One of the great batting lines of the first half was Yasmani Grandal’s .189/.388/.436 slash. Unfortunately, as has been the case for many a hitter on the White Sox, his return to action in ‘21 is in doubt after he underwent surgery to repair a knee ligament. I won’t wax poetic on Grandal; Devan Fink did a great job covering his early-season batting line. But it’s becoming more common to see a hitter with an average that starts with a “1” these days. The common reference to a batting average under .200 is the “Mendoza Line,” which our Ashley MacLennon made a strong case for ditching as a reference earlier this season. I, on the other hand, am going to make the case for why it’s become irrelevant.

Batting average, the prevailing measure of a hitter’s success for most of baseball’s existence, has faded into the background, yet the rate at which a hitter successfully reaches base via a hit is still usually the first statistic reported. Grandal’s batting average is not good, but the selection of .200 as a cutoff point is arbitrary; after all, a batting average of .214 is also not good. What most baseball fans understand now is that because all base hits are not equal in value, batting average is limited in what it says about a hitter. But there is a stigma attached to a poor batting average, which is probably why the Mendoza Line has stuck.

Let’s rewind to last year’s shortened campaign. There was a lot of speculation going into a 60-game season as to whether or not a player would be able to hit .400. That didn’t happen, though Charlie Blackmon was hitting .500 after a couple weeks. We did end up with a handful of qualified hitters with an average below .200 — seven such, to be exact:

This is by far the highest number of qualified hitters with a batting average below .200 for a single season. It is totally a product of the short season, though. None of the hitters on the list above are contact hitters, but their true bat-to-ball skills are probably better than what they showed in ‘20. When the sample is small, there is a greater chance that you get some outliers in your results.

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With the first half of the season in the books, the first round of the MLB Draft wrapped, and All-Star festivities underway, now is the moment teams can take a breath and start evaluating their strategy for the stretch run. There’s been some significant movement in these rankings since I last posted them, with a handful of teams moving into and out of the bubble during the last two weeks. That should make for a very exciting trade deadline that’s just a few weeks away.

One note: from here on out, these rankings will appear every other week. With most teams sorted into their tiers, there probably won’t be as much week-to-week movement in the rankings as we’ve seen earlier in the season.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

The Atlanta Braves had justifiably high hopes coming into the 2021 season. Despite the early loss of Rookie of the Year runner-up Mike Soroka, the 2020 Braves won their third straight division title. If the postseason had been four innings shorter for Atlanta, they would have made their first World Series of the 21st century, 21 years after getting swept by the Yankees. Almost all of the key players returning fueled preseason optimism, but rather than tangling with the NL’s best teams, the Braves are in a grueling brawl to finish above the .500 line. The disappointment was already in full force before the team took their biggest hit yet: the sight of outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr. being carted off the field after an attempt to make a leaping catch.

As with any injury, the initial beleaguered hope was that Acuña would rub some sweat or dirt or spit onto the painful area, walk it off, and be ready to jump back into the lineup. Everyone dodged a bullet — well, maybe not opposing pitchers — earlier this season when Acuña injured his abdomen after diving on a pickoff play but quickly returned to the lineup. Before the night was out, however, an MRI confirmed that this was a serious injury, a torn right ACL that will end Acuña’s season.

Acuña already looked like a special player before the season started, but he somehow looked even better this year, still just his age-23 season. Hitting .283/.394/.596 with 24 home runs, a 161 wRC+, and 4.0 WAR, he had already crammed a whole season’s worth of awesome into a half-season bag. The ZiPS projections had Acuña finishing with 44 homers and 7.2 WAR, the latter number one the best for all position players, vanquishing his competition in the Battle of the Legacies (Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Fernando Tatis Jr.), though falling to best Shohei Ohtani when pitching contributions are included. Read the rest of this entry »

With the first day of the draft wrapped, below are our thoughts on last night’s picks, which included quite a few surprises. As always, you can view full reports and draft rankings over on The Board, which has also been updated to reflect team picks.

KG: The Diamondbacks likely slept with smiles on their faces last night after watching the player some saw as the top player in the draft as recently as six weeks ago fall to them at six. Lawlar’s age worked against him in draft models, but if he went to Vanderbilt, crushed it for two years and re-entered the draft in 2023, would anyone care about his date of birth? Some teams at the top soured on him a bit as June turned into July, and the D-backs are the lucky benefactors. Read the rest of this entry »

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Today is Day One of the draft, so here’s another mock. We may have another mock just before the first round kicks off that is just names with teams. The spice was really flowing yesterday afternoon, as teams have been in meetings for at least a few days and have moved on to gathering intel themselves after lining up their boards. Full scouting reports and draft rankings can be found over on The Board.

1. Pittsburgh Pirates
Pick: Marcelo Mayer, SS, Eastlake HS (CA)

The overwhelming majority of our sources believe the Pirates are taking Mayer, but it’s quite possible that not even the Pirates themselves are going to be sure until minutes before the draft. We’re not hearing Jordan Lawlar here anymore and haven’t heard either of the Vandy arms for a while, so this is likely going to come down to how negotiations go between the Pirates and the camps of Mayer and, probably, Henry Davis. Read the rest of this entry »

Bryson Stott had a pretty good idea of what to expect coming into the 2019 draft. Ultimately taken 14th overall by the Philadelphia Phillies, the now-23-year-old shortstop out of the University of Nevada Las Vegas had reason to believe that he would be selected in that neighborhood of the first round. Our own mock draft had him going one pick earlier, while Baseball America ended up being spot-on with their prediction.

Stott likewise knew that several of his friends would be taken in the first round, albeit not necessarily by which organizations. He and a handful of former USA Baseball teammates would periodically update each other on what they’d been hearing, as well as any pre-draft workouts they’d been invited to. Specific expectations were couched in caution.

“As I’m sure you know, you don’t really get much before the draft,” Stott told me earlier this month. “It’s kind of, ‘You hear one thing and then something else happens.’ So it’s a weird time, and an exciting one, but still pretty stressful.”

As Stott pointed out, the entire 2018 USA team infield went in the first round the following year. Andrew Vaughn was at first base, Braden Shewmake was at second, Stott played short, and Josh Jung covered the hot corner. Will Wilson was an extra infielder, while Shea Langeliers and Adley Rutschmann were the catchers. Last year’s first-overall pick, Spencer Torkelson, was also on the team.

“It was a pretty good infield,” said Stott, in what could rightly be called an understatement. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from Tess Taruskin. Read previous installments here.

Keibert Ruiz, C, Los Angeles Dodgers
Level & Affiliate: Triple-A Oklahoma City Age: 22 Org Rank: 2  FV: 50
Line: 4-for-5, HR, 2B, 2 RBI
Notes
Ruiz’ four-hit night wasn’t enough to make up for the fifteen runs scored by the opposing El Paso Chihuahuas, but it certainly bolstered confidence in the young catching prospect’s overall 2021 performance. His approach at the plate continues to impress; Ruiz’s 11% K-rate is the third lowest in all of Triple-A (10th lowest in all of the minor leagues), and he’s only struck out twice in the past twelve games, walking 11 times over that span.

Nick Plummer, DH/OF, St. Louis Cardinals
Level & Affiliate: Double-A Springfield Age: 24 Org Rank: NR  FV: 40
Line: 3-for-5, 3 HR, K, 5 RBI
Notes
The line says a lot, but not quite everything. Plummer hit three home runs last night, but most notable was when they came and where they landed. His first four-bagger didn’t come until the bottom of the seventh, when he banged an opposite-field bomb off of the left field foul pole. His second dinger came the following inning, when he sent one over the wall in left center. Finally, as if filling out his bingo card, he walked it off in the 10th on an absolute rocket over the right field wall.

Here’s a look at all three:

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Two weeks ago, on June 24 at Dodger Stadium, Zach Davies and three relievers combined to throw the 2021 season’s umpteenth no-hitter, even while walking the ballpark. The defeat of the Dodgers lifted the Cubs to 42–33 and kept them tied with the Brewers atop the NL Central. But for as pretty as Chicago appeared to be sitting at that moment, the team didn’t win again until Wednesday night, as an 11-game losing streak not only knocked it out of first but below .500 — a slide that probably marks the end of an era, as it changes the calculus for how the organization should view its current roster.

While five of their losses during the streak were by a single run — including three straight to the Reds in Cincinnati last weekend — the Cubs also surrendered 13 or more runs four times in that stretch, losing to the Brewers by the lopsided scores of 14–4 and 15–7 (blowing a 7–0 first-inning lead in that one, yeesh), and to the Phillies, 13–3 and 15–10, the latter on back-to-back nights. Compounding their misery is that they abetted Milwaukee’s 11-game winning streak and briefly dipped to fourth place.

Having lost again to the Phillies on Thursday, the Cubs enter Friday tied for third in the NL Central, 9 1/2 games behind Milwaukee, and eight games back in the Wild Card race. Their playoff odds, which were a modest 35.7% in the wake of the no-hitter, have dwindled to 4.7% — a fact of which club president Jed Hoyer is well aware. With a trio of pivotal players — Javier Báez, Kris Bryant, and Anthony Rizzo — all on expiring contracts, Hoyer effectively put up the “For Sale” sign while speaking to reporters on Thursday. Via The Athletic’s Patrick Mooney:

Cubs president Jed Hoyer: “Eleven days ago, we were fully on the buy side of (the trade deadline), everyone was calling about that. Obviously, people are now calling to see which players are available, so it’s a very different scenario than we expected. Life comes at you fast.”

— Patrick Mooney (@PJ_Mooney) July 8, 2021

Jed Hoyer is open for business and taking phone calls ahead of trade deadline: “When your playoff odds get into single digits at this time of the year, you have to keep one eye on the future and what moves you can potentially make that can help build the next great Cubs team.”

— Patrick Mooney (@PJ_Mooney) July 8, 2021

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