FanGraphs player pages are a wild thing to look at these days. While nearly 1,300 players accrued big league service time in 2020 and generated a stat line, thousands of minor leaguers saw their statistical record go from 2019 straight to a series of 2021 projections. It’s as if 2020 never happened, and wouldn’t that be great? But 2020 did happen, and these players didn’t play. Sure, there were alternate sites (and likely will be again this year) and some limited instructional leagues, but players didn’t have a real season of development or anything anywhere close to it. Every team had a plan and worked hard to mitigate the damage, but the effect on these players in terms of their professional progression is almost certainly negative across the board.

Figuring out just how much the lost year will hurt prospects is a fool’s errand and should be evaluated on a player-by-player basis, and there are plenty of arguments for those most impacted, ranging from 16-year-olds at complexes to players already on the big league 40-man roster. Different types of players needed a season for different reasons. There’s no real conclusion here as to who is the most affected, as the lost 2020 season is uncharted territory, so in an abundance of caution, here are the primary player groupings that teams are most worried about.

Teenagers With Zero Plate Appearances

There are a handful of 2019 draftees who haven’t played yet, but the focus of this group is the 2019 international class. Yankees phenom Jasson Dominguez is the most hyped Latin American signing in recent memory, but he’s suddenly 18 years old and has yet to have a pro at-bat. Instagram videos of him hitting bombs are great and all, but a year of DSL action would give the Yankees much more comfort in terms of bringing him stateside.

That concern doesn’t just apply to well-known members of the class like Dominguez, Rangers slugger Bayron Lora or toolsy Royals outfielder Erick Pena; the same worries are there for players who signed for $100,000, or even $10,000. Dominican complexes can get very crowded, and games are needed to figure out who might get off the island. With restricted overall roster sizes going into effect and a continuing flow of signed players coming in, many will not get the opportunity they had in the past to prove their signing scouts right. Read the rest of this entry »

This week may be Prospects Week here at FanGraphs, but for MLB, this has been Minor Signings Week. The long offseason dance is just about over, and everyone’s now at risk of going to homecoming alone. So rather than a long spiel that sees me reference a historical battle or obscure 18th-century literature, let’s get straight to the moves.

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In their latest move to revamp a bullpen that was atypically subpar in 2020, the Yankees have signed free agent Justin Wilson to a one-year contract that’s reportedly worth around $4 million — one that apparently has player and club options to lower its average annual value for Competitive Balance Tax purposes. Regardless of the deal’s complexity, this will be the 33-year-old lefty’s second go-round with the Yankees, for whom he pitched in 2015; he spent the past two seasons with the Mets.

Wilson’s final 2020 numbers with the other New York team (3.66 ERA, 3.04 FIP, 0.5 WAR in 19.2 innings) were solid but unremarkable. Of the 10 runs he allowed, six were clustered into two outings of three runs apiece: a loss against the Red Sox on July 29, and a hold against the Marlins on August 26. Beyond those two clunkers, he allowed runs in only three of his other 21 outings. For the fourth straight season, he walked more than 10% of batters he faced, though his 10.5% rate was still his lowest since 2016.

Below the surface, Wilson’s performance was more interesting. Relying primarily upon a four-seam fastball that averaged 94.9 mph and a cutter that averaged 90.8 mph, he did an excellent job of limiting hard contact in 2020. Via Statcast, his 84.5 mph average exit velocity placed in the 96th percentile, his 28.3% hard-hit rate was in the 92nd percentile, and his .274 xwOBA in the 75th percentile. Those numbers are based on a small sample of just 53 batted ball events, but they’re only a bit better than what he did in a 2019 sample of 101 batted ball events: 85.3 mph exit velo, 27.7% hard-hit rate, .285 xwOBA. In fact, over the past two seasons, Wilson’s four-seamer — which at 2,280 rpm hardly has a noteworthy spin rate — has generated the lowest exit velocity of any four-seamer in the majors:

Likewise, Wilson’s overall 85.0 mph average exit velocity over the past two seasons was the majors’ fifth-lowest at a 50-inning cutoff. The innings total is low because he missed over seven weeks due to left elbow soreness, but even with that absence, he ranks second in the majors in appearances (472) and innings (424.2) by left-handed relievers since the start of the 2013 season, trailing only Tony Watson — who just agreed to a minor league deal with the Phillies — in both categories. From 2013 to ’18, Wilson averaged 67 appearances and 61 innings per year, accompanied by a 3.34 ERA and 3.32 FIP.

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In 2016, Matt Shoemaker had a career year. He made 27 starts, threw 160 innings, and compiled 3.5 WAR on the back of a 3.88 ERA, 3.52 FIP, and truly pinpoint control (4.5% walk rate). In the four years since, he’s thrown 166 innings — total. That’s been worth 1.3 WAR, with his 4.12 ERA, 4.73 FIP, and 8.2% walk rate all representing steps back from his peak form.

Of course, as a pitcher, his services are still in demand: There are never enough arms to cover the innings that teams need, and you can always dream on someone returning to their peak form. This year, that need and dream belong to the Twins, who signed Shoemaker on Sunday to a one-year deal worth $2 million as he attempts to reprise his former success.

From late 2016 to ’20, everything that could go wrong for Shoemaker did. On September 4, 2016, he was hit in the head with a line drive that fractured his skull. He rehabbed from that injury in time for the 2017 season, only to have his year cut short by forearm tightness; he eventually had a compressed nerve surgically corrected. When he returned to the field, his arm still hurt, and he missed most of 2018 after surgery on an elbow tendon.

That was enough for the Angels, who non-tendered Shoemaker, but his woes were only beginning. After signing with the Blue Jays, he tore his ACL during a rundown (as a fielder, but still!) after only five starts. After yet another rehab, he returned for an abbreviated 2020. Even then, he couldn’t stay on the field, missing the better part of a month with shoulder inflammation.

That’s a truly grim five-year stretch, the kind of injury past that some pitchers can’t recover from. But while some pitchers’ arms are never the same after that kind of luck, Shoemaker has been effective when he’s taken the field. It hasn’t been great — as I mentioned above, his ERA, FIP, and walk rate have all been worse — but he’s still been playable, and it’s easy to convince yourself that a healthy Shoemaker might add back some velocity and pick up where he left off.
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Aaron Sabato went in the first round last summer because of his bat. As Eric Longenhagen wrote when putting together our Minnesota Twins Top Prospects list, “teams were about as sure of Sabato’s hitting ability as they were of any player’s in the 2020 draft.” An accomplished slugger at the University of North Carolina, the 21-year-old first baseman is a masher with an admirable offensive ceiling.

Defense is the question mark. At 6-foot-2 and 230 pounds, Sabato is built for power and not speed, with some pundits already projecting him as a DH. The Rye, New York native’s take on that opinion might be best-expressed as, “Not so fast.” Sabato sees himself as a more-than-capable fielder who can help his team on both sides of the ball. As for what he can do with a bat in his hands, let’s just say that he agrees with the scouting community. Sabato isn’t cocky, but he certainly doesn’t lack confidence.

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David Laurila: You were a middle infielder in high school, and now there are people projecting you as a designated hitter. What are your thoughts on that?

Aaron Sabato: “Guys read the height and weight, then they’re, ‘Oh, he played shortstop a couple years ago and now he’s on a corner at first base; he must be trending toward DH.’ I don’t see it that way at all. My feet move really well, my hands are really good. If you watch me — my actions and the way my body moves — you’ll know that I’m not a DH. Obviously, I’m not going back to the middle of the infield, but whether it’s third or first — I know it’ll most likely be first — I can play a corner. I think I proved to the coaches, and the staff, down in instructs that they didn’t draft a DH. They drafted a guy who could field, maybe an at elite level.”

Laurila: How big were you in high school?

Sabato: “My weight wasn’t as high — I was probably 215 — but I was chubbier. I grew an inch or two in college, and I also thinned out.”

Laurila: How were you playing shortstop as a “chubbier” kid? Were you at a small school? Read the rest of this entry »

Below is my list of the top 100 prospects in baseball. The scouting summaries were compiled with information provided by available data and industry sources, as well as from my own observations.

As I’ve noted while publishing my team lists, because there was no minor league season in 2020, there are some instances where no new information was learned 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, I’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, I’ve primarily focused on data from there, and the context of that data, in my 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 my lists and on The Board: MIRP, or multi-inning relief pitcher, and SIRP, or single-inning relief pitcher.

And now, a few important things to keep in mind as you’re perusing the Top 100. You’ll note that prospects are ranked by number but also lie within tiers demarcated by their Future Value grades. The FV grade is more important than the ordinal ranking. For example, the gap between prospect No. 3 on this list, Adley Rutschman, and prospect No. 29, Josiah Gray, is 26 spots, and there’s a substantial difference in talent between them. The gap between Heliot Ramos (No. 61) and Luis Matos (No. 87), meanwhile, is also 26 numerical places, but the difference in talent is relatively small. You may have noticed that there are more than 100 prospects in the table below, and more than 100 scouting summaries. That’s because I have also included 50 FV prospects whose ranking fell outside the 100; their reports appear below, under the “Other 50 FV Prospects” header. The same comparative principle applies to them.

You’ll also notice that there is a Future Value outcome distribution graph for each prospect on the list. This is an attempt to graphically represent how likely each FV outcome is for each prospect. Before his departure for ESPN, Kiley McDaniel used the great work of our former colleague Craig Edwards to find the base rates for each FV tier of prospect (separately for hitters and pitchers), and the likelihood of each FV outcome. For example, based on Craig’s research, the average 60 FV hitter on a list becomes a perennial 5-plus WAR player over his six controlled years 26% of the time, and has a 27% chance of accumulating, at most, a couple of WAR during his six controlled years. I started with those base rates for every player on this year’s list and then, with the help of Kevin Goldstein (who assisted with other elements of this list as well), manually tweaked them depending on our more specific opinions about the player. For instance, Jose Garcia and Trevor Larnach are both 55 FV prospects, but Garcia’s approach makes him very volatile, while Larnach is a surer bet to hit. At the same time, if Garcia ever develops a better approach, his power and ability to play a premium position give him a ceiling that Larnach can’t reasonably attain. My hope is that the distribution graphs reflect these kinds of differences.

For a further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, please read this. If you would like to read a book-length treatment on the subject, you can purchase the book I co-wrote with Kiley, Future Value.

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The average innings per start across MLB has been in decline for a few years now. The last time starting pitchers threw more innings than they did the previous season was in 2014, at 5.97 per start. Just five years later, that number had dropped all the way to 5.18, a loss of nearly 400 starter innings league-wide. At the forefront of this were the Rays, who began using openers in 2018 and finished the year with their starters throwing nearly 200 fewer innings than those of any other team.

Two seasons later, a pandemic-shortened season introduced a number of factors — injuries, larger rosters, seven-inning doubleheaders, and more — that helped the rest of the majors take a step toward Tampa Bay’s minimization of the starter’s responsibilities.

With the 2021 season two months away, it seems apparent that those two lines are about to diverge. With roster sizes being trimmed back to 26 and a somewhat more typical offseason hopefully leading to fewer injuries, I would guess that the average starter workload will go up for the first time in seven years. The Rays, however, appear to be heading for a season of pitching management even more extreme than what they had in 2018, after signing two pitchers over the holiday weekend: 40-year-old lefty Rich Hill and 33-year-old right-hander Collin McHugh, each at one year apiece, with the former set to make $2.5 million and the latter $1.8 million. Read the rest of this entry »

For the second time in his career, Jake Arrieta will join a rebuilding Cubs team. The soon-to-be 35-year-old righty spent four seasons and change with the Cubs from mid-2013 to ’17, joining a team en route to 96 losses and helping Chicago to four straight playoff berths, including a long-awaited championship in 2016. During that stretch he emerged as an ace, throwing a pair of no-hitters and winning a Cy Young. This time around, he’s trying to re-establish himself as a reliable starter via a one-year, $6 million deal, that for a team that’s in the process of blowing up the roster that won the NL Central in the abbreviated 2020 season.

The contract is a big step down from the complex three-year, $75 million deal Arrieta just completed with the Phillies, but then he struggled mightily while trying to live up to that contract. Over the course of those three seasons, he delivered a 4.36 ERA, 4.55 FIP and 3.7 WAR in 352.2 innings, making a full complement of starts only in 2018. The recurrence of a bone spur in his right elbow, which had bothered him the previous year as well, limited him to 24 starts in 2019 before he underwent season-ending surgery in mid-August. While Arrieta could have opted out and sought a larger payday at that juncture, it clearly wasn’t in the cards for him amid the diminishing returns.

Those returns continued to diminish in 2020, as Arrieta made just nine starts before being shut down in mid-September due to a right hamstring strain. His 5.08 ERA was his highest mark since 2012, when he was still trying to find himself with the Orioles; the season was his fifth straight with an ERA that increased from the previous year. He broke a similar streak in the FIP department with a 4.66 mark, down from 4.89 in 2019 and in the vicinity of league average (101 FIP-). Read the rest of this entry »

Grayson Rodriguez is a top-100 prospect thanks to a four-pitch mix that includes an explosive high-spin heater. As electric as that mid-90s offering is, it’s not the most eye-catching item in his arsenal. The Orioles’ top pitching prospect throws a changeup with screwball characteristics. While not technically a screwball — Juan Marichal and Mike Norris come to mind — the movement profile is anything but run-of-the-mill for a right-handed change. At age 21 with a bright future ahead of him, Rodriguez is armed with a unique pitch.

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David Laurila: You’ve developed a good changeup. What makes it effective?

Grayson Rodriguez: “The way I like to attack with my fastball sets up my changeup well, how it moves and what it looks like out of my hand. As I’ve learned how to throw it with TrackMan and Edgertronic cameras, I’ve figured out a way to get the ball to spin exactly how I want it to. Those things have really helped me, because my changeup is different from a lot of other guys’. It’s almost like a screwball. Hitters don’t see it as much as they do a normal changeup.”

Laurila: How do you get the screwball action?

Rodriguez: “At my release point, my wrist is pronating a lot more than normal. If you break down my hand movement and wrist position — break everything down in slow motion — it’s really turning over. It’s kind of an aggressive, violent turn-over. You don’t see that very often. My ball, on an axis, is spinning at about 3 o’clock to 3:30. If you were to picture that on a clock, it’s almost like a left-handed slider, or a left-handed curveball.” Read the rest of this entry »