Take a look at any Mets prospect list from 2017 and Amed Rosario was the headliner. He was all fast-twitch muscles and gorgeous defense. His frame was the type that looks perfectly suited for shortstop: tall and rangy, but not so lanky that he couldn’t one day hit for power. We saw him as a 65 FV prospect, the third-best in all of baseball.

After 2017 and 2018, that assessment looked sorely misguided. Over 762 plate appearances across those two seasons, he put up every scary number imaginable. He walked only 4.2% of the time while striking out 22% of the time, both worse than he’d performed in any full minor league season. Pitchers knocked the bat out of his hands; he hit for a .129 ISO despite 12 triples. The speed that made those triples possible didn’t translate into extra value; his BABIP was only .318, which is good but not great, and he was caught stealing a brutal 14 times.

Those are just offensive outputs, but the offensive and defensive approach were perhaps even scarier. He swung at 42% of pitches outside of the zone, the sixth-highest chase rate in the bigs. Every hitter who chased more often than him, however, channeled their aggression better; he somehow swung at a below-average percent of pitches over the heart of the strike zone in 2018 despite all the chasing. Read the rest of this entry »

Two years ago, the rebuilding San Diego Padres made a big free agent splash, signing first baseman Eric Hosmer, late of the Kansas City Royals, to a five-year, $105 million contract. If Hosmer decided not to exercise his opt-out clause after the fifth year, the contract would become an eight-year, $144 million pact, then the largest deal signed in the history of the San Diego Padres.

The argument against the Hosmer signing was pretty simple: Eric Hosmer wasn’t very good. Among first basemen from 2011-2017, the years since Hosmer’s rookie season, he ranked just 17th in WAR. When a rate stat like wRC+ is used, Hosmer drops to 26th among first basemen with 1000 plate appearances:

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While getting good performances from players in spring training is nice, it’s really more of a bonus. The most important part of spring training is getting players healthy for Opening Day. For the Red Sox and Yankees, injuries are piling up. The most recent bit of news for the Yankees comes in the form of trouble for Aaron Judge, who felt pain in his right pec while swinging, putting his status for Opening Day in doubt. On the Red Sox side, Chris Sale, who was already under a slower throwing program that would put him on the injured list to start the season, has a sore elbow after throwing and is being sent for an MRI. While we wouldn’t want to go overboard on the impact of these injuries given the timelines are very much unknown, everything we think we know about the AL East could go sideways.

The Yankees’ rotation has already been hit hard, with Luis Severino set to miss the season recovering from Tommy John surgery and James Paxton out until at least May and potentially longer after back surgery. Domingo Germán is also out for the first 63 games of the season due to a domestic violence suspension, but Gerrit Cole at the head of the rotation followed by Masahiro Tanaka gives the team some wiggle room to stay afloat and rely on a potent offense. But that potent offense isn’t quite as potent without its two best hitters.

Here are the projections for Yankees hitters this season. Read the rest of this entry »

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Back in December, the Braves signed Cole Hamels to a one-year, $18 million deal, a move that effectively replaced one grizzled, championship-tested southpaw with another, namely departing free agent Dallas Keuchel. As with the former Astro, who didn’t sign with the team until last June, the Braves apparently aren’t going to get a full complement of starts from the former Phillie, as Hamels is well behind schedule due to an offseason shoulder injury, a move that opens the door for the Braves to test their vaunted pitching depth.

Recall that after a stellar first three months of last season (2.98 ERA, 3.59 FIP, 99.2 IP), Hamels left his June 28 start with an oblique strain, and after missing five weeks, he struggled upon returning. Lasting five innings or more in just four of 10 starts, he was touched for a 5.79 ERA and 5.29 FIP while losing a bit of velocity (0.9 mph per PitchInfo) and swing-and-miss, and made just one start after September 16 due to shoulder fatigue. Still, thanks to a much-improved changeup, his full-season 4.09 FIP and 2.5 WAR were his best marks since 2015, and he reportedly generated interest from at least 13 teams before signing with the Braves.

The shoulder is apparently still a problem. As camp opened on February 12, the Braves revealed that the 36-year-old lefty “irritated” (manager Brian Snitker’s word) his shoulder doing weighted ball exercises over the course of the winter, was going to be behind schedule, and would be reevaluated in three weeks. Ten days later, after undergoing treatment from Dr. Keith Meister of TIM Sports Medicine and Orthopedics in Dallas, Hamels described what sounds like garden-variety shoulder inflammation:

“I know I’m behind the 8-ball,” he said. “But once I knock (the inflammation) out right away, I know I’ll be able to be the best pitcher I can and put up good numbers.

…“It hit a point where I couldn’t get past (the pain),” Hamels said. “Soreness is good but you have to know what’s good and what’s bad. I wasn’t feeling as good as I thought I should and I couldn’t overcome it without asking the right questions.”

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Last year’s Cardinals were successful. Thanks to a solid rotation, a good bullpen, and excellent defense and baserunning, St. Louis won the division and advanced to the NLCS. The Cardinals’ main weakness was at the plate, where they were mostly average. Excluding pitchers, the team’s wRC+ for the season was 100, and ranked 14th in the game. The team’s outfield was no exception; the group put up an identical 100 wRC+, which ranked 17th among major league outfields, with their 7.0 WAR occupying that same ranking. Despite allowing Marcell Ozuna to leave in free agency and trading Randy Arozarena and José Martínez to the Rays, the team still has a glut of outfielders competing for roles this spring. They have quantity and they might have quality as well, but sorting out playing time could be a mess.

The Cardinals have three players who accumulated at least 100 plate appearances in the outfield last season. Here’s how those players performed:

That trio probably doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence. Fowler had a bounce-back season, but with an average batting line and most of his time spent in a corner outfield spot, he was slightly below average overall and turns 34 years old before Opening Day. Bader saw his walk rate improve, but hitting in the eighth spot the majority of the time probably helps account for some of that uptick, and might have made Bader too passive. His overall numbers against righties last season were in line with his breakout 2018 at about 10% below league average, but his numbers against lefties plummeted, unusual given he has hit well against them his entire career, including in the minors. Despite Bader’s weak year at the plate, his fantastic defense makes him an above-average player. As for O’Neill, he struggled mightily as a pinch hitter last season; he put up a slightly above-average line as an outfielder and a 116 wRC+ in July in more regular starting duty before he injured his wrist. Given his somewhat inconsistent minor league history — sometimes crushing, sometimes hitting closer to average — it’s fair to say we still don’t know much about O’Neill’s abilities as a hitter against major league pitcher or how he might fare given extended playing time.

So the incumbents, if you want to call them that, consist of an aging, should-be fourth outfielder, a glove-first center fielder, and a 24-year-old with a lot of power and strikeouts who may or may not be capable of starting at an average to above-average level. The outfield situation is emblematic of an offseason that seems to have passed St. Louis by. The Cardinals do have other outfield options in camp, including one of the better prospects in baseball, Dylan Carlson. Here are the 2020 projection for Carlson and a few other options who are in the mix:

Projections aren’t perfect, but they don’t paint a sunny picture for the Cardinals’ outfield. One of the better projected players is Tommy Edman, and he is a better fit on the infield; he’s likely to be more of a super-utility player this season, which would take him out of a starting role. While Lane Thomas, Austin Dean, and Justin Williams are in the mix for roster spots, Thomas has put up mostly average numbers in Triple-A, Dean is a 26-year-old with defensive issues, and Williams hasn’t been able to put the ball in the air consistently. That leaves four starters for three spots.

Bader plays center field so well, it’s tough to see him not getting the starting spot out there. While O’Neill, Fowler, and Carlson have all shown some ability to play center, those days are mostly behind Fowler, O’Neill has been a corner outfielder for most of his career between the majors and minors, and Carlson might not be a center fielder long-term, as Eric Longenhagen noted in his prospect write-up when he placed Carlson 39th on this year’s Top 100:

Carlson is an average runner and a large dude for a 20-year-old. His instincts in center field are okay, but not good enough to overcome long speed that typically falls short at the position. Because of where we have his arm strength graded, we think he fits in left field or at first base.

So if we put Bader in center at least most of the time, there are two starting spot for Carlson, Fowler, and O’Neill. The projections say Carlson is the better outfielder of the three, and his prospect status indicates his ceiling is probably higher as well. There are going to be some service time considerations; Carlson could be held down in the minors for a few weeks to gain an extra year of service time, though that’s not a tactic that has been used by the Cardinals in the past. Carlson is not yet on the 40-man roster, but that’s an obstacle easily overcome.

A neutral evaluation of the three players would give Carlson one of the remaining corner spots, creating a toss-up between O’Neill and Fowler. While spring stats aren’t indicative of talent level (given the small sample size of plate appearances and the potential disparity in opponents’ skill levels), it should be noted that none of the play so far this spring has served to change the order of the projections, with O’Neill and Carlson producing and Fowler not. It’s reasonable for the Cardinals to want to actually see what they might have in O’Neill; while perhaps less reasonable to play Fowler due to his contract status, it is something that teams do all the time. It’s possible those two factors might be enough to keep Carlson in the minors.

Carlson isn’t a sure thing, but his projections make him out to be a clear rung ahead of the other potential outfielders. The “path of least resistance” so often used by the Cardinals would put the veteran in one corner outfield spot and the young, but uncertain talent already on the 40-man ahead of a top prospect with a high floor. But the Cardinals as a team already have a pretty high floor. It’s the ceiling that is in issue. If the club is going to beat their 82-win projection this season, the outfield provides the biggest opportunity. The outfielder with the lowest ceiling also makes the most money. Dexter Fowler would make a solid fourth outfielder for the Cardinals as the team looks to see just how good a young outfield of Bader, O’Neill, and Carlson could be, but that’s a tough conversation to have with a veteran whose been starting for more than a decade. It’s a bit messy, but in order for the Cardinals to see what they have, they have to play the most promising players who project to have the best performance.

For the Chicago White Sox and their fans, this past winter was a very different experience than other recent offseasons. While the team more than dipped its toes into the waters of the Manny Machado sweepstakes after 2018 — seemingly signing every free agent who was a relatives, friend, or neighbor of the eventual Padres third baseman — that effort was a targeted strike at a free agent of rare quality. Outside of that chase, the Sox, still in their rebuilding phase, were not particularly aggressive when it came to adding talent in free agency. Kelvin Herrera was the only player signed who received a contract guaranteeing $10 million, and the White Sox are probably second-guessing that one.

This winter changed this tale. The 2019 White Sox were surprisingly competitive throughout the first half of the season and were within a game of .500 as late as early July. Any unrealistic playoff hopes were dashed by a 7-17 July, but that was still the only month of the season during which the team lost at least three more games than they won. This was a mediocre team, but a mediocre team that was at least playing watchable baseball for most of the season. In the end, the team added 10 wins to their 2018 total of 62.

Of note is that the White Sox didn’t net these 10 games from having a bunch of top prospects graduate to the majors. Of the team’s top 30 prospects from last year, only Eloy Jiménez made a positive impact on the team’s win total in 2019. And even Jiménez’s impact was relatively small, as on-base and defensive struggles kept his WAR to a merely adequate 1.9. The White Sox could legitimately point to their improvements and claim that the best was very much yet to come. Read the rest of this entry »

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In April of 2018, Trevor Bauer conducted an experiment. While he never admitted it, he mysteriously threw the ball with significantly more spin for an inning. Given Bauer’s repeated insistence that adding pine tar or some other equivalent foreign substance could increase his spin rate by 200-300 rpm, and the fact that his spin rate was almost exactly 300 rpm higher in the first inning as compared to the rest, he might as well have winked.

So, uh, let’s talk about last September. The following graph is Bauer’s average four-seam fastball spin rate by game:

Now, I’m not a baseball scientist. But short of Alan Nathan and Meredith Wills and David Kagan, those are in short supply. So I thought I’d conduct a non-rigorous but still curious investigation of these September starts to see if I could get to the bottom of what happened.

Let’s get something out of the way first: my base case, before I started investigating, is that Bauer got back into the sticky stuff. The jump is just so clean, so consistent within each game, that it doesn’t look at all accidental. In a single earlier game, on August 19, Bauer seemingly discovered some spin, posting his then-highest single game average spin rate, just over 2500 rpm. For the rest of 2019, however, he lived between 2250 and 2500 rpm. Then, like magic, every single pitch Bauer threw in September had a spin rate higher than 2500 rpm.

What could cause this, if it isn’t some type of sticky substance? It’s a long shot, but maybe Bauer started cutting the pitch. What does that mean? If you already know, you can skip this section, but I’ll go over it quickly. Picture a tire rolling down the road. Now, picture that same motion by a ball in air, with no road in the way. That’s transverse spin. Picture the baseball with that tire-style spin, with the car in reverse, and you have a 100% spin efficiency fastball. Read the rest of this entry »