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 »

Meg Rowley and Sam Miller briefly banter about the state of Chris Sale’s arm and appreciating one’s friends when they are on vacation, then preview the 2020 Boston Red Sox (4:40) with the Boston Globe’s Alex Speier, and the 2020 San Francisco Giants (38:40) with The Athletic’s Grant Brisbee.

Audio intro: David Bowie, “Under Pressure”
Audio interstitial 1: David Bowie, “Changes”
Audio interstitial 2: Dan Bern, “The Sun Shines on McCovey Cove”
Audio outro: David Bowie, “Heroes”

Link to order Homegrown: How the Red Sox Built a Champion from the Ground Up
Link to order The MVP Machine

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Time is the ultimate badass. No matter how great you are, no matter how amazing you are at planning, time always wins in the end. And so it is in baseball as in other things. Mike Trout is, in many ways, the reigning king of baseball, that rare player who enters every season as the nearly-undisputed best in the game. Trout is no longer the young phenom and will turn 30 in just under 18 months, the threshold past which your baseball youth is symbolically gone. Young talent debuts every year while Trout inches closer and closer to retirement, and the day will come when he’s no longer baseball’s clear best.

Just being the best player projected coming into the season is practically enough to ensure your baseball immortality. I went back to the start of the modern era (1901) and collected the top WAR projection for every season, instructing ZiPS to calculate a Marcel-like method for the seasons prior to 2003, when the ZiPS projections did not exist. This is a quick way to demonstrate Trout’s dominance compared to other elite players in baseball history:

There are a couple of oddities in there, mostly caused by the difficulty of projecting a player who missed seasons due to war service, but otherwise it’s a Who’s Who of the Hall’s inner circle. I’d wager that in 50 years, all but two of these players will be in the Hall of Fame, with Charlie Keller likely on the outside, and Snuffy Stirnweiss certainly so. (If I’m still around in 50 years to test this prediction, I also wager I’ll be a very shouty, curmudgeonly 91-year-old.)

In terms of the number of years at the top of the heap, Trout’s eight seasons already puts him in third place in modern baseball, behind only Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds. In terms of uninterrupted reigns, Trout’s eight consecutive seasons ties Bonds’ 1992-1999 stretch, meaning that if he has the top projection entering 2021, he’ll have earned his spot as the giocatore di tutti giocatori in baseball.

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 881

FanGraphs’ lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen and senior writer Jay Jaffe pinch hit for regular host Meg Rowley, and discuss Curt Flood’s Hall of Fame candidacy, the role of cultural relevance in assessing a player’s case for Cooperstown, how spring training has struck them so far, and parenthood. Eric also shares a few baseball and prospect-related thoughts in a special post-interview monologue.

You can pre-order Eric and erstwhile FanGraphs writer Kiley McDaniel’s book Future Value here.

Be sure to follow the FanGraphs Prospects account on Twitter for all the latest prospect news!

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 58 min play time.)

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With their eyes shifting from rebuilding to contending, the White Sox have been on a spending spree lately, not only signing a fistful of free agents this winter but also locking up some of their most talented young players via long-term extensions. They struck again on the latter front on Thursday; via The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, they’ve agreed to a five-year extension with Yoán Moncada, their most valuable position player in 2019.

Moncada, who signed with the Red Sox out of Cuba for a record $31.5 million back in February 2015, topped the FanGraphs Top 100 Prospects list in 2017, shortly after being traded from Boston to Chicago in the Chris Sale blockbuster. He put together uneven performances at the big league level in 2017 and ’18 but began living up to that top prospect billing by breaking out in a big way in ’19, his age-24 season. While he missed three weeks in August due to a right hamstring strain, he hit a sizzling .315/.367/.548 with 25 homers and 10 steals. He tied for sixth in the AL in wRC+ (141) and placing ninth in WAR (5.7).

There was much to like about Moncada’s breakout on both sides of the ball. Despite a more aggressive approach at the plate that saw his O-Swing% jumped from 23.3% to 32.7%, and his overall swing rate from 41.1% to 47.3%, he cut his strikeout rate from 33.4% (yielding a league-high 217 strikeouts) to 27.5%. Not only did he make more frequent contact, he hit the ball much harder; his average exit velocity jumped from 90.6 mph to 92.8, seventh among all qualifiers, and his xwOBA shot from .302 to .362. On the defensive side, he seamlessly handled the move from second base, where he was subpar in 2018 (-3.7 UZR, -11 DRS), to third base, where he was more or less average (4.3 UZR, -4 DRS). Read the rest of this entry »