the happiest inevitability to contemplate, but there will come a day in the future when Mike Trout will no longer be the best player in baseball. When that day comes — and we’re not saying it’s tomorrow, or even in 2021 — there’s a very good chance that one of the game’s top three right fielders will be the player who claims the crown.

Mookie Betts already outdid Trout for the 2018 AL MVP award with a single-season WAR (10.4) slightly higher than anything our Halo’d hero has mustered (a max of 10.2 in 2013), and he’s only heading into his age-28 season, having already done the Trout-like thing of surpassing the average Hall of Famer’s seven-year peak in WAR at his position. What’s more, Betts has now played a central role in two championships, having helped the Dodgers get over the hump in 2020’s pandemic-shortened season thanks in large part to his October heroics at the plate, on the basepaths, and in the field.

If it’s not Betts who dethrones Trout, it may very well be 22-year-old Juan Soto, a new convert to the position whose production to date and projection going forward both place him in the midst of inner-circle Hall of Famers. And if not Soto, then perhaps 23-year-old Ronald Acuña Jr., whose speed makes him a threat to become just the fifth member of the 40-homer, 40-steal club. A year ago, Dan Szymborski projected Acuña as the most likely heir to Trout’s title, though today Soto might be the one, with Fernando Tatis Jr. perhaps elbowing his way into the picture as well.

As a group, right fielders outproduced all other positions in wRC+ for the first time in the history of our splits (which go back to 2002) in 2019, with a 108 wRC+. In the pandemic-shortened season, with Cody Bellinger and Christian Yelich having switched positions, the group “slipped” to 106, five points below that of first basemen, but even so, good players having big years such as Michael Conforto and Bryce Harper, late bloomers like Mike Yastrzemski and Teoscar Hernández, and on-the-rebound players such as Wil Myers and Jason Heyward helped to uphold the position’s high standard for offense. Moves by Soto and Kyle Tucker, the maturation of Dylan Carlson and the return of Mitch Haniger should help keep that going, even if not all of the pandemic’s top producers can replicate last year’s punch. Read the rest of this entry »

This week, the revolving co-host chair heads to the Bronx as I’m joined by Emmy award-winning filmmaker Randy Wilkins. We discuss Yankees fandom, our mutual feeling about 2017, and how the 2021 season might end up being defined by injuries. Then it’s more creative talk as we discuss how we view our audiences, the current state of film, Spike Lee stories and more. As always, we hope you enjoy.

Music by Conan Neutron & The Secret Friends.

Have a question you’d like answered on the show? Ask us anything at chinmusic@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

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The week before the regular season begins is usually extension season, as teams and players scramble to complete deals before the day-to-day rigors of playing baseball for six straight months get in the way of discussions. While this year hasn’t seen many extensions so far, it hasn’t seen none; on Wednesday, the Astros signed Lance McCullers Jr. to a five-year, $85 million extension, as FOX 26’s Mark Berman first reported.

McCullers would have reached free agency after this year; all five years of his extension would have been free-agent years, which makes comparisons easier. This deal is essentially a pre-agreement to a free-agent contract, with none of that squirrely nonsense of buying out arbitration years or extra team options on the end. Five years and $85 million, simple as that.

How does that rate look next to comparable free agents? For once, I’m stumped. The pandemic-shortened season, and teams’ subsequent financial retrenching, makes using past years as a guidepost a poor idea. Madison Bumgarner, for example, signed a five-year, $85 million deal — the exact terms! — but did so before the world changed. This offseason, no comparable pitchers hit the market; the only pitcher who signed a multi-year deal with an average annual value above $10 million was Trevor Bauer, and that’s not a useful comp here either.

You could, if you were so inclined, use Dan Szymborski’s research from last week that estimated the cost of one WAR in future years. The estimate has wide error bands, because it’s based only on multi-year contracts signed this offseason, but it looks like so:

With that in hand, we next need to estimate how good McCullers will be in the relevant 2022–26 timeframe. Luckily, ZiPS has us covered there as well:

With the projection in tow and a cost per WAR (I added $250,000 per year after the years in the table), we can just do the math. That’s a 9.3 WAR projection overall, and after applying the relevant yearly multipliers, the projections would suggest a $75 million contract. That implies the Astros overpaid, but take a gander at those innings projections. McCullers’ past injury history leads ZiPS to a pessimistic playing time assumption. An extra 15 innings per year would move the deal up to fair value. So would four seasons of 150-inning production and a single missed season. In other words, it comes in pretty close to what we’d expect after accounting for his skill and risk factors.

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This morning, Kevin Goldstein kicked off the outfield rankings in left. Now we shift our attention to center field, home to the game’s best player.

What a fun time for center fielders. We still have Trout, but there are only a couple of genuine stars after him. Instead, a changing of the guard is afoot. Luis Robert, Ramón Laureano, Trent Grisham, Kyle Lewis, Cristian Pache. All of those players could conceivably headline our list in future years, and we get to spend 2021 learning who will take the jump. At the same time, a handful of veterans have remained productive into their 30s, headlined by Aaron Hicks, Starling Marte, and Lorenzo Cain. There are a ton of plausible All-Stars here and quite a few players who probably won’t be back for next year’s edition.

As you might expect, our rankings get very jumbled in the middle. Marte and Lewis rank 16th and 17th, for instance, and I wouldn’t have batted an eyelash if they were 10 spots higher. These are not anyone’s personal rankings, but rather a projection based on ZiPS, Steamer, and our playing time estimates. Go ahead and disagree with the list; you won’t be alone. Read the rest of this entry »

12:05

Dan Szymborski: Hello, been trying to figure out why it’s not on the front page!

12:05

Dan Szymborski: Oh wait, NOW it is!

12:05

Dan Szymborski: lol

12:06

Dan Szymborski: I don’t know who is in it yet!

12:06

Dan Szymborski: I want to see some 19th century mustache petes

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The Detroit Tigers have a number of promising young pitchers, as well as a handful of veteran arms who retain upside. The bulk of them will have to thrive if the club hopes to compete in the AL Central anytime soon. But while there’s little doubt that Detroit’s rebuild is moving steadily in the right direction, the franchise’s fortunes will largely be determined by how soon and to what extent the pitching staff blossoms. Now under the watchful eye of Chris Fetter, Tigers pitchers head into the 2021 season with a plethora of potential, but also no shortage of question marks.

Here are conversational snapshots from, and about, six Detroit hurlers.

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Tyler Alexander has the most-varied mix on the Tigers’ staff. The 26-year-old left-hander has five pitches in his arsenal, and last season he threw each of them between 103 and 140 times (per Statcast). His second-most-frequent offering was a slider that yielded middling-at-best results. Despite an improved movement profile and a 31% whiff rate, opposing hitters logged a .333 batting average and a .606 slugging percentage when they put the pitch in play.

I mentioned that lack of success to Alexander, pointing out that he got, on average, nine more inches of drop, and slightly more horizontal, compared to the previous year. Why the lack of results?

“Well, I throw good sliders and I throw bad sliders,” was his reasoned response. “And I would assume the bad ones got hit. You know, I’ve worked a lot on that pitch. I’ve worked really hard on on finding the consistency with it. For instance, I thought I was really good yesterday. The outing before that, I thought it was terrible. It’s a feel pitch for me, and I’m slowly starting to get there. I’ve had issues getting it down in the zone; I’ve had issues getting it backdoor. In every interview I’ve ever had, I’ve said, ‘I’m working on my slider, I’m working on my slider.’ I’m always going to be working on it. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad.” Read the rest of this entry »

It may seem a little bit early to start talking about postseason hardware, but what’s the fun of a projection system if you’re not looking at every way to separate the best of the best? In any case, it’s not as interesting an exercise when the season ends, given that we already know what happened (though it’s way more accurate).

Naturally, voting is not going to be a simple ranking of WAR. Each award has 30 different voters, all with differing priorities and philosophical beliefs in the way of excellence. Rather than kidnapping my colleagues and subjecting them to a series of lab tests about voting, our best solution is to use past votes to infer how they’ll vote going forward.

While using a neural network is always tempting, we’re handicapped by the real scarcity of data; 30 votes per award is not a lot to work with. As I’ve worked with the models over the years, the other issue is that there does seem to be a change in how voters are voting, enough to have an effect on who is winning the awards and by how much. I’ve found that chucking out anything before 2000 improves every model and every approach I’ve tried. By and large, we’re not voting on WAR, but it and other analytics have affected the results both directly (more sabermetric-friendly writers joining the BBWAA) and indirectly (influencing existing voters). I could probably make a very accurate model for how I vote, but we’d be treading far too deep into meta territory at that point.

So, what’s new this year? One variable I’ve added to the mix is past award performance — something I wish I had checked in the past, but better later than never. Essentially, players who have received votes recently tend to do slightly better than equally excellent players who have not received votes recently.

Let’s jump right in.

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