I started writing this article with an eye on it being brief because much of the rest of Prospect Week was not, and that’s part of what brought this piece about. The Board is out of control, growing and expanding like The Blob, consuming more rows and columns by the day, threatening to create a paucity of digital space once thought infinite. Since 2017, when we first breathed life into The Board, the amount of info we display there has grown and the number of players included has doubled from just over 600 to just over 1,200.

A little over a year ago, once we realized this was happening, Kiley and I began asking ourselves why and whether or not it was correct. We answered the latter question pretty quickly. It became more rare for players we didn’t cover at all to the reach the big leagues or be traded, which was better for readers. Carson Cistulli had a harder time finding Cistulli’s Guy prospects he felt strongly about, which was an indication that we’d plugged a statistical hole in our boat (until Alex Chamberlain’s Peripheral Prospects series arrived and helped highlight an age-related one). Plus, we received few accusations of frivolousness from industry contacts, though there was some, citing opportunity costs. Mostly, while mindful that not all of them will, we decided we liked it better to cover all the players we thought could make a big-league impact rather than work with a cap. It most aligned with what the goal would be were we running a hypothetical 31st team, and it is this statement that I ask you to put in your back pocket for later on. Read the rest of this entry »

Since 2014, I’ve cranked out the career numbers for every significant prospect, regardless of whether they’ve reached the level of the minors that would normally justify an official projection. After a one-year hiatus, those projections, more commonly known as the ZiPS Top 100 Prospects list, return for their FanGraphs debut. If you’re unaware of what ZiPS projections are and the purpose they serve, please consult this article and this article while I reconsider my public relations strategy.

These projections are not a replacement for scouting. Projection systems are very clever, and a smart analyst can figure out a lot of ways to approach some of the thornier data questions that emerge over 15 years of prognostication (as for me, I’ve muddled by). But they can’t capture everything and the farther down the minor league ladder you go, the worse the data gets and the shorter the players’ histories become. That’s why I usually need a compelling reason to create a yearly projection for a hitter with no High-A experience or a pitcher who has yet to make a Double-A appearance. ZiPS can use college data, but I prefer to avoid it. And ZiPS does not use high school data, as that would be preposterous. Without college stats or a major international league, ZiPS literally has nothing to go on for a player without minor league experience. So if you’re wondering why Jasson Dominguez is missing from the list, it’s not that he’s a lousy prospect, it’s just that ZiPS doesn’t have anything useful to say about him yet.

One of the biggest differences between ZiPS and most other prospect lists is that, given the uncertainty surrounding any prospect’s future performance, ZiPS projections tend to give higher career WAR forecasts to lower-risk, lower-ceiling players in the high minors. So ZiPS has historically given higher grades to prospects like Steven Matz, Kolten Wong, and Marcus Semien, though it turned out his ceiling was quite high, than any other prospect lists did. Some of the successes — players who ranked higher on the ZiPS list than any other I found — include Ozzie Albies (No. 49, pre-2015), Mookie Betts (No. 26, pre-2014), Trea Turner (No. 11, pre-2016), and Joc Pederson (No. 2, pre-2015). Naturally, there have been some dismal busts too, just like any prospect list, the worst possibly being the year ZiPS had Arismendy Alcantara ranked 13th. Whoops. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the latest developments in the escalating player war of words over the Astros sign-stealing scandal, José Altuve‘s alleged unfinished tattoo, Rob Manfred’s roundly criticized comments, Shohei Ohtani’s new driver’s license, and a modest pay hike for minor leaguers. Then they preview the 2020 Braves (34:29) with From the Diamond host Grant McAuley, and the 2020 Phillies (1:13:37) with The Athletic’s Meghan Montemurro.

Audio intro: The Who, "Tattoo"
Audio interstitial 1: The Replacements, "Someone Take the Wheel"
Audio interstitial 2: Cayetana, "South Philly"
Audio outro: Bud Light, "Mr. Fake Tattoo Inventor"

Link to story about Correa, Altuve, and Bellinger
Link to story about minor league pay hike
Link to possible Altuve tattoo sighting
Link to Darvish tweet
Link to Ben on the Braves rebuild
Link to post about Ozuna
Link to Grant’s Braves positional previews
Link to story on the Phillies’ spending
Link to story on the Phillies’ bullpen usage
Link to story on the Phillies’ sports science department
Link to Ben on the Phillies’ framing turnarounds
Link to Roger Angell interview
Link to order The MVP Machine

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The swing is noisy and needs refining, but Lewis has the physical ability for superstardom.

That line, written by Eric Longenhagen, led Royce Lewis’s writeup in our 2020 Top 100 Prospects rankings, which were published earlier this week. Both halves of the sentence are intriguing. While the first is potentially a red flag, the second is indicative of a blue-chip up-and-comer with a sky-high ceiling. Selected first overall by the Minnesota Twins in the 2017 draft out of a San Juan Capistrano high school, Lewis holds down the No. 13 slot on Longenhagen’s list.

Alex Hassan isn’t all that concerned with the 20-year-old shortstop’s swing. According to the Minnesota farm director, the underlying characteristics are what really matter. Lewis possesses plus bat speed, a good bat path, and “when he makes contact, he does a lot of damage.”

While nothing is actually broken, Lewis isn’t exactly quiet in the box.

“There are some characteristics that are unique to Royce,” said Hassan. “What’s interesting is that leg-kick piece. Last year, I went back and looked at some of his GCL video from right after he signed, and there are plenty of pitches where his leg kick goes right up to his belt, and he executes his swing from there. It’s something he’s tinkered with. It can be a big leg kick, somewhat of a medium leg kick, and at times he’ll try to get his foot down a little earlier. But the kick has been there since he came into the system. It’s simply a feature of Royce, as opposed to some kind of bug that’s popped up.”

Hassen espouses an if-it-ain’t-broke-fix-it approach, but at the same time he recognizes that excessive movement can be deleterious to a hitter’s ability to consistently square up baseballs. He’s seen Lewis make strides toward. Moreover, he’s seen them made cautiously, and without undue urging. Read the rest of this entry »

In the third incarnation of a time-honored tradition that recurs every 500-ish episodes, Ben Lindbergh, Sam Miller, and Meg Rowley are joined by The Athletic’s Grant Brisbee and ex-EW cohost (and current Tampa Bay Rays “Analyst, Baseball Development”) Jeff Sullivan to draft assorted things that they like about baseball.

Audio intro: Beauty and the Beast Soundtrack, "Something There"
Audio outro: Jefferson Airplane, "And I Like It"

Link to first draft episode
Link to second draft episode
Link to article on baseball, sex, and sheet music
Link to article about Quadruple-A players
Link to article about Craig’s daughter’s tweet
Link to Bregman popup play
Link to second Bregman walkoff
Link to article about Bo card
Link to order The MVP Machine

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On Wednesday, Major League Baseball made official a handful of rule changes that had been in the works for nearly a year. In case you missed it while following the latest twists and turns of the Astros’ sign-stealing saga or the excitement of pitchers and catchers reporting, here’s the full press release, which spares us from having to retype it:

Rule changes for the 2020 season were announced today by @MLB. pic.twitter.com/cXZrFzHv3F

— MLB Communications (@MLB_PR) February 12, 2020

The three-batter minimum rule — and the existential threat it poses to lefty specialists — has been the most discussed of these changes. Our own Ben Clemens illustrated that it won’t matter all that much, a conclusion supported by Sam Miller’s examination, while other analysis such as this article by Tom Verducci and this one by Cliff Corcoran suggest it could have a negative impact.

The changes to the injured list and the service time tradeoffs that come with the permanent 26th man and the limited September roster size can bear closer analysis, but the rules that have my attention today — and this should be no surprise if you’ve been reading my work here — are the ones concerning position players and two-way players. By themselves, they won’t amount to much, and while they do close the loopholes that come with the 13-pitcher limitations on the new 26-man rosters, those are some pretty narrow loopholes to begin with. What they really do is stamp out a bit of novelty, not that the sport needs further encroachment by the Fun Police. Read the rest of this entry »

My two previous posts on the contentious PBA negotiations between MLB and MiLB focused on the most significant portion of MLB’s proposed plan: eliminating short-season baseball and contracting or reclassifying the 40 teams that go with it. As Baseball America noted, significant changes would be made to current leagues:

The proposal also completely reorganizes the full-season minor leagues. While there would still be Triple-A, Double-A, high Class A and low Class A, those four levels would be completely reworked to make the leagues much more geographically compact. In Triple-A, the Pacific Coast League would shift from 16 teams to 10. The International League would grow to 20 teams. The 14-team low Class A South Atlantic League would be turned into a six-team league with a new Mid-Atlantic league springing up.

The short-season Northwest League would move to full-season ball.

Part of MLB’s stated motivation for those changes is a desire to improve facilities at the minor league level and make travel, both between the majors and minors and between affiliates during the minor league season, less taxing for players. As Morgan Sword, recently promoted to executive vice president of baseball economics and operations, indicated in this New York Times piece regarding MLB’s plan, there are several factors in determining a minor league team’s affiliation:

One was a team’s proximity to its parent club and to potential opponents. Another was the condition of the facilities. A third concerned everyday life, such as hotel availability and general security.

Read the rest of this entry »

Black swan events are a defining feature of each baseball season. Like any good sport, the contours of the game and its season elicit a comfortable and familiar warmth. But also like any good sport, the details that make up the fabric of a particular contest or campaign are essentially unpredictable. It’s the round ball, round bat game: Weird stuff happens all the time.

Once they happen though, unexpected events have a way of enmeshing themselves in the game’s broader narrative as if they were just another ad on the outfield wall. Our brains struggle to handle surprises, and so we rationalize them. For a time, it was very weird that Lucas Giolito suddenly looked like one of the best pitchers in baseball; by the time the Cy Young ballots were tallied, his breakout season was just another event from 2019, a feel-good moment and a developmental win, but no longer a curiosity. Lucas Giolito is now good and we accept this for what it is.

But there’s so much more fun to be had with unexpected events. They’re worth celebrating on their own merits. In one form or another, they happen every day and to every team and we should remember the most notable of those surprises. More to the point, one of these is coming for your team in 2020. Like a birthday present waiting to be unwrapped, each team is just a month or so away from discovering something weird about itself. Today, we’re going to use recent history as a guide to imagining what that will look like.

Below, I’ve recounted the most unexpected thing that happened to each team from last year — with a twist. Instead of simply reflecting on what happened, I’ve assigned that very same outcome to a different, random team in 2020. For example, the Cleveland Indians saw one of their cornerstones play like Triple-A flotsam for three months, for no apparent reason. What would that look like if it happened to the Rays?

This is the longest article I’ve ever written for FanGraphs, so Meg (sensibly) made me break it into two pieces. Today, you get the American League teams; the NL will follow early next week. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 879

FanGraphs’ lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen joins the program to discuss Prospect Week, the process of assembling the Top 100, how players move up and down in the rankings, his 2021 Picks to Click, and the upcoming college baseball season. He also signs the Ballad of Oneil Cruz and Tahnaj Thomas, two players you ought to know.

Eric’s book Future Value, co-written with erstwhile FanGraphs prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel, is available for pre-order now.

All of our Prospect Week coverage can found in the handy navigation widget below, and be sure to follow the FanGraphs Prospects twitter account for prospect news throughout the season.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @megrowler on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximate 1 hour and 3 min play time.)

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Trading a star player is easier to sell to a fanbase when said player’s potential replacement is part of the return package. When the Pirates traded Andrew McCutchen, they got back Bryan Reynolds. When the Marlins traded Christian Yelich and J.T. Realmuto, they got back Lewis Brinson and Jorge Alfaro. The exit of a star player always begs the question of who will take his spot, and if the team can point to a shiny young newcomer from another organization and say he’s the answer, it helps to maintain at least an illusion of stability at that position. Fans might miss their old star player, but fear not, because the new guy could be just as good, and so on. This has worked out better in some situations (McCutchen to Reynolds) than others (Yelich to Brinson), but it’s easy to see why a front office would want to employ this kind of strategy.

That’s how the Boston Red Sox behaved when scouring the market for potential returns in their efforts to dump the transcendent Mookie Betts (and, importantly, mountains of salary commitments), and they found their match in the Dodgers, who offered 23-year-old outfielder Alex Verdugo as part of their package in a deal that was completed earlier this week. On the outset, it seemed like a seamless transition. Verdugo certainly won’t be as valuable as Betts in any phase of the game, but he’s a decent enough bat and capable fielder who the Red Sox can plug into right field and forget about. Seems easy enough, right? Well, not necessarily. Verdugo, a left-handed hitter, will be replacing the right-handed-hitting Betts. The other two presumptive starting outfielders for Boston, Andrew Benintendi and Jackie Bradley Jr., are also lefties. Since the plan for right-handed-hitting J.D. Martinez should be to use him in the field as little as possible, and the rest of the projected bench combining for little-to-zero big league outfield experience, the Betts trade still left Boston in a vulnerable spot where outfield platoons are concerned. Read the rest of this entry »