It’s a lousy time to be the Red Sox these days, running an American League-worst 6-16 record while allowing over six runs per game. Chris Sale and Eduardo Rodriguez are out for the year, Rafael Devers and J.D. Martinez aren’t generating anything close to their usual firepower while much of the lineup wheezes, and 3,000 miles away, Mookie Betts is off to an MVP-caliber start with his new team, the Dodgers.

On Monday, Betts continued his early-season rampage, homering for the fifth time in five games. This time it was a leadoff shot against the Mariners’ Justin Dunn:

That was the 21st leadoff home run of Betts’ career, a total that’s tied for seventh since 2014, his first year in the majors; George Springer leads with 36. It was Betts’ ninth homer of the season, which would have tied him for the National League lead with Fernando Tatis Jr. if the Padres prodigy hadn’t hit two against the Rangers (the second of which broke the Internet and the game’s insufferable unwritten rules). The 27-year-old right fielder is hitting .319/.374/.681 with 1.6 WAR, tied with Brandon Lowe for third in the majors behind Tatis and Mike Yastrzemski (both 1.8).

Last Thursday, while his former team was losing so badly to the Rays that they used both catcher Kevin Plawecki and infielder Jose Peraza on the mound, Betts homered three times against the Padres. It wasn’t just any three-homer game, either — and not just because his first homer, off Chris Paddack, came on a pitch off the plate and away (a rarity Ben Clemens broke down on Friday). It was the sixth three-homer game of Betts’ career, which tied the major league record:

There are some prodigious home run hitters on that list; four of the 17 players above hit at least 600 in their careers, while two more are in the 500s and three in the 400s. Betts, on the other hand, is still two homers shy of 150, and yet there he is at the top alongside Sosa (609 homers in 18 seasons) and Mize (359 homers in 15 seasons, a total suppressed by his losing three prime seasons to World War II). He’s been helped a bit by playing in a homer-heavy era, and by Fenway Park as well, in that he’s the only player with three three-homer games there, as many as Nomar Garciaparra and Ted Williams put together. Read the rest of this entry »

While a shortened season might make this year’s version of our Trade Value Series an unusual one, with the deadline looming, we are not about to break with tradition. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at those players who fell just short of the top 50, be sure to read the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, which can be found in the widget above, along with the other installments in the Series.

For those who have been reading the Trade Value Series the last few seasons, the format should look familiar. For every player, you’ll see a table with the player’s projected five-year WAR from 2021-2025, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money, if any, the year through which the team has contractual control of the player, last year’s rank, and then projections, contract status, and age for each individual season through 2025, if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons. Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2019 post. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for creating the tables in these posts. At the bottom of the page, there will be an updated grid showing all the players who have been ranked up to this point.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the next 10 spots on this year’s list.

After ranking 39th on this list last year, Jeff McNeil finished the 2019 season with the same hot bat he started it with on the way to a 4.6 WAR campaign. Given roughly a season and a half of big league plate appearances, McNeil has a stellar 139 wRC+, and his 7.3 wins pro-rate to roughly five wins per 600 plate appearances. Those results might urge for moving him up rather than down, but there likely wouldn’t be significant interest in McNeil’s skillset if he were offered in trade. He isn’t great anywhere defensively, though he is versatile and has experience at second base, third base, and both corner outfield spots. He has average to slightly above average power, but he does make a ton of mostly-medium hard contact. He also needs those hits to continue to fall, and might be more vulnerable to increased shifting. A player with that power profile who relies on solid contact to get on base and who is without a true position probably won’t inspire teams to trade away a bunch of their prospects to acquire him, but McNeil gets results.

Maybe he is undervalued by the industry as a whole. He’s making the minimum through next year, likely won’t earn big salaries in arbitration, and won’t be a free agent until after the 2024 season. Those arbitration years all come in McNeil’s 30s, limiting his upside. McNeil hits and plays multiple positions well enough to make him a desirable player, but continued questions about his future production have driven his trade value below some less-accomplished players.

Coming off a solid, 2.7 WAR 2018, the Twins and Max Kepler agreed to a contract extension that guarantees the outfielder $35 million for five years, with a $10 million team option on the 2024 season, just $9 million more than the $1 million buyout for that year would be. In 2019, Kepler had the breakout season many had been expecting for years, nearly doubling his home run total from 20 in 2018 to 36 in 2019. The increase in power saw his wRC+ go from average to 121, and his WAR totaled 4.4 on the year. Kepler is a good outfield defender. He draws walks and doesn’t strike out much. Even if his 2024 option is exercised, he will earn just under $32 million over the next four seasons.

Kepler had some support to be even higher on this list. The concerns that held him back were mostly age-related given his type of production. At 27 years old, it’s possible that his defense has already peaked, and since his fly ball swing produces a lot of outs, his low batting average will suppress some of the value of his good walk rate. His breakout produced a good batting line, but not a great one. The last year of his contract and the option season both occur in Kepler’s 30s. He’s a good player and a very good value, which is why he’s on this list, but Kepler’s skills are more solid than spectacular and the pandemic might have wiped out most of what would have been his best season. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about MLB’s BABIP bouncing back from its unusually low early level, the Tigers calling up a trio of top prospects in an attempted playoff push, and Cardinals rookie Roel Ramirez’s unprecedented debut, then answer a listener email with a Stat Blast about the longest regular-season and postseason team vs. team losing streaks (inspired by Cleveland’s current 20-game streak against Detroit). Then they draft their favorite small-sample player seasons so far, focusing on strange stat lines, surprising breakouts, and unlikely comebacks (plus a postscript on Fernando Tatis Jr.’s unwritten-rules-violating grand slam).

Audio intro: The Orange Peels, "So Far"
Audio outro: Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, "Surprise"

Link to video of Ramirez’s debut
Link to Robert Au’s Stat Blast Song cover
Link to Adam Ott’s team vs. team streak research
Link to MLB.com article on team vs. team streaks
Link to Andy McCullough on Hosmer
Link to Ben Clemens on Santana
Link to Tony Wolfe on Bundy
Link to Dan Szymborski on Bauer
Link to Ben on foreign substance use
Link to article about Yastrzemski’s surge
Link to article about Tatis’s 3-0 grand slam
Link to list of 3-0 grand slams

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I’d be a liar if I said the Los Angeles Dodgers are struggling. At 16-7, they have been as dangerous as expected and currently hold the best record in the National League while leading in both runs scored and ERA. But the offense still isn’t firing on all cylinders, with Cody Bellinger, Max Muncy, and Joc Pederson all off to fairly slow starts. This is an especially concerning development for Bellinger given that he was responsible for approximately eight wins in 2019, hitting .305/.406/.629 with a 162 wRC+ and 47 homers while besting Christian Yelich for the NL MVP award.

Outside of hitting a couple home runs against the Angels on Friday, Bellinger’s 2020 has been his most forgettable campaign in the majors. A triple-slash of .187/.245/.341 (57 wRC+) has left him hovering around replacement level, and in a 60-game season, we’re only a week away from the halfway point.

Baseball is a game of adjustments, and even during an MVP campaign last year, Bellinger found pitchers adjusting to him with (slightly) successful results. On the morning of June 1, 2019, Bellinger’s OPS stood at an awe-inspiring 1.208; his batting average had fallen below the .400 line just a week before. You wouldn’t call the .262/.372/.561 (136 wRC+) he hit over the rest of the season an actual problem, but it was distinctly below his early-season standards. It wasn’t a complete sea change, but pitchers gradually started throwing him more breaking pitches as 2019 progressed, a trend that has continued in 2020. When Bellinger surged in April and May of last year, only 20.9% of his pitches were breaking pitches, a number which increased to 25.6% from June to September and to 28.7% in 2020, passing the 30% line so far in August.

And pitchers haven’t yet been punished for this approach. Bellinger has swung at 51.6% of all breaking pitches in 2020, compared to 34.2% in April/May 2019 and 41.9% from June on. Swinging at more breaking pitches has resulted in fewer hits than before; after getting 14 hits against the bendy stuff in April/May, including five homers, he only managed 16 over the next four months and he has just two in 2020. Since June 1, 2019 in 122 games, Bellinger has just two hits against curveballs, with none coming in 2020. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s easy to make light of the job of a baseball manager. Fill out a lineup card, pull your pitchers when they’re tired, and don’t call for any bunts? It often feels like we could all do that. Whenever I start feeling like it’s a cinch to manage, I think back to something my dad told me when I was younger: the manager’s job is to put his team in the best position to win.

Granted, that was before the sabermetric revolution, so managers weren’t necessarily doing a great job of it, but putting their team in the best position to win has always been the point of the job. If that sounds easy, so be it, but there are plenty of ways to mess it up, which means every decision a manager makes has the potential to be the thing they did that led to a loss.

With that theory of managing in mind, I did a double-take when I saw the Astros’ lineup on Sunday. Facing lefty Justus Sheffield, Dusty Baker submitted this lineup:

In a lot of ways, that’s a satisfying lineup against a left-handed pitcher: seven righties against just two lefties after accounting for switch-hitting Abraham Toro, and some big boppers among those righties. Seeing Josh Reddick batting second set alarms off in my mind, though. Read the rest of this entry »

Just past the one-third mark of the abbreviated 2020 season, the Yankees have been steamrolling opponents to the point of compiling the American League’s second-best record (15-6) thanks largely to a league-best offense, but as with last year, they’re having a hard time keeping their regulars healthy. Earlier this past week, they lost Giancarlo Stanton to a hamstring strain, and within a 48-hour span this past weekend, they placed both Aaron Judge and DJ LeMahieu on the Injured List as well, that at a time when the pair collectively occupied the AL leads in the three slash stats. As with last year, when shortstop Gleyber Torres was the only member of the expected starting lineup to avoid landing on the IL at some point, the team’s depth is getting quite a test, but there’s no guarantee that they can replicate the strong performances that kept them afloat in 2019.

Stanton, who after being limited to just 18 games last season due to strains in his left biceps, left shoulder, and right knee — not to mention a right quad strain suffered during the AL Division Series — would have begun this season on the IL as well due to a right calf strain, had it opened on schedule. The delay caused by the coronavirus pandemic worked in his favor, and he began the shortened 2020 campaign with a bang, mashing an Opening Day home run off the Nationals’ Max Scherzer in his first plate appearance, then following up with an major league-high 483-foot shot off Eric Fedde two days later. For a short while, he remained healthy and productive, serving as the designated hitter in 14 of the team’s first 15 games and batting .293/.453/.585 (182 wRC+) with three homers, but he left the second game of the Yankees’ August 8 doubleheader with what was soon diagnosed as a Grade 1 left hamstring strain, an injury that is expected to sideline him for 3-4 weeks.

It’s a frustrating turn of events for the 30-year-old slugger, who has lost significant time to injuries in four out of the past six seasons, though Stanton did play 159 games in 2017 with the Marlins and 158 in ’18 with the Yankees. “I’m hurting for him,” manager Aaron Boone told reporters at the time. “I know what he’s done to be here. His play speaks for itself. Hopefully it’s something that doesn’t end up keeping him down too long.”

Judge, who is off to a .290/.343/.758 start while leading the AL in slugging percentage and home runs (nine, now tied with Mike Trout) and ranking third in wRC+ (191), was lifted from Tuesday’s game against the Rays in the sixth inning, just after hitting the last of those homers. Boone said he wanted to get the slugger off his feet after four straight games on the turf at Tropicana Field, but he hasn’t played since due to what was initially described as “lower body tightness” and has since been diagnosed as a mild calf strain.

She just asked, "Why don't you watch some baseball and learn if Aaron Judge is better?" https://t.co/kCefalSM1o

— Jay Jaffe (@jay_jaffe) August 16, 2020

Read the rest of this entry »

While a shortened season might make this year’s version of our Trade Value Series an unusual one, with the deadline looming, we are not about to break with tradition. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at those players who fell just short of the top 50, be sure to read the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, which can be found in the widget above.

For those who have been reading the Trade Value Series the last few seasons, the format should look familiar. For every player, you’ll see a table with the player’s projected five-year WAR from 2021-2025, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money, if any, the year through which the team has contractual control of the player, last year’s rank, and then projections, contract status, and age for each individual season through 2025, if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons. Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2019 post. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for creating the tables in these posts. At the bottom of the page, there will be an updated grid showing all the players who have been ranked up to this point.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the first batch of players.

There isn’t a consensus around Dustin May, either on prospect lists or in baseball front offices. His high-end fastball has a ton of movement and sits in the upper-90s, but its sinking action is likely to prevent it from being a huge swing-and-miss pitch. Nobody is down on May, per se, but his prospect rankings ranged from the top 10 on some lists to the mid 20s on others, with our lead prospect analyst, Eric Longenhagen, slotting him 14th. He’s already seen some success in the majors, with his FIP and ERA in the low-threes in over 54.1 innings.

He’s made eight starts and while his strikeout rate was just 20% in those outings, he has limited walks and homers and put up a 3.18 FIP. He’s going to need to miss more bats to take the next step in his development, but the tools are there to make it happen. Although the opinions are somewhat wide-ranging when it comes to just how good he will be, enough teams see his future being bright to make this list. The Dodgers couldn’t get equivalent value from every team for May, but if he were available, they could extract a considerable return. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year for more than a decade, FanGraphs has released a Trade Value Series, ranking the top 50 players in baseball by their trade value. In that respect, this year is no different. For a lot of other reasons, though, this year’s exercise is very, very different. The COVID-19 pandemic still rages on in this country, preventing a normal start to the season; recent outbreaks on the Marlins and Cardinals — and a continued rise in the country’s case rate — have called the completion of even the scheduled 60-game season into question. While teams might soon have access to some data and video from the alternate training sites, per reports from Kiley McDaniel, there’s no minor league season to evaluate prospects, and any team making trades does so with considerable uncertainty surrounding not only this season, but also an offseason that could potentially see meaningful payroll cuts from teams that lost revenue during a shortened 2020 campaign staged without fans. Add in the murkiness of 2021 — we don’t yet have a vaccine, after all — and the end of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement after next season, and there are far more variables to contend with when gauging trade value than there usually are. One other difference is that with Kiley McDaniel no longer at FanGraphs and Dave Cameron still with the Padres, I have taken over the task of creating this list.

Generally speaking, the players who appear on this list don’t get traded at the deadline. In fact, they usually don’t even get traded within a year of appearing on this list. The players featured here are good and often on good rosters. Add in an under-market contract and there is very little incentive for teams to move these guys. And what is typically true for players on this list will likely be even more so this year as teams will be less inclined to trade away proven players who are good values for guys with less certain futures who they might not have seen in person since this spring or even last summer. While we would normally try to assess a player’s value right now, the complicated nature of this season means keeping an eye toward this winter for expected value in the next few months, too.

In attempting to determine value, my process likely didn’t differ greatly from my predecessors. Combining estimates of present and future talent with years of control and likely salaries helped create a rough estimate of potential surplus value for every player; input from contacts with clubs also helped inform my decisions. Every team has a different risk appetite when it comes to player production, and each is going to have financial considerations, as well as an understanding of their chances of contending now and in the future, that have a considerable impact on the type of player they are interested in acquiring. The Yankees and Dodgers aren’t operating on the same payroll plane as the A’s and Rays, and rebuilding teams like the Orioles and Giants aren’t looking for the same players as the win-now Reds and Brewers. Read the rest of this entry »

Jim Gentile had 21 multiple-home-run games, the most historic one coming in 1961 when he hit grand slams in back-to-back innings. More obscure, but no less interesting, was a two-homer effort at Fenway Park three years later. Playing for the Kansas City A’s, the man known as ‘Diamond Jim’ triggered a skirmish in the Red Sox dugout with his dingers.

“A dear friend of mine, Dick Stuart, was playing first base for Boston,” the now-86-year-old Gentile told me recently. “They finished batting practice, and as I was walking up to the cage, he yelled at me, ‘Diamond, how ya hitting ‘em?’ Then he threw me his bat, and said I should try it. On my first swing, I hit the ball into the bullpen. I got out of the cage and went to throw it back to him, and he said, ‘No, keep it.’

Bill Monbouquette was on the mound for the Boston that day. A solidly-built right-hander, ‘Monbo’ not only had a no-hitter and a 20-win season on his resume, he was a self-described red-ass (a segment in this 2015 Sunday Notes column serves as evidence). If Gentile didn’t already know that, he would soon find out… albeit from a safe distance.

“Come game time, I’ve got my bat in my hands,” recalled Gentile. “I’ve also got Stuart’s bat in my hands. I figured, ‘Heck, I’m going to use his.’ I probably shouldn’t have. There’s kind of an unwritten rule that if someone gives you something like that, you wait until you get out of town. But I walked up there with his bat, and hit the ball in the bullpen. A couple innings later, I hit another one in the bullpen.”

As Gentile was rounding the bases, Red Sox catcher Bob Tillman picked up the bat and saw Stuart’s name on it. Moreover, he told Monboquette. Read the rest of this entry »