You shouldn’t trust spring training statistics. Opposition quality is, to put it kindly, uneven. Non-roster invitees and overmatched minor leaguers get their turns in the spotlight. A home run off Johnny Washedup or Mike Minorleague isn’t the same as one off a fifth starter, let alone Gerrit Cole.

So of course, today I want to talk about an off-the-radar reliever putting up good numbers in spring training. “But Ben,” you might say. “Did you read the paragraph that you yourself just wrote?” Good point, conveniently voiced reader. But here’s a trick to writing about spring training performances that might stick. I want to talk about Jonathan Hernández. And while he’s looked sharp this year, I want to talk about him not because he’s been good for the last month but because I think he was already good.

An origin story is in order. Hernández signed with the Rangers as an international free agent in 2013, when the Rangers were the unquestioned best team at finding international talent. He slowly but surely climbed the minor league ranks as a starter. His sinker/slider combination was good enough to tread water, but never dominant.

Early in his career, he’d shown excellent command. As he ascended the minors, he added exciting velocity to the sinker. But the command waned as the velocity increased, a classic tradeoff. In 2018, he walked 13% of the batters he faced in Double-A. We put him 19th on the Rangers prospect list heading into 2019, reflecting excitement about his velocity and concerns about a relief role. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2020’s scariest baseball moment so far, on Sunday, Willie Calhoun’s face took a direct hit from a Julio Urías fastball, leaving Calhoun on the ground in a great deal of pain. Any baseball to the head is a scary situation, and Calhoun hopefully is escaping from this incident with “just” a broken jaw. Further tests are scheduled for Monday, which will tell us more about the extent of the damage to Calhoun’s face. While the team’s first concern should be the health of their player, the Rangers still need to make baseball decisions.

The result, in the short-term at least, appears to be using Nick Solak in left field. Both the ZiPS projections and I are big fans of Solak, but this move likely simply shifts where Solak gets his playing time, and doesn’t necessarily represent a significant increase in usage.

Even before the Calhoun injury, the Rangers’ offense looked the worst of the plausible playoff contenders, at least if you buy into projections. As of this morning, assuming that Calhoun comes back and manages 448 plate appearances combined in left field and designated hitter, our Depth Charts rank Texas position players 28th in baseball. That’s ahead of only the Orioles and Tigers; the Rangers’ 11.3 projected wins are barely half that of the worst-projected playoff teams from last season, the Brewers and Cardinals.

I don’t believe the Rangers think of themselves as being among the most serious of Wild Card contenders in 2020. But I also don’t think they would have signed Kyle Gibson, Todd Frazier, and Robinson Chirinos if 2020 was seen as a lost cause, nor would they have been so insistent on getting a good price for Mike Minor at the trade deadline last year in order to make a deal. The most recent ZiPS run has the Rangers at 77 wins, while the Depth Charts forecast 78 wins; that’s a team that could at least make a little noise if things broke the right way.

That’s where Yasiel Puig comes in. The Rangers are light on offense, light on corner outfielders, and light on power from the right side. Puig is a fairly limited player these days, no longer the kind of star he was when he broke into the league. What Puig does remain, however, is a roughly league-average slugger who will give you right-handed power and not embarrass you in the outfield. After two years of lefties throwing fastballs against Puig with impunity, he finally made them pay in 2019. My colleague Jay Jaffe wrote more about this, but Puig slugged just .203 with a single homer against lefty fastballs in 2017-2018 combined. In 2019, Puig flipped the script, slugging .540 against lefty fastballs.

While a lot of teams would be able to find fill-ins for Calhoun from their backups or minor-league depth, outside of the starters and Nick Solak, the Rangers don’t really have any interesting options. If you don’t believe me, here are the ZiPS projections for the at least minimally possible internal options in left, with everyone re-projected as a left fielder:

Not a single one of these options projects as better than replacement-level in left. Suffice it to say, Puig murderizes these projections.

Even Puig’s 10th-percentile projection adds a win over a full season compared to the rest of the team’s options (he forecasts as an average player in 62% of his projections, an All-Star in 12%, and replacement level in just 3%). He’s also good enough that, like Hunter Pence was last year, he can carve out a significant role even as a non-starter, though he likely won’t match Pence’s surprising 2019 production.

Texas would be smart to treat a Puig signing with a bit of urgency rather than taking a wait-and-see approach. Puig was ineligible to receive a qualifying offer from the Indians, so unlike last year’s free agent stragglers, most notably Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel, there is no particular incentive to force him to spend April in street clothes. Nor are the Rangers the only team with a reason to give Puig a call. The Yankees are now without Aaron Judge and while Giancarlo Stanton ought to return from his calf injury soon, his recent injury record is likely enough to give the Yankees’ front office pause.

The Rangers already had a narrow path to the playoffs, and losing Calhoun and his possible upside makes that path even narrower. Texas is absolutely awash in cash, nowhere near any of the luxury tax thresholds, and Puig can help the team long after a Calhoun recovery. Sign Puig. Do it yesterday.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sunday afternoon was a worrisome one for the Astros, as Justin Verlander made an early departure from his Grapefruit League start against the Mets, complaining of right triceps soreness. While manager Dusty Baker said the move was precautionary, the 37-year-old righty underwent an MRI on Monday, which revealed not a triceps injury but a strain of his latissimus dorsi, albeit a minor one. Even if it’s not a major injury, any potential sidelining of the two-time Cy Young winner highlights the uncertainty within an Astros’ rotation hit hard by free agency.

Coming off a season in which he brought home that long-sought second Cy Young award on the strength of a 21-6 record, 2.58 ERA, 3.27 FIP, 300 strikeouts, and 6.4 WAR, Verlander waited until January to begin his offseason throwing program, and lately, his spring has not gone as planned. He was scratched from his February 27 start due to discomfort in his right groin, instead throwing a simulated game. After getting roughed up over the course of 2.2 innings and 53 pitches — but touching 97 mph with his fastball — against the Cardinals on March 3, he was scheduled to go four innings on Sunday against the Mets. He held them scoreless for two innings while throwing 29 pitches, but after his second inning, informed pitching coach Brent Strom that he was experiencing triceps soreness. Via MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart:

“We don’t know if he is hurt,” Baker said. “Like I said, it’s precautionary. I was surprised his velocity [91-94 mph] was down a tick from the last time, but you know Verlander can dial it up when he gets ready. We didn’t see anything. I was quite surprised when Strommy came over and told me he had to come out of the game.”

Read the rest of this entry »

12:35

Jay Jaffe: Hey folks, sorry for the delay, which will extend just a few more minutes. I just filed a piece on the Astros’ rotation question marks behind Justin Verlander, who left yesterday’s start with a triceps complaint. Let me get situated and I’ll begin tackling the questions.

12:41

Jay Jaffe: OK, i’m back. White knuckle Monday morning spilling into afternoon, but lunch (sushi) is on the way and so are some answers.

12:42

Jay Jaffe: LOL I was misidentified as the EIC this morning in a tweet promoting my appearance on Chicago’s 670 The Score, but co-host Connor McKnight set the record straight: Connor McKnight @C1McKnight @jay_jaffe We at this Twitter account sincerely regret the error and apologize, profusely, to @megrowler @fangraphs and baseball fans everywhere. We do, however, appreciate the conversation and the irony of a non-editor editing the tweet. 9 Mar 2020

12:44

Jay Jaffe: i’d say maybe 3-4 on a scale of 10. The comparison has been made to his 2015 absence, which lasted into mid-June, but the Tigers appear to have mishandled the initial diagnosis and he also strained a lat during rehab. If I’m throwing out a wild guess before the MRI results come in, I think this points to him starting the season on the injured list but returning by mid- to late April.

Read the rest of this entry »

Curveballs can be fairly vexing to classify. Though not as vast as the kingdom of sliders, curveballs have more personality than other pitch types. Some curveballs have heavy sweep like a slider (slurve), or have a grip variation that will kill spin (knuckle curve); others can fall like a hard changeup (churve), while another variant seems to float in slow motion on the way to home (eephus).

Most tend to fit the more stereotypical slicing shape (sweep with comparable drop), or have a heavy arch that fits the 12-6 style. Each variation has its own identity and benefits depending on factors such as arm slot, spin direction, and axis orientation.

There are situations where a pitcher adopts a particular style but fails to execute the pitch, so it fits into its sub-category. You can have a 12-6 curveball that plots normally on the x-axis but fails to drop far enough down the y-axis. Or, you can have a more classic curveball that doesn’t separate itself enough from either plot point, which causes the pitch to hang in the zone.

But we can make adjustments to these undesirable results, and that’s what we’ll be focusing on in this piece. What can be done to add depth to a curveball that regularly demonstrates a lack of life or separation from the center of the pitch zone chart? Read the rest of this entry »

“We feel like we’ve got starting pitching depth, we have impactful championship caliber players at every position that will allow us to compete for multiple championships.” — Marlins president Michael Hill

***

This isn’t a bad time for Marlins fans. There aren’t many organizations you could credibly make that claim about following a 105-loss campaign and consecutive last place finishes, but this is Miami, where the standards are comparatively low.

Much of the positivity stems from an absence of negatives: Jeffrey Loria isn’t the owner, there’s no fire sale in progress or on the horizon, no scam contract extension on the books, no stars desperate for greener pastures, no silly stories about management bilking fans out of their premium parking spaces. This franchise usually trades in disappointment, and there are comparatively few sources of it right now.

There are also a few actively good signs. The club has cobbled together a functional pitching staff from spare parts, and have turned Brian Anderson and Sandy Alcantara into, if not building blocks, then at least the kind of productive players who wouldn’t look out of place in a contender’s lineup. The farm system itself seems rejuvenated: The Fish landed seven prospects on our most recent Top 100 list, most of whom already have Double-A experience. The organization as a whole is teeming with depth for the first time in ages, and they’ll add more impact talent in June’s draft. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Mike Trout’s career spring training stats, then preview the 2020 Minnesota Twins (9:01) with the The Athletic’s Aaron Gleeman, and the 2020 Pittsburgh Pirates (46:33) with The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Jason Mackey, plus a conversation between Ben and Pirates pitcher Mitch Keller (1:19:30) about Keller’s historically unlucky debut MLB season.

Audio intro: Union Street Preservation Society, "Meet Me in Spring"
Audio interstitial: Sleater-Kinney, "Leave You Behind"
Audio outro: Ages and Ages, "Just My Luck"

Link to Max Marchi on spring training stats
Link to story on Takashi Miyoshi’s new role
Link to Matt Trueblood on not extending Theo Epstein
Link to Jason on the Pirates’ pitching plan
Link to Ben on the Archer trade
Link to Ben on Keller’s debut year
Link to the Banished To The Pen preview series
Link to order The MVP Machine

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There’s no question that Nick Madrigal can hit. The Chicago White Sox drafted the sweet-swinging infielder fourth-overall in 2018 after he slashed .361/.422/.502 at Oregon State University — and he’s continued to rake. Last year, Madrigal put up a tasty .311/.377/.414 slash line between three levels, reaching Triple-A in his first full professional season.

Few doubt that the just-turned-23-year-old will be a solid big-leaguer, as his bat-to-ball skills come with strong defense at the second base position. The question is whether he’ll ever produce more than a modicum of in-game power. Madrigal stands 5’ 7”, and he’s gone deep just four times in 705 minor-league plate appearances.

Could he one day display pop? Mindful that 5’ 6” Jose Altuve homered 31 times last year, I asked Madrigal how much raw power he actually has.

“I have some in my swing,” Madrigal told me on Friday. “I’m getting stronger and stronger every year, so I do think power could be part of my game. I’m not too worried about it, though. People say, ‘When will you start doing that?’ or ‘When will you start doing this?’ But I know what kind of player I am. My job is to get on base. I can drive the ball, but I’m not going to go up there trying to hit home runs, or anything like that.”

Once upon a time, he did go for the downs. Read the rest of this entry »