Forrest Whitley has slid precipitously in the rankings. A helium-filled No. 4 in 2019, the 23-year-old right-hander fell to No. 15 on last year’s FanGraphs Top 100 Prospects list, and has now slid out of the top 100 altogether. When Eric Longenhagen released our 2021 list on Wednesday, Whitley — “as enigmatic as any pitcher in the minors” — was on the outside looking in, coming in at an after-the-fact No. 106 as a 50 FV prospect.

He’s hell-bent on proving any, and all, doubters wrong. Following an offseason where he worked diligently to fine-tune both his physique and his repertoire, Whitley is in camp with the Houston Astros looking to show that the earlier hype wasn’t misplaced. A first-round pick in the 2016 draft, he’s now aiming to emerge as a front-line starter at baseball’s highest level.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with your height and weight. Where are you at right now?

Forrest Whitley: “I’m 6-foot-6 and 205 pounds.

Laurila: That’s low for you, right?

Whitley: “Compared to where I was the last couple years, it would be considered low. But I’ve experimented a lot, in many different ways. This is where I feel the most comfortable.”

Laurila: By “most comfortable,” I assume you’re referring primarily to being able to repeat your mechanics.

Whitley: “Yes. I feel like I have a lot more stability and body control, which plays a premium at my size. It’s definitely been a grind to get consistent mechanics down, and I think a lot of that had to do with strengthening all parts of my body, because there’s a lot more surface area to me than most guys. Hammering down all those areas was pretty much my main focus this offseason — getting everything as stable as possible. From the many bullpens I threw before I came here [to spring training] it seems to be paying off.” Read the rest of this entry »

2:01	Jay Jaffe: Good afternoon, and welcome to another edition of my Friday FanGraphs chat. That’s four in a row, my longest streak in quite some time!

2:02

Jay Jaffe: Today I’ve got a fun piece that grapples with the possibility that Fernando Tatis Jr. has already shown us enough to suggest he could wind up in the Hall of Fame — an article that’s confusing the hell out of people for whom binary answers are the only answers. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fernando-tatis-jr-has-a-clear-shot-at-coop…

2:03

Jay Jaffe: As I write this, i’m listening to the first edition of Kevin Goldstein’s new podcast. I don’t generally get to listen to podcasts because it’s very hard to think of words when somebody is speaking words in my general direction, but I’m excited to hear what KG and co-host David Roth are up to  https://blogs.fangraphs.com/chin-music-episode-1-the-regal-beagle/

2:03	Jay Jaffe: Word of warning: if you have a question about prospects, all I’m going to be able to do is point you to articles about prospects. I’m not Eric Longenhagen

2:03	Jay Jaffe: And with that, on with the show…

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Yup, I’m podcasting again. Join me, Kevin Goldstein, for episode 1 of Chin Music, my new podcast. This week I welcome very special co-host David Roth of Defector, and feature a guest segment with The Athletic’s Pedro Moura, who talks about the Trevor Bauer signing and covering the beat during a global pandemic. Plus, we discuss the grind of spring training, what to do in Florida, some TV shows and much more.

Warning One: While ostensibly a podcast about baseball, these conversations often veer into other subjects.

Warning Two: There is explicit language.

RSS feed: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/feed/chin-music/
Apple feed: Coming soon. Read the rest of this entry »

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Fernando Tatis Jr. has agreed to the longest contract in baseball history, and one of the most lucrative — and yet looking at the jaw-dropping ZiPS projection for his career, his 14-year, $340 million deal might be underselling him. At the very least, Tatis’ contract and his production to date cast him as a generational talent, and his forecast suggests he’ll wind up ranking among history’s great shortstops. While it’s hard to believe that a player with only two partial years in the majors has a leg up on a berth in the Hall of Fame, the statistical history of players who’ve done what he’s done at such a young age suggests that it’s true: Tatis is already soaring towards Cooperstown.

Or if you prefer, stylishly shimmying there:

Hip-notized by @tatis_jr ? pic.twitter.com/25eBSeokFn

— San Diego Padres (@Padres) August 8, 2020

The skeptic in all of us may be saying, “Whoa, let’s pump the brakes on this kind of talk,” but it’s the Padres who have placed the bet on a Mookie Betts-like impact over the course of well over a decade, and looking at the comparisons and the company he’s keeping once we crunch the numbers, it’s tough to disagree. Nothing is guaranteed, least of all a player’s spot in the Hall of Fame a quarter-century from now, but the odds of him fulfilling that promise are substantial.

Regarding the Hall, consider first the baselines set by a player arriving in the majors at an early age. Repeating a study I did in relation to Ronald Acuña Jr. in 2018 (only this time catching a glitch in my accounting relating to 19th century players), I used Baseball-Reference’s Stathead to track the rates at which position players who made at least one plate appearance in their age-18 through 21 seasons reached the Hall:

Read the rest of this entry »

Every year there are players who fall through the cracks between the boundaries of prospect coverage and big league analysis. These are often players who came up, played enough to exhaust their rookie eligibility, and then got hurt and had a long-term rehab in the minors. Some are victims of the clogged major league rosters ahead of them; others are weird corner cases like Adalberto Mondesi.

Regardless, prospect writers are arguably in the best position to comment on these players because they fall under the minor league umbrella, but simply adding them to prospect lists would open a can of worms — what do you do with other young big leaguers? So every year, I examine a subset of the players caught in this limbo to give curious readers an update on where once-heralded prospects stand now.

Dustin Fowler, CF, Oakland Athletics

Fowler has been squeezed out of a very crowded, platoon-heavy Oakland outfield for the last several years, and seemingly passed by fellow lefty bat Seth Brown for corner/DH type duties, and now has to compete with Rule 5 pick Ka’ai Tom for a part time role. Fowler spent all of 2020 at the alternate site and all of 2019 at Triple-A Las Vegas, where he hit .277/.333/.477 with 25 homers, by far the most homers he’s hit in a season. A lot of that was Vegas’s elevation and the PCL hitting environment. It’s not that Fowler doesn’t hit the ball hard; he does. His average exit velo was 91 mph and his hard hit rate was nearly 48%, which is a 60 if you map it to the 20-80 scale. But he remains a free-swinger with a relatively flat bat path, so he often offers at pitches he can’t do much with. I had a 50 FV on Fowler at peak and I still like him, but now as more of a .310 wOBA type of outfielder. I thought he was an average center fielder as a prospect but have no idea what the defense is like now. Remember that he ruptured his patella tendon colliding with an exposed electrical box a few years ago. Maybe he’s a platoon outfielder, but Oakland has a lot of those types right now. If Tom beats him out during the spring, maybe Fowler’s an interesting candidate for pro ball in Asia. Read the rest of this entry »

While it’s not quite the cakewalk that the NL Central projects to be in 2021, the AL West is up for grabs this year. The Astros project as comfortable favorites, but that’s just one team. The Rangers and Mariners aren’t likely to be competitive. That leaves room for the A’s and Angels to take a crack at the division. On Thursday, Oakland took a stab at it, signing Trevor Rosenthal to a one-year, $11 million deal, as Jon Heyman first reported.

If you glanced at our list of the top 50 free agents, you won’t find this deal particularly odd. Projector emeritus Craig Edwards saw a two-year, $16 million deal for Rosenthal, while crowdsourcing came in at two years and $13 million. One year and $11 million is a better deal than those, but not by a huge amount, and Jeff Passan reported that he turned down multi-year deals in that range. Rosenthal’s contract includes deferrals — he’s due $3 million in 2021, $3 million in 2022, and $5 million in 2023. That’s essentially $11 million, though; at a 2% interest rate, it’s the same as $10.75 million in 2021. Don’t focus too much on that — it’s mere window dressing, and the interesting part of the contract is Rosenthal himself.

Rosenthal is hardly a standard free agent, and the fact that he’s signing a perfectly ordinary contract is in itself remarkable. This time last year, he had reported to camp with the Kansas City Royals on a minor league contract. The deal wasn’t for the league minimum — it guaranteed him $2 million if he made the major league roster, with another $2.25 million in incentives. Earnable money is different from a guaranteed contract, however, and if he’d had a bad spring training or tweaked something before camp ended, he’d never see the money.

With the benefit of hindsight, that deal was great for both Rosenthal and the Royals. He appeared in 14 games and struck out 21 opponents, good for a 37.5% strikeout rate that echoed his best years with the Cardinals. Did he walk 12.5% of opposing batters? Sure, but you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet, and he had been plenty effective in St. Louis even with slightly elevated walk rates. The Royals dealt him to San Diego in exchange for Edward Olivares and Dylan Coleman, two mid-level prospects, and everyone walked away happy.

Wait, hold up. Rosenthal has a career 2.75 FIP (and a 3.46 ERA and 3.32 xFIP, it’s hardly smoke and mirrors). He had a career 2.79 FIP before his solid 2020. He got flipped for two real prospects after 13 innings of relief work, after 233 pitches. Teams seemed to agree that he had value. Why did he have to take a minor league deal to prove himself? Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 910

As part of Prospects Week, this episode of FanGraphs Audio features interdisciplinary conversations between lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen and experts from non-baseball fields about the industry of competitive evaluation.

• At the top of the program, Eric welcomes Matt Lloyd, assistant general manager of the Orlando Magic. They discuss how analytics has changed basketball in recent decades and the many challenges presented by evaluating players in the sport. Matt also outlines what the year-round schedule of draft preparation looks like in the NBA and how trades come to be in the league. [5:14]
• After that, Eric is joined by Luis Scott-Vargas of ChannelFireball. Luis is a Hall of Fame Magic: The Gathering player who has been a dominant force in the game for many years. He and Eric talk about how a collectible card game spawned an immense following and the competitive analysis that has come along with it. Luis also offers insight into how things like technology and the resulting wisdom of the crowds has shaped the game, as well as the ethics of outsmarting your opponent vs. “angle shooting,” and how they are similar in MTG and baseball. [37:10]
• In the third segment, Eric talks to Steve Palazzolo of Pro Football Focus. Eric begins by asking Steve about his baseball career and what led him to working in football evaluation. Then the pair go over how different teams have started using analytics to their own varying degrees. They also discuss how the influence of research has started to change decision-making on the field, some of the unique challenges of trying to appropriately evaluate football players on a crowded gridiron, what the current best solutions are for most accurately understanding talent — and how all of this affects the draft. [1:08:17]

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For the sixth year, ZiPS returns to crank out its top 100 prospects for the upcoming season. If you’re unaware of what the ZiPS projections are or the purpose they serve, please consult this article as well as this one while I reconsider my public relations strategy.

I like to think that I’ve developed a pretty useful tool over the years, but don’t get me wrong: a projection system is not even remotely a substitute for proper scouting. While ZiPS and other systems like it can see patterns in the data that are hard for humans to extract, humans have their own special tricks. Projecting prospects is hard, as you’re mostly dealing with very young players, some of whom aren’t even done physically developing. They play baseball against inconsistent competition and have much shorter resumés than established major leaguers.

That last bit is an especially tricky puzzle for 2021. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, we didn’t have a minor league season. Some prospects were left to train at home, while others saw time at their team’s alternate site or in Fall Instructional League. But those environments can’t replace live opponents who are trying to crush your hopes and dreams, and they didn’t generate much in the way of useful statistics.

You will also notice, as usual, that there are a few players who appeared on Eric Longenhagen’s Top 100 who are missing here, simply because they have only played in high school and no professional games. It’s not that ZiPS dislikes them or doubts their future, it’s just that the system doesn’t have anything useful to say. ZiPS has the capability to use college stats when it has little choice — which is why you’ll see Spencer Torkelson and Austin Martin appear — but there’s just nothing for ZiPS to work with when we’re talking about someone like Jasson Dominguez. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Baltimore Orioles trending on Twitter because of their 0.0 percent FanGraphs playoff odds, what that figure really signifies, and how teams tend to respond to pessimistic projections, then break down why the record-breaking 14-year extension signed by superstar shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. is a windfall for him, great news for fans of the Padres, and a boon to baseball. After that (35:10), they celebrate Prospect Week at FanGraphs by bringing on lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen to discuss his brand-new ranking of the top prospects in baseball, which organizations’ prospect strengths stand out, the potential of Wander Franco, Jasson Dominguez, and other intriguing talents, which prospects were most affected by the pandemic, whether there were any developmental upsides to playing at alternate sites, the upcoming draft classes, why Tatis was originally underrated, the now-complete career of Tim Tebow, and more.

Audio intro: Guns N’ Roses, "14 Years"
Audio interstitial: Hinds, "San Diego"
Audio outro: Matthew Sweet, "Coming Soon"

Link to @MLB playoff odds tweet
Link to Means on the Orioles’ playoff odds
Link to Ben Clemens on the Tatis extension
Link to Big League Advance EW interview episode
Link to Sportico on Tatis and BLA
Link to Ken Rosenthal on Tatis and BLA
Link to Eric’s Top 100-ish prospects
Link to Kevin on pandemic-hampered prospects
Link to Eric and Kevin’s 2022 picks to click
Link to Eric’s draft rankings
Link to story about Daniel Lynch
Link to NASA Perseverance press release
Link to Pinstriped Prospects Dominguez tweet
Link to Fernando Perez EW interview episode

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For the Toronto Blue Jays of 40 years ago —  a young team, an expansion team, a Major League Baseball team in a non-American country — finding an identity, something for fans to cling to beyond regional affinity and a desire for entertainment, was an uphill battle. They played in Exhibition Stadium, a field not made for baseball, pummeled by wind and snow off the lake. They lost, and lost, and lost again, their roster an endlessly rotating door.

After the buzz of novelty wore off, their attendance dwindled, from fourth in the American League to 11th just four years later. The tainted atmosphere of MLB at the time, with collusion and the constant threat of labor stoppages looming large, didn’t help either. The strike-shortened 1981 season ended in a fifth consecutive last-place finish. The most press the Jays got in the stretch run that year was about struggling third baseman and NBA draftee Danny Ainge’s dreams of switching sports. He finished the season, his last as a major leaguer, batting .187; from the stands of the Ex, a fan threw a basketball at him.

The following year, for the first time in history, the Jays climbed out of last place in the division. (They were sixth out of seven.) And then, in 1983, a breakthrough: They put together a winning record. Dave Stieb was great again; Lloyd Moseby and Jesse Barfield broke out. Though they didn’t, in the end, come close to a playoff spot, they were a very competitive 89-73. More fans attended than ever before; suddenly, there was life here. 

It was in September of that year that Tony Fernandez made his debut. He had been signed in 1979, a teenager out of San Pedro de Macoris in the Dominican Republic; he was, still, just 21. He came in as a pinch-runner, and he scored on a wild pitch. That was the beginning.

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