Predicting breakout candidates is one of the hardest and most frustrating tasks for anyone who tries their hand at baseball soothsaying. By its very nature, a breakout (or breakdown) projection is a low probability event. If it wasn’t, it would be the basic projection! Your big hits will be next to some embarrassing mistakes. For example, if I were of a mind to gloat about having said in this 2018 piece for ESPN that Christian Yelich had a peak Joey Votto/Will Clark season in him, I couldn’t get around the fact that the player listed right after Yelich was Danny Salazar, who has appeared in one game since that article ran.

So what constitutes a breakout season? Is it a player making a significant change in one aspect of their game? A bounce-back season? Is a top prospect showing improvement a breakout? Or is it a sudden step forward along broad lines? I’d argue that it’s any and all of these things. I used to try to statistically define a breakout season, but in the end, I found no purely mathematical estimation that was satisfactory. As I’ve written this piece over the years, I’ve gone with a more abstract definition: when a player, capable of contributing to a playoff contender, is able to fundamentally change what we think of them.

Predicting breakouts and breakdowns for 2020 is even tougher than usual thanks to the 60-game season, which will complicate knowing if I’m right even if it is somehow miraculously played to completion. But it’s part of the job, so let’s get to the bet-making instead of the bet-hedging. Here are my 10 favorite breakout picks for 2020.

Eloy Jiménez, Chicago White Sox

Eloy Jiménez had a vaguely disappointing rookie year in 2020, with a .513 slugging percentage in a pinball season not enough to balance out the .315 on-base percentage and mediocre defense. What keeps me a believer is that he was a more well-rounded hitter in the minors than he’s displayed in the majors and it’s way too soon to peg him as a low-OBP slugger. It was encouraging that his plate discipline numbers improved over the course of 2019, and ZiPS thinks his second-half .337 BABIP is closer to his real number than his .275 over the season’s early months.

I don’t think a year similar to Yordan Alvarez’s .313/.412/.655 2019 would be all that shocking. Neither does ZiPS; in a 600 PA season, it put his 90th percentile home run total at 54.

I kind of wanted to put Nomar Mazara here as a tandem, but I resolved to stop picking him after doing so for three consecutive seasons and whiffing each time. A breakout is still a possibility for Mazara, but if I pick him for a decade and he finally does break out, I’d just be the blind squirrel finding the nut.

Adrian Houser, Milwaukee Brewers

You’d be excused for not getting excited about Adrian Houser as a prospect; he was never especially enthralling in the minors. What was exciting, however, was Houser’s two-seamer/sinker, which he used to great effect in 2019. Pitch-classification algorithms can have issues with a pitcher like Houser, but while he upped his grounder game considerably last season — useful for a right-handed pitcher given Miller Park’s history as a haven for left-handed sluggers — he did it while avoiding the somewhat dated approach of simply constantly throwing hard and down.

Houser did have considerable splits last year depending on his role, with a 4.57 ERA as a starter compared to 1.47 in relief. But in a rotation that seems overstuffed with third and fourth starters, Houser’s upside is interesting.

Dinelson Lamet, San Diego Padres

One thing people forget about Dinelson Lamet is how little experience he actually has as a pitcher, with only 500 professional innings under his belt. I think there’s a good chance that if not for the Tommy John surgery, he’d be a legitimate ace right now for the Padres; his change was a work in progress at the time. Lamet has been 16 runs below-average with his mid-to-upper 90s fastball — which came back faster post-surgery — but I don’t think this is a case of Nathan Eovaldi, a pitcher who had trouble turning his velocity into outs. Lamet just hasn’t the time to refine his potent fastball-slider combination yet.

Luis Urías, Milwaukee Brewers

It strikes me as odd that in some circles Luis Urías is already thought a bust despite just turning 23. After sitting out the spring with a recovering from surgery on a broken hamate bone, Urías’ poor injury luck has continued; he tested positive for COVID-19 prior to the Brewers’ intake procedure for training camp. His case was reported to be asymptomatic and while we have little practical evidence of how cases like that will affect elite athletes, Craig Counsell appeared optimistic about Urías’ chances of rejoining the team in fairly short order. Urías had a disappointing stint in the majors in 2019, but even taking a huge chunk out of his .315/.398/.600 Triple-A effort due to the league offense and the level, there’s strong evidence that his baseline is well above his .223/.329/.326 major league line last year.

Victor Robles, Washington Nationals

It seems a little weird with the benefit of hindsight, but Victor Robles was always supposed to be the new hotness before Juan Soto exploded onto the roster in 2018. Robles isn’t going to catch up to Soto any time soon — or likely ever — but he showed signs of being a fairly complete hitter as a prospect and his defense in center field has been about as good as advertised. His main problem remains that he makes very soft contact, especially on groundballs, and I think his tendency to be overaggressive on the first pitch and top a soft grounder is hurting him here; he just doesn’t have the contact skills of a David Fletcher. Victor Robles will never hit for power like a Joey Gallo, but better pitch selection would give him a shot at retaining his 2019 home run bump. Too much of his current plate discipline comes from simply being willing to take a hit by a pitch.

Dansby Swanson, Atlanta Braves

Poor Dansby Swanson is at risk of becoming the new Gregg Jefferies, a player who is always measured versus our lofty initial expectations, found wanting, and ends up underrated by “only” being a B+ player in the majors. Swanson hit the ball harder in 2020 than he ever had before in the majors, with his barrel rate more than doubling his 2017 and ’18 numbers and his weak contact hits dropping considerably. It didn’t show up in his overall stats, but ZiPS “thought” he should actually have been a .492 slugger instead of the .422 mark he posted. zSLG isn’t an outlier, either; Statcast’s xSLG had Swanson at .480.

Dylan Bundy, Los Angeles Angels

My working theory on Dylan Bundy is that he needed a change of scenery more than practically any pitcher in the majors, both figuratively in terms of coaching and literally in terms of a park better configured to contain his mistakes. Bundy came out of high school nearly a decade ago as a hard thrower, a pitcher who regularly hit the high-90s and was clocked at 100 as an amateur. Years of injuries killed off the fastball, but Bundy continued to pitch as if he was still that pitcher, aggressively challenging hitters with a 91-92 mph four-seamer. That doesn’t actually work against major league hitters; for his career, he’s allowed a .542 SLG on four-seamers, including a .574 in 2018 and a .642 in 2019.

Bundy has to reinvent himself the way Frank Tanana did after his injury. There were signs of progress at times in 2019, with Bundy trying to change speeds more often. I still think there’s upside here if the Angels convince Bundy that his comps fall along the lines of Doug Fister, not Randy Johnson.

Byron Buxton, Minnesota Twins

Byron Buxton thrived last season when the Twins finally did what they’d resisted doing for years: sticking him in the lineup, letting him play, and not panicking every time he had a bad week. ZiPS gives Buxton a 10% chance at a 130 OPS+, enough that it would make him a superstar when combined with his defense. The shoulder is a concern, but he’s also had the luxury of more time to recover because of the pandemic’s long layoff.

Mitch Keller, Pittsburgh Pirates

I can’t think of a scenario in which Mitch Keller’s .475 BABIP in 2019 represents an actual ability. I’m not convinced that Mitch Webster, coming out of retirement and converted to pitching, would allow a .475 BABIP. Historically, hitters being dragooned as pitchers have a BABIP allowed in the .330 range, which I think sets a soft ceiling of minimal pitching competence. But it was such a wacky number that even ZiPS is having trouble coping and I’d take the under on the .328 projection, even with Keller having similar issues in the minors, though not to the same extreme. Like Lamet above and my eternal example, Kevin Gausman, I think Keller really needs an offspeed pitch he can count on, but the talent is there. It’s hard to strike out 12 batters a game and have no idea what you’re doing.

Tyler Anderson, San Francisco Giants

There’s a chance that this is personal bias since his windup always gives me nightmares in MLB: The Show, but Tyler Anderson was always on the verge of breaking out as command-type pitcher in Coors and with a better outfield defense and a friendly park in San Francisco, I think he could have a Kirk Rueter-type run of success. And yes, I know he’s more of a strikeout pitcher than Rueter — the comp isn’t perfect. Having the extra time to recover from major knee surgery will be helpful, I feel.

These are my breakout candidates. Next, I’ll reveal the sad side of the coin: the breakdowns.

Read the rest of this entry »

You can’t make the postseason in a single day in July. You can’t be eliminated either, of course, even if you’re the valiant Brewers and your opponents are your perennial rivals, those darn St. Louis Cardinals. This past Friday, however, something momentous happened in our OOTP simulation.

Here, take a look at the box score:

So no, it wasn’t a spectacular performance, on either side, that makes this game the rare ultra-meaningful July clash. The 3-2 loss featured more squandered opportunities than you’d generally like to see, including two runners on third left stranded with less than two outs. That’s not really worth a column, though.

The scary part (and there is a scary part) probably jumps right out at you. But just in case, here’s the next day’s box score to drive the point home:

This one was a 4-2 win, keyed by a pinch hit home run from Justin Smoak — first and third, two outs in the top of the sixth, and excellent time to pinch hit. It dropped Jack Flaherty to a woeful 2-11 simulated record — oof. But the key to this game isn’t any of that. It’s Ben Gamel, batting seventh, with a quietly effective day. Read the rest of this entry »

July 3, 2019 was a pretty typical day for major league baseball. Cody Bellinger hit a walk-off home run in the 10th inning against Arizona to give the Dodgers their league-leading 59th win of the season in their 88th game. Last-place Cincinnati defeated first-place Milwaukee to bring all five NL Central teams within 4.5 games of each other. Stephen Strasburg struck out 14 Marlins without allowing a run. Mike Trout hit two dingers, because of course he did. There were close games and there were clunkers, thrilling displays and frustrating setbacks. You probably forgot about all of it.

This July 3 was, well, different. Temperatures notwithstanding, it might as well have been mid-February, as players from all 30 organizations gathered in their respective ballparks for their first official team workouts in months, after the global COVID-19 pandemic suspended the major league season. Players and staff rejoined their teammates only after first undergoing intake tests for the virus, with several wondering even as they took the field whether they were doing the right thing by attempting to play at all. Those circumstances made for a strange and chaotic first weekend of camp.

Longtime star pitchers David Price and Felix Hernandez announced on Saturday that they would opt out of the 2020 season, one day after veteran catcher Welington Castillo was also reported to have opted out. On Monday morning, Nick Markakis also informed his team he would opt out of the season. Their decisions bring the total number of major league players known to have decided against playing this season to nine. Read the rest of this entry »

No sooner had the Yankees opened their summer camp — or spring training 2.0, or whatever we’re calling this tense and perhaps tenuous ramp-up to the long-delayed 2020 season — on Saturday than they got their first scare: the sight of pitcher Masahiro Tanaka being drilled in the head by a line drive hot off the bat of Giancarlo Stanton. The 31-year-old righty never lost consciousness but was taken to the hospital for testing and further evaluation, and while he was released, on Sunday he was diagnosed with a concussion. The terrifying sequence was a reminder that the coronavirus isn’t the only thing for players to fear during this abbreviated build-up to the regular season, but all things considered, both he and the Yankees look quite lucky right now.

At Yankee Stadium, in a simulated game that marked their first formal workout of the restart, Tanaka had faced Aaron Judge and Gleyber Torres before Stanton stepped in. The slugger smoked a line-drive comebacker that struck the pitcher on the right side of the head and ricocheted high in the air (I’ll leave it to you to find the video). Keep in mind that since the advent of Statcast in 2015, only Judge and Nelson Cruz have higher average exit velocities than Stanton’s 93.4 mph — he is emphatically not the guy you want pounding a ball off your noggin. According to James Paxton, the ball came off the bat at a sizzling 112 mph. Tanaka fell to the ground, writhing in pain, and stayed down for about five minutes before sitting up and eventually being helped off the field with the assistance of two trainers. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in early 2013, I wrote a guest article for Baseball Prospectus entitled “How Far Did That Fly Ball Travel?” In that article, I posed a seemingly simple question: Can we predict the landing point of a fly ball just after it leaves the bat? A more precise way to ask the question is as follows: Suppose the velocity vector of a fly ball just after leaving the bat is known, so that the exit velocity, launch angle, and spray angle are all known. How well does that information determine the landing point? I then proceeded to investigate the question, at least for home runs, with the aid of HITf/x data for the initial velocity vector and the ESPN Home Run Tracker for the landing point and hang time. Using a technique described in the article, that information was used along with a trajectory model to reconstruct the full trajectory and extrapolate it to ground level to determine the fly ball distance. The answer to the question was immediately obvious: The initial velocity vector poorly determines the fly ball distance.

This conclusion led naturally to the next question: Why? One obvious reason is variation in atmospheric conditions, especially wind. However, the data revealed that the variation in home run distance for given initial velocity was as large in Tropicana Field, where the atmospheric conditions are expected to be constant, as in the rest of the league. So that was eliminated, at least as the primary culprit.

The article then went on to consider variation in two other parameters that play a role in fly ball distance: backspin ω_b and drag coefficient C_D. Neither of these parameters were directly measured. Rather they were inferred, along with the sidespin ω_s, in the procedure used to recreate the full trajectory. The analysis showed the following:

• For a given value of C_D, distance increases as ω_b increases. This makes sense, since larger backspin results in greater lift, keeping the ball in the air longer so that it travels farther.
• For a given value of ω_b, distance decreases as C_D increases. Again this makes sense, since greater drag is expected to reduce the carry of a fly ball. Interestingly, this was the first appearance in print of a suggestion of a significant ball-to-ball variation in the drag properties of baseballs.
• There was a moderately strong positive correlation between C_D and ω_b, suggesting that the drag on a baseball increases with increasing spin, all other things equal. Although this effect is well known for golf balls and had been speculated for baseballs in R. K. Adair’s excellent The Physics of Baseball, to my knowledge this is the first real evidence showing the effect for baseballs.
• Given that both lift and drag increase with increasing ω_b and that they have the opposite effect on distance, it was tentatively concluded that at high enough spin rate there would be no further increase (and perhaps even a decrease) in distance with a further increase in spin.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Cincinnati Reds have been eagerly awaiting Hunter Greene’s return from Tommy John surgery. And for good reason. Prior to going under the knife 15 months ago he was hitting triple digits with his heater. Drafted second overall by the Reds in 2017 out of a Sherman Oaks, California high school, Greene is No. 77 on our 2020 Top 100 Prospects list.

According to Kyle Boddy, his return is nigh. Cincinnati’s pitching coordinator recently spent time with Greene in California, and he deemed the 20-year-old’s rehab “basically done.” Throwing in front of a Rapsoto, Greene was “an easy 97-plus [mph], reaching 100-101 when he was rearing back.”

More than a return to health is buoying the return to form. With the help of technology — “he’s really getting into the metrics and analytics” — and a former Chicago White Sox pitcher, Greene has made a meaningful change to his delivery. What had been “long arm action with a big wrap in the back” is now a shorter-and-cleaner stroke.

“That’s a credit to people like James Baldwin, who was the rehab coach and is now our Triple-A coach,” Boddy told me. “JB has worked with Hunter extensively, leaning on materials from Driveline Plus. Hunter has had a tendency to cut his fastball, so we’ve relied on a lot of video to show him how to fix that and get more carry.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the difficulties of disclosing or obscuring the identities of players who hit the injured list after contracting COVID-19, dissect a few new analogies from Scott Boras’s brain, and discuss resuming their season preview series, then (35:47) conclude their week-long celebration of the Negro Leagues by bringing on esteemed Negro Leagues historian Larry Lester to discuss the origins of scholarship about the Negro Leagues, co-founding the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, collecting Negro Leagues artifacts, his relationships with former Negro League players, helping select the Negro Leaguers inducted into the hall of Fame, his efforts to find Negro Leagues box scores and the status of the project to complete the statistical record, the greatest writers who covered the Negro Leagues, his favorite unsung players, the Negro Leagues Baseball Grave Marker Project, how he researched Negro Leagues uniforms and helped obtain pensions for Negro Leaguers, and more (plus a postscript about reading recommendations).

Audio intro: Bob Dylan, "One More Cup of Coffee"
Audio interstitial: Natural Resource, "Negro Baseball League"
Audio outro: Blind Lemon Jefferson, "See That My Grave is Kept Clean"

Link to stream Stove League on Viki
Link to Lindsey on COVID and the IL
Link to Larry Lester’s website
Link to NLBM website
Link to Only the Ball Was White
Link to Larry’s Henry Chadwick Award page
Link to Larry’s Bob Davids Award page
Link to Hall of Fame Screening Committee press release
Link to Grave Marker Project page
Link to Jerry Malloy Conference info
Link to info on Cannonball Dick Redding
Link to Seamheads Negro Leagues Database
Link to SABR’s guide to researching the Negro Leagues
Link to Rob Arthur on systemic racism in baseball
Link to Rob on racial bias in player promotions
Link to Shakeia Taylor on Effa Manley
Link to Shakeia on the Negro Leagues centennial
Link to Shakeia on the Negro Leagues Grave Marker Project

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Ryan O’Rourke experienced life in the big leagues. The recently-retired left-hander appeared in 54 games with the Minnesota Twins between the 2015 -2016 seasons, and in two with the New York Mets last year. But the bulk of his career was spent in the minors. A 13th-round pick by the Twins in 2010 out of Merrimack College, O’Rourke toiled down on the farm in each of his 10 professional campaigns.

He experienced a lot. The minor leagues are an adventure, and while often fun, they are by no means a bed of roses. The pay is bad, the travel and accommodations are arduous, and for the vast majority of players, crushed dreams are inevitable. Moreover, success and failure aren’t always dictated by talent alone.

———

David Laurila: How would you describe professional baseball at the minor-league level?

Ryan O’Rourke: “Now that I can look at it from a helicopter point of view, I’d say that it’s a crapshoot in the truest sense of that word. If you don’t end up with the right organization, and your development isn’t a priority, your path to the big leagues is so much more difficult than it already is.

“I was fortunate to be with the Twins, who were very good about taking care of people, but I’ve heard horror stories from other teams. If you’re a nobody — anyone outside the 10th round is probably a nobody — and don’t show promise right away… let’s just say that guys who get big money in rounds one through 10 are given countless opportunities over someone who may have deserved it more.

“That’s the sad nature of the minor leagues, which, from a business standpoint, I do understand. If you gave one guy $400,000 and another guy $4,000, it’s obvious who you’re keeping. And sometimes it’s a matter of a coach liking you or not. Sometimes you’re cut because you didn’t impress one guy.”

Laurila: How much jealousy and resentment is there of high-round guys? For instance, Byron Buxton is a talented player but he also got a $6 million signing bonus. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »