The *10th Annual* MLB Draft Preview with Chris Crawford
MLB’s amateur draft has been thoroughly rearranged/rebooted/moved around this year, partly due to the pandemic, and partly due to the same manic energy that leads to all sorts of new, limited edition hats that everyone hates. 15 years ago, the draft was still a low-tech affair, conducted by telephone with no TV coverage at all. That changed in 2011, as MLB Network decided to show the first round, and got some Jersey kid named Mike Trout to show up in-studio. Since then, interest in the draft has skyrocketed, and thus, this year, the first round (and competitive balance picks) will be on ESPN today at 4pm. The draft will continue on Monday and Tuesday, with coverage back on MLB Network.
The draft is only 20 rounds this year; up from the pandemic-shortened 5 rounds last year, but still half of what it was before Covid. There are, after all, fewer roster spots to fill after MLB’s restructuring of the minors axed several teams and entire leagues from the affiliated-ball ladder. In addition to having ESPN televise the first round, they’ve moved the draft physically for the first time: it’ll be in Denver, on All-Star Weekend. Many seem miffed that it could essentially compete with the Futures game, as just about anyone motivated enough to watch the draft probably also wants to watch the best prospects play each other. But you can kind of see what MLB is thinking: you’ve got a day to revel in the future of the game and get everyone interested in the stars of 2025 or so.
The draft has seen pretty remarkable changes since I’ve been doing this; the bonus pools that essentially limit what teams can spend were brand new when we started this series, and they may change again in the next CBA, due to be negotiated this year/next year. With so much in flux, it’s nice to fall back to tradition, and a familiar expert to help make sense of all this. So for the *10th year* in a row, I’ve talked with NBC Sports’ Chris Crawford. Chris is a local guy, and you can hear his segments (with fellow friend-of-the-blog Nathan Bishop) on the Ian Furness show every Monday on 950 am KJR. He does some great videos for NBC Sports Edge, like this one on JP Crawford (no relation), and a great podcast called Circling the Bases with other NBC baseball writers (DJ Short, Drew Silva). In the first post of this series, we talked about the M’s looking at Florida catcher Mike Zunino, and not only did the Mariners pick him, but he’s brought everything full circle by making his first All Star team. In that post, Chris waxed poetic about Byron Buxton, who looked set to dominate baseball this year before injuries sidelined him. All of that to say, Chris knows his stuff, and I look forward to this post every year.
1: Last year’s 5-round mini-draft should produce a really deep class for 2021. Has that happened? Is this one of the deepest classes in recent years?
It is not. Now, it’s not the shallowest class, either, but this is not a great class. It looked it was going to be on paper, but some bats — particularly in the college class — didn’t hit, and some pitchers got hurt and/or didn’t perform well. I would say this is an average class, but the added redshirt juniors/seniors/redshirt seniors really didn’t help as much as you might think.
2: Beyond the players themselves, the league has made some sweeping changes to how teams find amateur talent. 150 players attended the North Carolina scouting combine, with games, strength testing, workouts, etc. Essentially a lot of the things teams would do when holding in-person workouts in prior years have now been kind of centralized, allowing teams to get a look at more players, particularly at the top of the draft. What does this do for teams? What does it do to scouting and the need to have a lot of eyes on players all across the country?
I think adding extra looks was big. Look, there’s a lot of development that happens with these kids at that age, and in 2020, scouts just didn’t get as much of a chance to see these players. The workout stuff is nice as well, but really just getting an extra look after the pandemic (not to say we’re still not in a pandemic) is big. Ultimately I think the games they play against their competition is more important? But the more looks the better.
3: In addition to all of that, the top ~100 or so high schoolers will play in the Prospect Development Pipeline (PDP) league through July and August. What do you think MLB wants out of this set-up, and are there any potential unforeseen consequences?
I think again it’s just another way to get looks. Prep prospects are the most volatile prospects and it’s not close. That’s obvious. So getting a chance to see these guys play against each other rather than inferior competition is nice. It’s just taking a little bit of the risk off the top.
4: The other big change this year was the sweeping changes to the minor leagues. There are now fewer leagues, with the lower levels cut back pretty dramatically (Pioneer/Appy leagues). How does this change a team’s draft strategy? Or does it?
I think so, yes. You’ll still see lots of young players drafted and signed — everyone is young if they’re draft eligible, you know what I mean — and they’ll get more “hands on” instruction in the ACL or FCL. But teams will certainly need to draft less for “organizational depth” I think, because you don’t need to fill as many rosters.
5: Ok, ok, let’s talk about the Mariners. The M’s have about $8.5M to spend in this year’s draft, starting with pick #12 (valued at around 4.4 M). Who do you think they take, and who are some of the best picks around #10-15?
Goes without saying, but a college player. Difference this year is it seems like there’s an emphasis — for lack of a better word — on adding a college bat. I think the name that makes the most sense is Matt McLain, a shortstop out of UCLA. He fills a bit of an organizational need, and he is probably the best college bat on the board. That being said, if Sal Frelick of Boston College — a diminutive but talented outfielder — is there, then I think he’s the selection. Just not sure if he falls to 12 at this point. Colton Cowser is kinda in between Frelick and McLain, and he’s an outfielder who could hit for average and power at the highest level and is by no means slow. If an arm like Ty Madden of Texas or somehow one of the two Vandy boys (Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker) fell then yeah, I think they’d swoop. But I’d bet on McClain, Frelick or Cowser being the pick at this point.
6: The M’s have focused on college pitching. We talk about this every year, it seems. They’ve been successful at this; their development group has done extremely well with those high-pick arms, and we’re now seeing Logan Gilbert in the majors. Do you stick with what works – with what your own PD group has been good at – or do you draft for need? The M’s need infielders.
I think sticking with what works here is fine; the Mariners have done a good job of identifying college arms and also understand that they offer less risk. I also think it’s been a case where bats just haven’t made since where they picked, but Dipoto’s history tells you that prep players just aren’t going to get drafted high. You just have to go with best player available in my opinion. if there’s a “tiebreaker” than taking the one who offers less volatility makes sense. But unfortunately this year is an awful class of infielders after the big name shortstops — so the two just kinda match. Again.
Just a quick hit this year, given Chris’s busy schedule this week. A reminder that the draft will be on ESPN today at 4pm Pacific, 7pm Eastern. It’ll be back at 1pm Pacific tomorrow for the middle rounds, and it’ll wrap up the day after. Days 2 and 3 can be seen on MLB Network.
So far, most mock drafts have the M’s taking Matt McClain, SS, from UCLA, just as Chris discussed above. Where the two big Vanderbilt pitchers go could really shake things up; Jack Leiter wants to fall to Boston at #4, but no one thinks he will. Meanwhile, Kumar Rocker’s velo inconsistency could see him slide down towards #10, but I’m starting to think that teams are overly harsh on draft-year inconsistency (see Carlos Rodon, Sean Manaea, etc.). Can’t wait to see how it shakes out. And don’t forget the futures game itself! Coverage starts at noon, so you can watch before the draft. The AL’s line up starts with Bobby Witt, Jr., Jarred Kelenic, Julio Rodriguez, and then Adley Rutschman. Wow.
Game 52, Rangers at Mariners
Justus Sheffield vs. Jordan Lyles, 7:10pm
The M’s try to keep some momentum going after a legitimately good win against a flawed-but-surprisingly-decent Rangers club. Chris Flexen pitched his best game in the majors, keeping the Rangers scoreless for 7 innings, and the bottom of the M’s order, heretofore a source of more embarrassment than run production, came through. Let’s hope it sparks something for guys like Tom Murphy.
Today’s game is a match-up between two former top prospects who seem to have settled in to back-of-the-rotation status. As I mentioned the last time these two faced off, Lyles was once the top Houston Astros prospect, before they were in the AL, and way before they became a player development force. Lyles has been a pitch-to-contact starter for years, in Colorado and now Texas, but has consistently – and severely – underperformed his FIP. His career FIP is 4.63; not great, but something you can live with in the 4-5 spot, especially given Lyles’ durability and rougher pitching environments. But his ERA is 5.25 in over 1,000 innings. Again, maybe beggars can’t be choosers in places like Colorado and a rebuilding Texas club, but that’s a fairly big discrepancy.
The problem is that Lyles can’t strand runners. His career mark is under 66%, and that’s despite a late-career improvement. He had a legitimately good year in 2019, spurred by improvement in that problematic metric, but he still hasn’t been able to reliably get out of innings. The problem may have something to do with his approach: the pitchers who strand 80%+ are guys like deGrom, Verlander, and Snell – guys who can get strikeouts with men on base. That’s harder for someone like Lyles, whose fastball is only 92-93, and is perhaps his worst pitch.
Lyles has responded to the erosion in his fastball’s results by embracing his inner junkballer. Against righties, he’ll throw more sliders than fastballs. That slider’s a hard one at 85-86, and has great vertical drop compared to his fastball. It generates a higher proportion of swings than his fastball does – and it’s not just the slider. Both his change (fairly normal) and curve (not normal) do too. This is essentially the Zach Plesac plan, of having a show-me fastball, and either keeping it out of the zone or throwing the bendy stuff in order to get weak contact. As batters generally have worse outcomes when they put non-fastballs in play, it kind of makes sense, especially if you’re struggling to out and out MISS bats.
His fastball’s now kind of fascinating to me. It gets comparatively few swings against it, and then the results of those swings are starkly divided between whiffs (he’s got a decent whiff rate on it now for seemingly the first time in his 11 years in MLB) and hard, hard contact (he’s given up 7 HRs on it already). All in all, the results aren’t pretty, but he could probably live with that if the rest of the plan was working. It’s not. His breaking stuff is being put in play, and too many of them are falling in for hits.
That’s my worry here. One of the big reasons for the offensive desert we’re watching in 2021 is a drop in BABIP, which is a topic Rob Arthur explored today at BP. What’s worse, there’s no place in the game that BABIP is lower than at T-Mobile park. A big part of *that* has been a reduction in the value of fly balls, or all non-grounders. A trend towards playing CFs deeper than before (and it looks like guys who are new/don’t appear to be as fast are positioned the deepest) coupled with the deadened ball has cut down even more on extra-base hits, which were always in short supply at T-Mobile. Now, it’s essentially impossible to get a base hit on a fly ball in Seattle without it going over the fence. It’s not like the M’s OF defense is world-class. It’s not bad, by any stretch, but it’s just not the first group you’d think of when you see how few balls drop in for hits.
All of this is good news for Lyles, who has a GB% well below 40%. It’s less helpful for Justus Sheffield, though he, too, is getting a few less grounders this year. The problem for Sheff hasn’t been base hits, though, it’s been homers. After giving up just 2 in 2020, he’s already given up 5. Worse, 4 of them have come off of sliders, which has been his outpitch since he was in the minors. It’s been effective against lefties and righties alike, and that’s allowed him to throw a lot of them, especially when ahead in the count.
But batters seem to be developing an approach against him: they’re sitting on the slider. To be fair, this isn’t exactly new. Sheffield’s always struggled to generate a lot of swings on the sinker (or, before that, his four-seam), but just like with Lyles, that’s not necessarily bad. If he can get called strikes, or if he can get weak contact on the slider – which batters swing at nearly *60%* of the time – then this is a feature, not a bug. Unfortunately, none of that is working right now. In 2020, poor results on the slider – which batters couldn’t lay off of – propelled him to his best season. So far this year, he’s not getting many called strikes on the fastball, and batters are battering the slider. Some of this may just be bad luck, but given that his slider’s the most likely pitch he throws to be hit in the air, it’s a calculated risk: more fly balls lead to more outs in play, but also more home runs.
1: Kelenic, LF
2: Haniger, RF
3: Seager, 3B
4: Lewis, CF
5: France, 1B
6: Crawford, SS
7: Godoy, DH
8: Murphy, C
9: Walton, 2B
SP: Sheffield
The Rainiers are back in action tonight in Reno. Darren McCaughan gets the ball for Tacoma against former Rainier and ill-fated trade return Zach Lee.
Tulsa beat Arkansas in 13 innings last night by a 6-2 score. It was a pitchers duel most of the way through, with Ian McKinney’s 6 scoreless innings starting it off. He K’d 8, giving him 37 Ks and just 8 walks in 23 IP thus far. He’s still just 26, and probably needs to be the next guy up to Tacoma if they can find a way to play normal baseball and not just operate as Seattle’s off-site overflow bullpen. Today, Penn Murfee starts for the Travs.
Everett got walked-off by the Vancouver Canadiens-of-Hillsboro (they’re sharing a stadium with the Hops while the border remains closed) 5-4. The Frogs managed just four singles, but made them count, and also took advantage of three Vancouver miscues. Today’s starter was supposed to be George Kirby, who hasn’t appeared since May 14th, leading to some worries from M’s fans like Darren Gossler (whose payroll tracker I’m sure you’ve seen). Earlier today, Kirby was shown as the starter, and if you look at MiLB.com, he still is. However, the M’s Player Development twitter, which posts starting line-ups, has the starter as 2019 6th rounder Michael Limoncelli. That in and of itself is noteworthy, as Limoncelli underwent Tommy John before the draft, causing him to fall to the M’s in the 6th. This’ll be his professional debut. Hopefully, Kirby will come in after Limoncelli throws an inning or two to get back into the swing of things. It’s something to keep an eye on, though, especially if Kirby’s pushed back again. There’ll be no Julio Rodriguez, though, no matter who pitches: he’s joined the Dominican Republic team in the Olympic Qualification tournament. The R’s Eric Filia will be on Team USA.
Modesto detroyed Visalia, 9-3, thanks to 3 hits from Cade Marlowe and a 5 IP, 10 K performance from Adam Macko. The Nuts scored 5 in the first, 1 in the second, and 2 in the third to put it out of reach. Visalia is just 5-16 on the year. It’s not going to get any easier for them: today’s starter is strikeout maven, Taylor Dollard.
Game 5, White Sox at Mariners
JAMES PAXTON vs. Lucas Giolito, 7:10pm
Last night’s game was a clunker. The M’s could not handle Carlos Rodon, who showed that the velo gains he made late in 2020 could still be put to good use, and his slider was as effective as ever. Hey, sometimes a reclamation project figures something out, and you’ve got to tip your cap to Rodon after a performance like that. Perhaps more concerning was Justus Sheffield’s outing, giving up 6 runs (4 earned) in 5 innings. Sheffield gave up 8 hits and issued three free passes (2 BB, 1 HBP), and giving up a home run (after allowing only 2 last year).
His slider wasn’t bad, but his sinker had a bit less sink. It’s only one game, and it came against a potent offense, but the M’s offense may not be able to help much if M’s starters falter. Sheffield, like Marco before him in game 1, needs to keep the game close.
Of course, the M’s may be better suited to help their pitchers do that thanks to the six man rotation and the extra day of rest it provides the starters. It might *really* help today’s starter, James Paxton. Paxton’s injury history is…extensive, and he suffered volatility in his velo during his time with the Yankees. If he’s healthy and throwing well, he gives the M’s rotation a quality it doesn’t really have without him. I’d say he adds depth, but that’s what Nick Margevicius and Ljay Newsome brings. He brings #1/#2 stuff to the middle of the rotation, and if he’s able to do so consistently, and if he’s able to increase his workload this year, it turns an average-ish rotation into a strength.
Part of keeping him healthy is going to be ensuring that he’s stretched out, and after missing some time mostly for visa issues this spring, the M’s are going to limit his workload tonight to 75 pitches or so. We’ll take what we can get, as Paxton’s going to be fun to watch. One thing to keep an eye on is his pitch mix. With Seattle, everything worked off of his four-seam fastball, and he added a hard cutter/slider as his putaway pitch, with his curve and rare change to round out the arsenal. With the Yankees, he went more to a sinker, and de-emphasized his four-seam. Was that a conscious decision, given the homer-friendly park? Classification error? Or a new weapon? We’ll soon find out.
Lucas Giolito was the best arm in his draft class (2012), which was saying something, given his own HS team also included Max Fried and Jack Flaherty. But he lost most of his senior year to elbow pain, causing him to fall to Washington at #16 overall. Soon after signing, the Nats confirmed it: he’d need TJ surgery. He rehabbed and reclaimed his place as one of baseball’s best prospects, and while the K rate wasn’t eye-popping as he moved up the ladder, the results were mostly there. He got a cup of coffee for Washington in 2016, and then was traded to Chicago as part of the Adam Eaton deal. Despite so-so stats in AAA, he got another big league opportunity in 2017, and was..fine. But everything collapsed in 2018, as he suffered through a long season with an ERA over 6 – an ERA he earned by walking nearly 12% of hitters and posting a poor 16% K rate.
He was just 23, but the Sox outlook suddenly looked cloudier. Carlos Rodon stagnated. Dylan Covey struggled. Yoan Moncada, the big prospect in the Chris Sale deal, was a below-average hitter, and shortstop of the future Tim Anderson posted a .281 OBP. Wasn’t the re-build supposed to be showing signs of life by now? Instead, the pitchers seemed to be going in reverse.
Everything changed for Giolito in 2019. Renewed confidence in his change gave him an outpitch, and his four-seam fastball went from being a real liability to an excellent pitch. He increased the spin rate on his heater, and was able to increase its vertical movement from essentially dead-on average to a few inches above average. He ditched his sinker, and swapped his curve for a slider. All in all, he’s gone from a clearly below-average starter to the unquestioned ace of the White Sox, with newfound bat-missing ability and confidence. He’s become the pitcher that scouts saw back in 2011 or so, but took a winding path to get there.
I think about the White Sox a lot, ever since writing that post coming out of the All Star break in 2017: the White Sox had a young club, signed to team-friendly extensions and the blew it all up, collecting a murderer’s row of prospects in the process. They looked set to become a threat, but the prospects took longer to gel than we’d thought. Is that how it’s going to be in Seattle? Is that what’s going on right now, or in 2020 – are what looks like growing pains for, say, JP Crawford actually incredibly important development, allowing him to make the leap that Tim Anderson did for the Sox in 2019? Are these guys closer than we think? Or was it always folly to think that the M’s could chop several years off the timeline for a rebuild, especially if they had to do it without the kind of international free agent talent (Luis Robert) and trade chips (Moncada and Kelenic may be a push, but the Sox also had Giolito, Dylan Cease, Reynaldo Lopez, etc.) that Chicago had?
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, 2B
3: Seager, 3B
4: White, 1B
5: Trammell, CF
6: Marmolejos, DH
7: Torrens, C
8: Fraley, LF
9: Crawford, SS
SP: James Paxton, woooo
Game 4, White Sox at Mariners
Justus Sheffield vs. Carlos Rodón, 7:10pm
After a great series win against San Francisco, the M’s welcome in the first contending team they’ll face this year: the Chicago White Sox. The south siders made the playoffs last year before being bounced by the AL West champs from Oakland. It’s been a long, hard road back to contention for Chicago after going into a rebuild by trading away Chris Sale and Adam Eaton.
A key consideration in that rebuild was tonight’s starter, Carlos Rodon. The Sox drafted him #3 overall in 2014 out of NC State, where he’d come into his junior year as the prohibitive favorite to go #1 overall, but some up-and-down velocity readings dropped him a couple of places. He made his big league debut in 2015 and was pretty successful early on, including his first full season, where he dropped his slightly elevated walk rate and tossed 165+ IP.
Unfortunately, that total remains his career high, and after shoulder problems, bursitis, and then TJ surgery, he’s combined to throw less than 43 innings since 2018. He’s been working with a new, external coach to try and help him stay healthy, and in his very brief return last year, he touched 97-98 at times. But he struggled anyway, and with a career walk rate at about 10%, it couldn’t have come as a complete shock when the Sox non-tendered him this winter. He ultimately re-signed with the club on a one-year show-us-what-you’ve-got contract, and looked good enough this spring that he won his old job back and is once again in the middle of the Sox rotation.
That’s impressive given the Sox goals this year. After a first round exit last year, the Sox are clearly gunning for the World Series, trading for Lance Lynn to help the rotation and bolstering an already impressive bullpen with Liam Hendriks. Their first series of the year didn’t go according to script, though, as they lost 3 of 4 to an Angels team that looked fairly impressive on offense.
Rodón’s best pitch since college has been his slider. Even after over 2,500 of them in his big league career, batters are still *slugging* just .236 off of it. Despite good velocity, batters have not had similar problems with his fastball. He came up with a four-seam and sinker, but has moved away from the sinker over time. Not a huge surprise, as batters slugged .526 off of it. They’ve had slightly less success off of the four-seam, but fundamentally, Rodón wants to get ahead and then fire off some sliders. As you might expect, this plan has worked a lot better against lefties than it has against righties, and thus the M’s will trot out a slightly tweaked, righty-heavy line-up tonight with Sam Haggerty in CF and Taylor Trammell getting a night off.
Chris Flexen was great in his first game with Seattle. He sat at 94 with his fastball, and showed off a cutter than looked unhittable at times. It was just one game, it’s early, yadda yadda, but he showed the stuff of a legitimate rotation mainstay. If he can keep that up, his signing really is one of the steals of the offseason.
1: Haniger, RF
2: France, DH
3: Seager, 3B
4: White, 1B
5: Moore, 2B
6: Murphy, C
7: Fraley, LF
8: Haggerty, CF
9: Crawford, SS
SP: Sheffield
The M’s can’t go as righty-heavy as other teams without hurting their defense, and of course, they don’t have Kyle Lewis available right now. But it does make sense to have Trammell start on the bench, I think, and get as righty-heavy as is practicable.
Steven Goldman’s article on the debates around pace of play and three-true-outcome dominant baseball at BP is worth your time ($). It’s the latest in a series of articles on how baseball got into the predicament wherein it’s increasingly rare that plays involve fielders, and who’s to blame. “Analytics” have been blamed by many, but as Goldman puts it, there’s no way to unlearn what we’ve learned about anything from the wisdom of bunting a runner to 2nd to the value of stolen bases or even how to train pitchers.
It’s an important debate as the league mulls a variety of ways to increase balls in play, and at least in the early going, the ball does seem to be limiting HRs to a degree. But as important as it is, I felt a little weird about that whole debate this morning. Why? Because the story of last night was Shohei Ohtani doing Shohei Ohtani things. He hit 101 with his fastball, and his splitter was utterly ridiculous, eliciting swings on pitches that traveled 57 feet…and you couldn’t blame the hitters. Then, in the first, Ohtani (hitting 2nd!) launched a long, long HR. It was the most electrifying performance on the young season, and it was…all three true outcomes stuff. Ohtani tossed 4 2/3 IP (before coming out after a collision at the plate that the Angels swear wasn’t injurious in any way), walking *5* and striking out 7.
Perhaps no one is doing more to make baseball as viral or “cool” on social media than Rob Friedman, the Pitching Ninja. For years, he would make GIFs of the nastiest pitches in the game. At first, MLB banned him for it, but relented and essentially brought him into the fold. Every day, he tweets out a ton of GIFs and talks to pitchers about how they throw them. He’s become popular not only among online fans, but among pitchers themselves, who’ve learned grips from his interviews with their colleagues.
It’s awesome, and I love watching pitches like Devin Williams’ airbender that we haven’t gotten to see due to the pandemic and the general paucity of games between Seattle and the NL central. But it strikes me that we as fans are going nuts over the *exact* thing that is making the game so three-true-outcomes heavy. We can’t get enough of Shohei Ohtani’s 100 MPH fastball and 91 MPH splitter. We love dingers. We don’t actually want to return to 2014, even if we keep saying we do! Our heart simply isn’t in it!
And this year shows that trying to reduce the ratio of home runs to fly balls can have other consequences – the new ball does indeed seem to be reducing HR/FB, but strikeouts are up markedly in the early going, as pitchers have appreciated the more standardized seam height. The nuclear option here remains moving the mound back and giving hitters a bit more time. But as Driveline’s Kyle Boddy mentions, it’s not clear that even that would come without serious unintended consequences: he believes it would aid breaking ball movement (giving a curve more time to move, or a slider to slide), potentially increasing both walks AND strikeouts. We may be seeing a bit of that already in the early going, as the new ball has sent walks and K’s up in the first few games.
I think the interim solution may simply be to increase the size of the OF, meaning Seattle and other teams may need to abandon the new OF alignment and move the fences back where they were when the park opened. Same in Comerica, same in Citi Field, etc. The league freaked out when offense nosedived from 2010-2014, and teams like the M’s moved fences in. Then, the ball ushered in a HR era the likes of which we’d never seen before. Before we try and move the mound, and before the league tries to seriously deaden the ball, why not flip things back to 2011 or so and move the fences? I know, I know: it’s really expensive. But it seems a bit more in keeping with the balance between hitters and pitchers than endless changes with the ball, and it seems less likely to come with serious unintended consequences than moving the mound.
Game 29, Rangers at Mariners
Justus Sheffield vs. Jordan Lyles, 6:10pm
It’s hard to remember, but back before the 2011 season, the Astros were both 1) in the National League and 2) the laughingstock of the prospect/player development world. Their top prospect heading into the campaign wasn’t Dallas Keuchel (14th on some lists) or Jose Altuve (11th). It was Jordan Lyles, who’d done fairly well in AA as a teenager in 2010. The problem was that he was more of a command/control guy as opposed to a real power pitcher, and could have trouble missing big league bats.
That proved prescient, as he debuted in 2011 but couldn’t…miss a ton of bats, and thus wasn’t able to turn his legitimately good control into good overall results. It didn’t help that his team was awful, and about to get a lot worse. In three seasons from 2011-2013, Lyles couldn’t push his ERA under 5 despite a decent-ish FIP for a back-end starter. Like Kolby Allard last night – a guy with a remarkably similar profile, but for his handedness – Lyles struggled with men on base, and thus with a poor strand rate. He also struggled with HRs, which was somewhat notable given the time period – there were far fewer of them then than there are in recent years.
Thus, it didn’t look good for his career that he moved from Houston to Colorado. However, Lyles put together a very good first year with the Rockies in 2014. Shockingly, his HRs-allowed fell despite moving up to altitude, but there were some concerning signs: his walk rate started to climb. That problem only got worse the next two years, and by 2016, he was a bullpen arm/swingman. Since then, he’s been a consistent presence on the trade wire – he’s played for two teams in each season since 2017. Lyles has a four-seam fastball at 92, a hard change in the high 80s, a slider, and a curve – his best secondary. He’s traditionally had some sizable platoon splits, with a much worse K:BB ratio against lefties.
Justus Sheffield has had similar issues stranding runners, but has enjoyed a pretty good year despite some BABIP trouble. That’s a rare thing on this staff, as M’s pitchers/defense are not allowing many balls in play to fall in. It hasn’t exactly mattered. Still, it’s nice to see that Sheffield’s solid run hasn’t just been BABIP luck. The fact that he hasn’t yielded a dinger yet may be lucky, sure, but he’s done pretty well overall. He’s missing bats when needed, and his walk rate has come down nicely. Now, it’s just about consistency. Sheffield’s got to show that this is who he is now: a guy the M’s can count on for 2021.
It is interesting that unlike a number of M’s minor leaguers, Sheffield’s velo seems to be going the wrong way. He averaged a bit over 93 last year, and is just under 92 now. Maybe that’s just the result of the weird, shortened, two-part spring training – a factor James Paxton blamed for the injury that sent him to the Yankees IL. So far, it hasn’t really hurt him. It’s a different sort of pitch now, but his whiff rate on it hasn’t really changed (it’s still not *good*, mind you), and that sinker seems to be playing well with his slider.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Haggerty, LF
3: Lewis, CF
4: Seager, 3B
5: Nola, C
6: White, 1B
7: Fraley, RF
8: Lopes, DH
9: Long, 2B
SP: Sheffield
Yes, Jake Fraley’s back. The CF/OF the M’s picked up from Tampa made his debut last year, and while it didn’t exactly go well, he’s got more upside than guys like Bishop, who’s spot he’s essentially taking tonight. The spot he’s taking on the active roster is Dylan Moore’s. Moore will head to the IL with a sprained wrist.
Game 27, Dodgers at Mariners
Yusei Kikuchi vs. Clayton Kershaw, 4:10pm
Kikuchi was scratched from his last start, but is back to face perhaps the greatest lefty of his generation. I can’t imagine how often coaches just tell lefties to copy Clayton Kershw. Not the weird wind-up; that’s not something any coach wants to see emulated. But the interplay between a straight, rising fastball, a diving curveball, and then a great slider in between. As M’s fans, we remember the team working with James Paxton to Kershaw-ify his delivery, a move that lasted a few years before he dropped his arm angle down in the minors and suddenly started throwing 98. But I think they may have done it again: I think the M’s have told Yusei Kikuchi to look at some of the things Kershaw’s done over the years.
For years, Kershaw’s three pitch mix worked so well because he had impeccable command of each (he also throws a change, because hey, why not). He was able to limit home runs and walks, and still get Ks at the top of the zone with the fastball, or the bottom of the zone with breaking balls. After his first few years in the league, his GB% was consistently high in large part because of those breaking balls; batters sitting fastball adjusted late, and ended up topping some of them.
Since 2017, the new drag-less baseball and declining velo meant that Kershaw was no longer the HR-suppressing guy he was at his 2011-2016 peak. He’s given up 73 HRs since 2017, and it hasn’t really mattered. Like Justin Verlander or Gerrit Cole, Kershaw has traded solo HRs for dominance in every other facet of the game. And unlike Verlander/Cole, he’s had to do it without top-shelf velocity.
Specifically, in 2019, Kershaw sat at 90-91 with his fastball and leaned in to becoming a junkball artist. He threw his FB 43% of the time, his slider 40%, and his curve 16%. The slider got whiffs and grounders, and the fastball kept hitters honest. In part due to his ability to get ahead, batters swung at over 60% of his sliders, but under 45% of his fastballs. If you’re putting Kershaw sliders in play more than Kershaw fastballs, you’ve pretty much already lost.
This year, he’s thrown *even more* breaking balls, and batters are hitting a staggering number of ground balls. He’s at 65% in the early going, 17 percentage points higher than last year. The key is that slider, with 88% of all balls in play getting smacked into the ground. It’s always been a cutter, at only 3 MPH slower than his FB last year, but a bit more than that now, as his FB velo’s returned somewhat. He’s tweaked the movement on that slider, getting a bit more drop despite throwing it at 88 (his FB’s now 92). Batters know it’s coming, but can’t quite stop.
I mention all of this because a lot of it sounds like Yusei Kikuchi’s revised gameplan. Gone is last year’s 86 MPH slider – a pitch that yielded 11 HRs last year. Instead, he’s now throwing a power cutter at 91-92, just a few MPH lower than his revved-up fastball. Last year, he threw that slider less than 30% of the time, but it’s now his #1 pitch. It doesn’t have the drop it once did, but it doesn’t need to; it’s functionally a fastball, and batters looking four-seam either top it or swing over it. And batters looking cutter aren’t ready for a four-seam – his whiff% on his fastball has doubled since last year. Like Kershaw, Kikuchi’s GB% has spiked.
Even better for Kikuchi, he’s yet to give up a HR. Even with the ground ball spike, he’s been quite lucky to avoid dingers thus far, but it’s worth noting that even if he wasn’t lucky on HR/FB ratio, he’d still be giving up fewer between an improved K rate AND all of those grounders. So why isn’t his ERA following the trend? The one thing Kikuchi hasn’t emulated is Kershaw’s consistently amazing strand rates. That’s going to take some additional work, even if Kikuchi’s absurdly low 55% strand rate should regress towards the mean.
1: Haggerty, LF
2: Moore, SS
3: Lewis, DH
4: Seager, 3B
5: Nola, 1B
6: Lopes, RF
7: Long, 2B
8: Bishop, CF
9: Odom, C
SP: Kikuchi
An off day for the struggling JP Crawford, while Evan White rests the knee he hurt on a foul ball in last night’s contest. Kyle Lewis gets a DH day, allowing Braded Bishop to play his more natural position of CF. I think the team’s technically better at 1B and SS at the plate, but the overall line-up is…not a great one. We’ll see if Kershaw takes advantage.
Kikuchi’s best friend on the team seemed to be Dan Vogelbach, so we’ll see how he’s adjusting to life without “Uncle Vogie.” Kyle Seager’s wife tweeted that her kids have never loved a teammate as much as they loved Vogie. I think all of these players recognize that a DH can’t stick on the roster with a sub .200 average and sub .400 SLG%, but I think a lot of players are missing a surprisingly good clubhouse guy. We’ll see if someone else steps up to fill the Uncle Vogie role, or if the clubhouse chemistry is a little different (not necessarily worse) going forward.
Game 20, Mariners at Rangers
Taijuan Walker vs. Jordan Lyles, 6:05pm
The M’s, like pretty much every team, had struggled to turn balls in play into hits this season. Playing in Arlington has certainly helped, as there’ve been all sorts of base hits in this series. That’s been good for both teams, and despite a few HRs, it’s felt like an old-school series, without tons of strikeouts.
I mention this because I happened to check the M’s batting splits, and they’ve been the worst *home* batting team. One big driver of those ugly numbers, and no, I wasn’t going to say “Evan White”, is their BABIP, which is .237, the lowest in MLB. Their isolated power is awful, too, at .106, tied with this Ranger ballclub. Why is T-Mobile park playing like it’s 2011?
The line-up is undoubtedly part of it, of course. But another possibility came up today: T-Mobile park is using a Coors Field-style humidor to store baseballs. Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer tweeted this as part of a discussion about MLB trying to get some consistency in the ball, not only between years (which they’ve completely failed to do) but between parks. Thus, the M’s, Mets, and Red Sox applied to use the humidor, and MLB approved it. The humidors all seem to be set to the settings Colorado used, and which Arizona adopted as well: 70 degrees and 55% relative humidity.
The question that immediately comes to mind is: how does this differ from how the balls were stored before? Colorado and Arizona are two of the driest parks in the game; other than Salt Lake City, I’m not sure there are too many places *less* humid than Phoenix/Denver. But New York, Boston, Seattle, etc. have relative humidity sitting much higher than 55% most of the time. But maybe comparing it to the overall city isn’t the point – what matters is how different it is from the room where the balls were stored last year. Air conditioning, heating, air flow, etc. could have kept the humidity higher or lower than 55%; I have no idea what it was. All we can do is just see how T-Mobile plays compared to their AL West rivals, none of which (to my knowledge) have gone with humidors yet.
This may make some competitive sense, given that the M’s were probably stunned when Seattle suddenly stopped preventing HRs and played much more neutral in 2016-2019. With a staff of young pitchers, it might be good if the ball didn’t fly as far at home, however much that might frustrate the hitters. But again: it’s not clear that this move WOULD inhibit ball flight, and certainly not as much as the 2020 baseball’s increased drag already does. It’ll be interesting to follow this throughout the year. For now, the M’s have a wRC+ of 119 on the road, compared to that ugly 64 at home. These are splits of an already-tiny sample, but hey, you know the drill.
We’re at the 1/3 mark on this little season-let, and the M’s brass is pretty encouraged with how things are going. Not on the field, but the progress in remaking what had been a moribund farm system. That Seattle Times story from Ryan Divish talks about the M’s system ranking #3 in BaseballAmerica’s new system rankings, up from, well, 30 a few years ago.
Different fans react to this very differently, from optimists excited that the vaunted plan is coming together, and pessimists pointing to other times the M’s have amassed a stable of highly-regarded prospects. It’s so easy to move the goalposts; I’ve derided the team talking about contention in 2019-2020, then 2021, and Divish’s story quotes Dipoto speculating that it could be 2022. But then, if they’re really good a year ‘late’ I don’t think anyone will deduct style points or whatever. What we need to do is figure out how to measure the success or failure of each year, starting with this one. Essentially, we need to get more specific about measuring progress (or the lack thereof).
So, what should it be? Does *each* young player the M’s are counting on need to meet some target? Or most? Or half? To me, some of the most important measures are: Can Sheffield and Dunn limit walks, namely, can they keep their BB% around 9-9.5%? Can Dunn strike out 7-8 per 9? Can Evan White strike out less than 30% from this point forward? Can JP Crawford finish with an ISO above .130 and a K% less than 20% (he’s shattering that K% goal right now)? Can Kyle Lewis maintain his hot start by hitting at a 110 wRC+/DRC+ level from here until the end of the year? Can Yusei Kikuchi finish the year with an ERA/FIP nearer to 4-4.5?
1: Crawford, SS
2: Moore, 1B
3: Lewis, CF
4: Seager, 3B
5: Nola, C
6: Long, 2B
7: Vogelbach, DH
8: Lopes, LF
9: Smith, RF
SP: Walker
Game 12, Angels at Mariners
Justin Dunn vs. Andrew Heaney, 7:10pm
It’s 2020, and we’ve had incredibly granular pitch data for over a decade. For the last few, we’ve got quasi-direct measures of spin, spin efficiency, and all manner of break measurements. Teams, of course, have even more; ultra-high speed cameras, wearable technology to measure stress, and everything pitchers need to tweak or design pitches from scratch. Nearly every team can create actionable coaching to target very specific patterns of movement to pair with other offerings or create less-hittable versions of the same pitch. And I think I know less about fastballs – the most easy-to-understand pitch – than ever.
One of the themes on this blog since 2016-2017 or so has been the interplay between pitchers and batters as the ball got slicker and fly balls starting turning into HRs at alarming rates. In the little batting ice age, the strike zone grew at the bottom of the zone, and pitchers targeted that area generating a lot of weak contact and called-strikes. But batters didn’t just shrug their shoulders and look for something better. They added loft to their swings, started actively stalking those low fastballs, and started destroying them. The “Trout Swing” was born, and it caused a sudden change in pitching approach.
The biggest casualty of this new approach was the sinker itself. Pitchers turned instead to four-seam fastballs that had more vertical movement, allowing them to sink less, and stay above batters’ swings. Vertical movement played extremely well at the top of the zone, leading both to more whiffs on fastballs themselves AND pairing extremely well with curveballs to deceive batters, who had a harder time distinguishing between the two pitches. At first, it seemed like there was no trade-off: you avoided the “bad” areas low in the zone, and you got more swing-and-miss and pop-ups to boot. But then batters adjusted again.
It’s taken a while, but in the (very) early-going in 2020, the sinker is making something of a comeback. It’s over 10% of pitches thrown this season for the first time since 2014, and it’s being thrown more often than it was back then.
Today’s opposing starter, Andrew Heaney, is a great example of a sinker specialist excelling in the current era. But what I think makes me so confused is the *way* he’s doing it. We all essentially know what a sinker is, and how it works, right? It’s a fastball thrown with side-spin, leading to more arm-side movement. Critically, the pitch doesn’t have as much backspin, leading to lower vertical movement, or, in english, more sink. All of this led to a series of trade-offs. On the plus side, that sinking movement led to a lot of ground ball contact, as batters hit the top of the ball. That arm-side movement made them very effective against same-handed batters, as the ball would tunnel in towards their hands. On the down side, they weren’t good at getting whiffs; high vertical movement/backspin produced strikeouts, whereas as sinkers were more designed for mis-hits. Still, how to utilize sinkers and four-seamers seemed easy. You’d get oddballs that threw something in between this dichotomy – Justus Sheffield’s low-spin, low-rise four-seamer in 2019 is a perfect example – and teams would try to push them towards one of the poles. Justus Sheffield’s low-spin sinker in 2020 is a great example of that, too.
With all of that as background, let’s turn our attention to today’s opposing starter, Andrew Heaney. Heaney’s been with the Angels since 2015, and has used his sinker about 60-65% of the time since then. It’s got a lot of movement, but it unlike many sinkers, it doesn’t actually…sink. With about 9″ of vertical movement, it looks like a tailing four-seamer, and that may be why Heaney’s ground ball rate has always been extremely low.
It wasn’t for lack of trying. From 2015 through 2017, he dutifully targeted the low strike, and while he got more of the middle of the zone than peak Derek Lowe or Justin Masterson, you could see the approach. He was hurt so much there’s less to go on, but he didn’t get many K’s in 2015, but after a few years in rehab, his K rate inched up in 2018 – his breakout season. But given that movement, he simply didn’t look like a sinkerballer at all. He got whiffs with his sinker, and that pitch generated a ton of fly balls, which in this day and age, meant he gave up a ton of home runs.
So he decided to just throw it like a four-seamer. Here’s how he’s using it since the start of 2019. For reasons I really can’t explain, this has turned the pitch into a dominant swing-and-miss pitch. In that time frame, his sinker – his SINKER – is generating a whiff/swing rate of about 30%. It was 12% in 2015. Moreover, it’s making his slider more deadly. There’s nothing weird in his velo – it’s identical to what it was in 2015. There’s nothing radically different in its movement over the years (normal swings and shifts). It’s just suddenly well-nigh unhittable. Heaney enters with a K/9 over 11 over his last 100+ innings, and his walk rate is declining.
It’s a very different situation, but it calls to mind Shane Bieber’s astonishing start in 2020 (and excellent 2019). Bieber’s been untouchable thus far, with 27 Ks and just 1 walk in 14 innings. Here’s the question, though: Why? What does Bieber *do* that’s producing this? Jacob de Grom throws a 94 MPH slider, and touches 100. Justin Verlander throws that high-spin, high-efficiency back-spin fastball, as does Gerrit Cole. Bieber does *none* of these things. It’s a perfectly average velocity fastball with perfectly normal spin rates and perfectly middle-of-the-road efficiency. Sure, sure, he gets most of his Ks on his breaking pitches, but you’re not supposed to be able to get away with throwing a perfectly average fastball in today’s game. Just like everyone knows you can’t succeed by throwing a sinker up in the zone all the time.
I feel like we know so little right now about how so many pitchers are doing what they’re doing. We can come up with ad hoc justifications, or point to one or two odd things about them, but it doesn’t seem to be as satisfying as the big picture ideas we thought we knew: high fastballs get swings and misses, and a “good” fastball has tons of vertical rise thanks to super high spin. The physics matched up with what we saw in the data at the time. But it’s the “at the time” bit that turned out to be the most important part of the statement.
1: Crawford, SS
2: Lopes, DH
3: Lewis, CF
4: Seager, 3B
5: Nola, C
6: White, 1B
7: Long, 2B
8: Moore, RF
9: Gordon, LF
SP: Dunn
Kendall Graveman’s sore neck has landed him on the 10-day IL. Also, reliever Zac Grotz has been optioned to the alternative site in Tacoma. They’ll be replaced by relievers Taylor Guilbeau, who’s already made an appearance, and Joey Gerber, who has yet to pitch above AA, but got plenty of action in the intrasquad games in the summer camp.
It’s Uber-prospect Jo Adell’s big league debut tonight. I got to see the athletic OF last year in Tacoma; he hit 2 HRs in two PAs before the game was cancelled by a sudden/heavy downpour. This guy is good.
The Strangest Draft Preview Yet: MLB 2020 Amateur Draft
It’s not really a full draft, more of a draftlet, a somewhat immoral amuse bouche, a well-produced spectacle and haphazard “we’re making this up as we go” event. Instead of 40 rounds, this year’s draft will span just 5, with 160 picks in total. Still, this is an influx of new talent to the league, and as we’ve done since 2012, I’ll preview the draft at a high level with old friend Chris Crawford of NBC Sports and Rotoworld (follow him on Twitter for draft info, Sonics nostalgia, and more). The world is on fire, there’s no baseball season, many of these draft prospects had their seasons wiped away. This is uncharted territory, but it feels almost comforting to ask draft questions in June, so let’s get to it:
1: What was the thinking on the depth/quality of this draft class back in the before-times before the pandemic?
On paper, it looked good. I still think it looks good. This is one of the better groups of collegians I can remember; maybe the best since 2011. The prep side is considerably weaker, and unfortunately, those preps didn’t really get a chance to prove much because of the pandemic. That’s not to say it is barren, but it’s definitely one of the weaker groups I can remember — particularly in terms of pitching. Having said that, this is still a strong group because the college side is good enough to make up for the lake of high school upside.
Is this a case of star-power at the top, or just depth from 1 through, uh, pick 160? And this relates to the prep weakness: would we expect very few preps to sign?
A combination of both. Spencer Torkelson and Austin Martin are both legit 1.1 guys and there are several college hurlers not far from that. And yes: I’d expect very few preps to sign.
2: If you were working for a team, how do you even approach this? You’ve had scouts not scouting for a while. I assume this tilts things towards college players, where at least there are a few years of stats? Or not really?
It’s a tough question to answer. I’d definitely lean heavier on college with a track record, but it would probably depend on where I’m picking. It could be a chance for teams picking later to procure those prep talents that would have gone higher if there were more looks. Ultimately I’m still going to take best player available — goodness knows how many times I’ve used that phrase in these previews — but there’s a good chance that my BPA might be a college guy if only because I know more. Sometimes mystery is overrated.
You’ve probably seen the report from RJ Anderson who said some teams may punt the draft, and pick a HS player they have no intention of signing. Is that one response to the uncertainty around this draft, or does that have more to do with teams suddenly crying poverty ahead of CBA negotiations?
It’s probably a combination of both. Owners have a hard enough time paying players who won’t contribute a couple years from now; paying them with this much uncertainty probably ruffles some feathers. Ultimately I don’t think we’ll see any team actually punt, but, it can’t be completely ruled out.
3: There are a few players whose stature has risen due to social media, especially Pitching Ninja. How has his viral fame boosted Luke Little’s draft stock, and how do teams deal with pop-up guys who get internet famous like this?
I haven’t heard much about Little in this last month. As to your larger question, I think there aren’t as many “pop-up” guys on the internet anymore, just because these area guys are able to see most of the prospects. Not saying it doesn’t happen, but these men/woman are really good, and they generally find what is out there with a few exceptions. The pop-ups are really for us common folk, but the area scouts usually know who is out there.
4: We’ve talked a bit about sports tech like Rapsodo, but how is it changing the draft? Is sharing data from wearable tech or other devices helping teams discover talent, or is it just providing more detailed info on the players teams were already following?
Probably closer to the latter, but it’s certainly playing a part. Spin rate is becoming more and more important with pitchers, and of course being able to more easily quantify stuff like bat speed and angle all matter, too. It’s still mostly about if a kid can play or not, but having some data to back up an opinion certainly doesn’t hurt; especially with kids facing off against lesser competition.
5: What will be the impact on college baseball of this draft? We’ve seen some programs eliminated, but there should be a lot of seniors (hopefully) playing next year.
It’s hard to answer that question, but it’s going to be fascinating — for lack of a better term — to see what happens here. There are only so many spots in the draft, and those who aren’t drafted can only sign for $20,000 this summer. There’s also only so many spots for these players to come back as you mention because of scholarship limitations and just the flat-out elimination of programs. Simply put, this is going to be rough, and it’s not just the pandemic that created this situation.
6: Showcase events for high schoolers have been proliferating, another thing we’ve talked about in the past. Those, too, have been shelved this year. What can scouts do to find or evaluate HS talent in the absence of these high-profile tournaments/showcases? What sorts of networks (coaches? training facilities?) can scouts rely on this year?
It’s going to be tough. It’s going to be based a lot on the small amount of information they have, and a lot of networking, as you mention. It just can’t replace the feeling of seeing a player participate in a “real” situation, however, and it’s why several prep players that likely would have been first-round picks end up going the junior college route or signing with four-year schools. It’s hard to get a feel for a 17-18 year old player anyway. With this little of a look? Best of luck.
7: The Mariners pick 6th, and have about $10 million to spend. Who do they target in the first round?
College, college, college. The Mariners are college-heavy early on, anyway. That’s certainly not going to change. The name I hear most often talked about is Nick Gonzales; a middle-infielder who has put up monster numbers at New Mexico State that probably needs to move to second base at the highest level. Max Meyer and Reid Detmers are also strong possibilities; Meyer is a right-hander out of Minnesota who has outstanding stuff but size concerns, while Detmers is your atypical left-hander who shouldn’t need much time to develop. If someone like Emerson Hancock or Asa Lacy slipped, those are possibilities, as well. One way or another, Seattle should get a good one.
How do guys like Lacy and Meyer compare to the top college arms of recent years, like Casey Mize, Alek Manoah, Nick Lodolo, and maybe Logan Gilbert?
I don’t think any arm in this class is as good as Mize. but I would take those arms along with Hancock over the arms you mentioned. At least without the benefit of hindsight. I may be overselling it, but I am a big fan of this group of pitchers.
8: The M’s have preferred pitching in recent drafts. Do you expect that to continue?
Yep. I think part of that has to do with it being the strength of this draft? But also I just think it’s the organizational mantra right now. Even if they do take Gonzales in the first round, I would imagine it won’t take them long to add a pitcher or three to this limited class.
9: Forget this year’s draft class: the suspension of the season seems like it’d have a big impact on young players for many years. Everyone, from HS underclassmen to young players at the big league level are losing out on important development due to Covid-19. What does this do to a player 5-6 years down the road? Are these worries overblown – is playing actual games less important than other aspects of training/preparation?
I don’t think it can be overstated, to be honest. Look, there’s a lot of things you can simulate now, and training regiments get better and better. You cannot replace the experience that comes from games. You just can’t. It’s not a death sentence, but prospects are going to be behind the eight ball because of this, I don’t think there’s any question. Allow me to be unprofessional for a moment: This all sucks. It really, really sucks.
10: Any local players who figure to hear their name called this year?
I can’t see any preps from this year going in the first five rounds, but could see a couple of local college arms. Stevie Emmanuel from UW is a 6-foot-5 right-hander who can get his fastball into the mid 90s and shows a pretty good breaking-ball when he’s at his best. The guy I’d target from the Huskies, however, is Braiden Ward. Some questions about how much offensive upside he has, but think of a faster Braden Bishop. A much faster Braden Bishop, in fact. Scouts are mixed on him as a pro prospect, but I could see him being a very solid fourth outfielder — maybe a starter if the hit tool can be even average.
_________________________________________________________
The MLB draft kicks off today at 4pm, with the first round (including the first Competitive Balance round) today on MLB Network, and the balance coming tomorrow. The M’s have one pick today, the #6 overall pick (you could, if you wanted, say that the M’s are the #6 org today), and then the #43 pick tomorrow along with pick #64 in the second Competitive Balance round, compensation from their trade of Omar Narvaez.
Finally, Black Lives Matter.
[Edit to add: the M’s first pick, and #6 overall, is U. of Georgia right-hander Emerson Hancock.
Check out the FB/CH combo here. Touches high-90s. Great sophomore season last year, and had 34 Ks to 3 BB in 24 IP this year.]
Cactus League Nights: Mariners at Brewers – The Spin Zone
Taijuan Walker vs. Corbin Burnes, 7:05pm
After an evening game against the Dodgers, the M’s have a true night game against the Milwaukee Brewers, who’ve been to the playoffs in consecutive years. In many ways, the Brewers are the model the M’s look to for their shortened rebuild. The Brewers had been adrift for several years after a brilliant 2011 run ended in the NLCS. After a couple of years of pretty-good and hanging around .500, they cleaned house in the FO, and had two down years in 2015 and 2016. But the stars aligned in 2017 thanks to an out-of-nowhere pitching staff, headlined by Chase Anderson, Zach Davies, and Jimmy Nelson. Their bullpen had a great closer, and the intriguing set-up man Josh Hader made his debut. KPB import Eric Thames got a lot of attention, but the team was led by that great staff. So, before 2018, they saw their contention window open, and they went for it. In came not only CF Lorenzo Cain, but also Christian Yelich thanks to a trade with the Marlins that now looks like one of the bigger heists in MLB history. Their pitching staff hasn’t recreated the magic that carried them in 2017, but of course it no longer needs to. At this point, it’s their line-up that’s one of the best in the National League, and they enter 2020 with Yelich under a brand new contract extension. They’re one of the better teams – and better stories – in recent years, and I think the M’s are particularly drawn to that out of nowhere rotation, a rotation that didn’t boast big strikeout guys or blistering velocities.
Of course, the M’s have to show that they can actually develop pitchers into effective MLB weapons. It’s all well and good to *say* that pitchers can be effective without big time heaters, but it’s another thing to show that you can coach such arms to sustained big league success. The M’s need to get their staff – projected to be among the game’s worst – to much, much higher levels of performance. With a big shake-up in the big league coaching staff, that’s a possibility, but it’ll take some work.
We got an early example of some of that work the other day, when Justus Sheffield had a great game against the Giants (admittedly, not exactly Murderer’s Row) with his brand new fastball: a sinker. This is a good sign, and something I advocated he try when he came back from his minor league re-set last year. With his freakishly low spin rates AND low spin efficiency, his fastball simply isn’t designed to be a swing and miss pitch. With more arm-side run and more natural sink, he could settle in as a ground ball guy who gets poor contact. I’d be worried – I *am* worried – about platoon splits with that approach, but his slider has been surprisingly effective against righties, which ameliorates those concerns.
Sheffield’s low spin rates highlights my issue with that metric. Sure, Sheffield’s spin rates are terrible. Tonight’s opposing starter, Corbin Burnes had absolutely elite spin rates on his four-seam fastball, which led him to be tabbed as a breakout candidate for the Brewers last year. Burnes has been able to produce very good strikeout totals thanks in part to his high-spin fastball. But it didn’t make him *effective.* He gave up 52 runs in 49 IP last season, and was demoted first to the bullpen and then to the minors. Chris Stratton’s elite spin rate couldn’t save him from being DFA’d. It’s not the spin or movement are immaterial – it’s just that the metric of raw spin rate flattens or ignores context.
One consequence of the race for spin has been the near-abandoning of the sinker. Is it a worry that Sheffield’s going to a pitch everyone’s telling their pitchers to stop throwing? No, not really. At some level, if teams are moving away from a pitch/approach, meaning that batters see more and more of a similar attack pattern, the bigger the impact of teaching that ignored pitch could be. If the league suddenly moves one way, it can sometimes be advantageous to go the other. We saw that last year with the Cincinnati Reds. Among qualified pitchers, only 22 had cumulative (positive) run values with sinkers above 2 runs. Julio Teheran and Mike Soroka led the way with Atlanta, but four of the top 20 played for the Reds: Sonny Gray, Luis Castillo, Trevor Bauer, and Anthony DeSclafini. The Reds have been awful in the pitching department for years, but a big change at pitching coach followed by this season’s overhaul of coaching and development (including hiring Driveline founder and friend of the blog Kyle Boddy) has already paid off, and make them one of the most intriguing teams in 2020…along with their rivals in the Central, Milwaukee.
To be fair: the Reds pitchers’ sinkers don’t look a lot like Sheffield’s. Gray in particular throws a particularly high spin variety, and they work more on armside run – in using that spin to generate non-“rise” movement. A low spin sinker will sink, but that may not be enough. By spin, Sheffield’s sinker may look a lot like Texas’ Ariel Jurado’s. So far at least, you do not want a sinker like Ariel Jurado’s. If Sheff can get some improved efficiency or a good combo with his slider, the low spin won’t be too much of a problem, but I think the change-up will be a big pitch for him going forward. They can pair really well with sinkers, as the aforementioned Luis Castillo shows.
This’ll be a great showcase for Taijuan Walker, too. After glowing reports about his work in a “B” game, it’ll be nice to see him on TV and facing a real line-up.
1: Long, 2B
2: White, DH
3: Vogelbach, 1B
4: Lewis, RF
5: Marmolejos, LF
6: Crawford, SS
7: Nola, C
8: Lopes, 3B
9: Smith, CF
SP: Walker