*Apologies for the bad writing, as this is my first-ever community post on FanGraphs.*

At the time of this writing, it’s been seven days since rosters expanded in the major leagues. Still, the International League (AAA) home-run leader has yet to appear in a major-league game season. Since the 2000 season, there have been three International League home-run champions that had not appeared in a major-league game that same season. Bryce Brentz, leading that league with 31 home runs and winner of the Triple-A Home Run Derby, is about to be fourth.

The Red Sox of the old days had the reputation of being offensive powerhouses by working long at-bats and possessing big power in the middle of the lineup. This year, it’s been quite the opposite. Red Sox pitching has been absolutely amazing this season; the pitching WAR is tied for second place (with the Dodgers) while also having the fourth-best ERA in the majors at 3.76 ERA. Compared to how great the Red Sox pitching is, the hitting is bad. REALLY BAD. Their pitching and hitting are night and day. It’s well documented that the Red Sox aren’t hitting for power this year, sitting dead last in the AL with only 146 home runs. Perhaps teams don’t need to hit home runs to be productive? The advanced metrics say otherwise. Out of all qualified players, the Red Sox batter with the highest wRC+ is Dustin Pedroia who has a 106 wRC+, and 2016 MVP runner-up Mookie Betts is running a 101 wRC+. All in all, the Red Sox offense has been below average this season. The emergence of Rafael Devers and the spark that Eduardo Nunez has provided to the Red Sox have both softened the blow, but there still appears to be a glaring weakness.

In the absence of David Ortiz, Hanley Ramirez was supposed to step up and become a middle-of-the-order power threat. What’s inexcusable is his performance versus lefties this year. As someone who’s destroyed lefties his entire career, he’s suddenly slashing .194/.312/.419 against lefties in 2017. His career OPS/wRC+ vs. lefties is .902 OPS and 138 wRC+ respectively.

HanRam has been having one of his worst seasons hitting-wise versus lefties. Despite insisting that he will improve against lefties, Red Sox fans have yet to see the results come out.

Another factor is Chris Young’s performance. Chris Young was brought to Boston to club lefties. He’s always been able to hit them, and his splits against lefties prove just that.

Discarding 2014 and this current season, that chart is a thing of beauty. Chris Young’s performance this year has been concerning; he hasn’t had an RBI since August 6! Chris Young was a player who was specifically brought onto this roster for the specific purpose of facing tough lefties. He is having his worst season hitting lefties yet. As of right now, he is batting only .184 against lefties this season with one home run, four extra-base hits, and four RBI.

The Red Sox need Bryce Brentz. Brentz certainly has the prospect pedigree, being drafted by Red Sox in the first round of the 2010 Major League Baseball Draft out of South-Doyle High School. Once rated as the No. 5 prospect in the Red Sox system, he stood out with his plus raw power. FanGraphs’ Kiley McDaniel had this to say about him a few years back:

“Brentz has easy plus raw power from the right side and is a solid athlete, but it doesn’t translate to defense, where his fringy arm limits him to left field. There’s some holes, lots of swing and miss and trouble with spin from right-handed pitchers, but also 20-25 homer power with a floor of a solid platoon bat.”

The key word here is “solid platoon bat,” something he’s finally evolved into this year. This year, down in Triple-A, when facing left-handed hitters, Brentz was hitting .279 with nine home runs, 25 RBI, and 17 walks. His OPS against lefties is 391 points higher than Chris Young’s OPS in the majors this season (.957 OPS). Rhys Hoskins, who took the majors by storm, was the only player ahead of him in the IL in terms of wRC+.

Brentz had worked with PawSox hitting coach Rich Gedman this past offseason, which has suddenly changed him into someone who destroys left-handed pitchers and is at least passable against righties. By introducing a toe-tapping procedure to Bryce Brentz, Gedman has turned him into a major home-run threat. I think it’s time to believe that after 6+ seasons in the minor leagues, Bryce Brentz finally has things figured out.

The basis behind why Dave Dombrowski won’t call up Bryce Brentz is, to say the least, questionable.

Dave Dombrowski said IL HR champ Bryce Brentz willl not get callup from Pawtucket. Brentz hit 31 HR but no 40-man roster spot available.

— Nick Cafardo (@nickcafardo) September 4, 2017

No 40-man roster spot available? C’mon. Off the top of my head, I could name off a few minor leaguers who don’t deserve this spot over Brentz. Most notably, the walk machine himself, Henry Owens. Owens was sent down to Double-A to work on mechanics, but instead, he’s walking 8.68 batters per 9. Ben Taylor, who made the Opening Day roster for the Red Sox, has had considerable minor-league success, but the results haven’t translated to the majors. He’ll most likely end up as a career middle reliever or minor-league journeyman. Sure, these players have their uses, but they don’t deserve their spots as much as Brentz does. After his hard work in the offseason, his performance needs to warrant him a 40-man spot. Additionally, after Chris Young becomes a free agent next year, Brentz can serve as the fourth outfield for the Red Sox in 2018. If the Red Sox don’t add Brentz to the 40-man by the offseason, he’ll become a free agent. It’s almost guaranteed that a team such as the Athletics or the Reds would be willing to give him a chance.

There’s another problem. At the moment, the Red Sox really lack good pinch-hitters. When your best hitters off the bench are Brock Holt, Sandy Leon, Rajai Davis, etc, the outcome looks really bleak. Brentz is a minor-league veteran who is a power threat off the bench, something the Sox currently lack. His career hasn’t progressed much (until now at least) since he shot himself in the leg during the spring training of 2013. If fact, if you go to some online forums, his spring-training incident has created tons of puns that have to with guns; the former top prospect had become a joke. Similar to the rest of the “comeback” stories (such as Rich Hill, Eric Thames, etc) that fans have loved to watch in recent seasons, the story of Bryce Brentz should warm the hearts of fans.

Something else stands out. During the Red Sox’s recent 19-inning game, this tweet was sent out. While it may have been mostly a joke, it really exemplifies the lack of power the Red Sox have.

Brentz would have already homered this inning

— Red Sox Stats (@redsoxstats) September 6, 2017

This really speaks about the Red Sox offense. Bryce Brentz is the spark plug that they need.

As seen by the Nationals calling up Victor Robles just the other day (considered late), the Red Sox certainly still have time to call up Bryce Brentz. If any Red Sox personnel is reading this, the rest of Red Sox Nation and I have this to say to you: “Hey, It’s worth giving Brentz a shot.” He’s deserved it.

When the Houston Astros sent two of their top pitching prospects, Vince Velasquez and Mark Appel, to the Philadelphia Phillies for Ken Giles in December 2015, they were expecting an excellent flame-throwing reliever, and possibly their closer of the future. In his first two years in the league, Giles amassed a 1.56 ERA in 115.2 innings. His work as a setup man/closer went largely unappreciated due to the losing nature of the Phillies, but Giles pitched like one of the best relievers in the game.

But his first year in Houston did not go as planned. Giles couldn’t maintain a hold of the closer job, as he blew five of his 20 save opportunities and finished with a 4.11 ERA. His 2.86 FIP proved he might have suffered from bad luck, and he still displayed incredible stuff (nearly 14 K/9), but he did not execute as expected or needed for the Astros.

2017 has been a different story for Giles. His 29 saves rank ninth in the league, and he has blown only three opportunities this season. His 2.30 ERA is legitimate, supported by a 2.14 FIP. Giles has been one of the best closers in baseball, but his name is hardly mentioned among the top guys in the league. And he’s been especially locked in of late.

Last night (September 5th at the time of writing this), Giles struck out the side in a 10-pitch inning to earn the save against the Seattle Mariners. The only ball he threw came when the batter barely checked his swing. Here he is hitting triple digits on the outside corner to get Ben Gamel looking and close out the game:

It was the second night in a row that he struck out the side for 1-2-3 ninth.

Since June 7th, Giles has a minuscule 0.86 ERA and .147 average against. FIP will rarely support a mark that low, but his 1.57 mark in that category is still exceptional. He’s striking out more batters and walking fewer, accumulating a K-BB% of 31.3%.

Giles has given up one run since July 16th, in 20.1 innings of work. His FIP is under 1, at an absurd 0.82, and he’s sporting a ridiculous 45.1% K-BB% in that time. He has also show the ability to be stretched out of late, as he has gone 1.2 or more innings in three of his last ten appearances. What has made him so effective this season?

It all starts with the slider for Giles, which ranks third in run value among relievers at 12.9 runs. Run values aren’t the best metric, but they definitely give you an idea of the effectiveness of a pitch. Just look at it:

The pitch starts at the “TEXAS” on Rougned Odor’s jersey and finishes below his knees. There is about nothing a hitter can do with that.

Look at a heat map, by pitcher viewpoint, of Giles slider’s location. He is burying the majority of his sliders along the bottom of the zone. Now look at a heat map of the average against the pitch, by zone. Where the majority of the pitches are going, hitters aren’t doing much with. At all. Per Brooks Baseball, hitters have only put the ball in fair territory on 25% of their swings at the pitch. They rarely put the ball in play, and they don’t do much with it when they do.

But this is actually not new for Giles. He was third last year in slider run value among relievers, at 12.6 runs. Where Giles has greatly improved his effectiveness is with his fastball. It was worth a run value of -13.3 in 2016, but it’s currently sitting at 3.4 this year. It has not been incredible, but paired with the slider, it doesn’t need to be.

Here is a comparison of his fastball in 2016 vs. 2017:

The batted-ball numbers are down across the board. He’s throwing it in the strike zone more often as well, which would cause you to expect he is pitching more to contact with the pitch. However, the Contact% has steeply declined, and the swinging-strike rate is way up. Obviously, with a 137 wRC+ allowed this year, the pitch is still not great. But when you have a slider running a -14 wRC+, it does not need to be.

Here is a heat map comparison of the two pitches: 2016 vs. 2017

The spray is much tighter in 2017, and he is throwing across the middle of the zone a whole lot less. Improved command of a pitch will obviously lead to more success. But another element might be involved in the improvement of his fastball. Giles has added nearly four inches of horizontal movement this year, from -1.7 to -5.6.

A 2016 fastball:

And the fastball from last night again:

The run to the right on the pitch is clear. Movement of any kind will always help to keep a hitter off balance, and while we can’t be sure, it looks like this may be what has given life to Giles’ fastball. His confidence with the pitch has grown, as his usage of it exploded from roughly 50% to 68.4% in August. And it appears this improved fastball may be keying his emergence as one the best closers in the game.

Giles lost some respect and notoriety with his poor 2016. But with the year he has put together so far, especially the way he’s pitching of late, he has earned all of that, and then some, back. He’s locking down the back of Houston’s bullpen. The Cleveland Indians displayed the importance of relievers in the playoffs last season, so don’t be too surprised if Giles is at the forefront of a charge to the World Series for the best team in the American League.

With Jarrod Dyson set to be a free agent, and Leonys Martin both ineffective and DFA’d twice, there has been some uncertainty among Seattle Mariners fans regarding who will patrol center field for the team in 2018. Luckily for Mariners fans, they have an internal option who is potentially an above-average player already playing for their favorite team: Guillermo Heredia.

At 26, Heredia is a bit old to just be emerging. Though unlike other players his age, his late arrival to the major leagues has nothing to do with his ability. Heredia defected from Cuba in January of 2015, just a few weeks before his 24^th birthday. Before defecting, Baseball America ranked Heredia as the 11^th best prospect in Cuba. He was signed by the Mariners in February 2016, after sitting out the entire 2015 season.

Heredia, considered by most to be a glove-first prospect, started the year hot with the bat in AA Jackson, hitting .293/.405/.376 in 260 plate appearances while living up to his defensive reputation. Heredia walked more times (36) than he struck out (32) and earned a promotion to AAA Tacoma after just 58 games. Heredia’s 35 AAA games—where he hit .312/.378/.414—were split by a cup of coffee when the major league club. In AAA, Heredia improved his strikeout rate to 9.6%, while his walk rate fell to 7.5%, but his combination of solid on-base skills and great defense earned him a call up to the majors for good on August 22^nd.

Heredia made the most of his cup of coffee, hitting a solid .250/.349/.315, drawing 12 walks against just 15 strikeouts in a small sample of 107 plate appearances. Thanks to his strong on-base skills, and stellar defense, Heredia managed 0.4 WAR in just 45 games — with most of his playing time coming as a late-inning defensive replacement.

Despite his stellar defensive reputation, Heredia was relegated to corner outfield for all but one game of 2016 due to Leonys Martin’s stellar defense in center. Still, Heredia managed to make an impression. Heredia passed the eye test, and scored positively in both UZR/150 (+7.2) and DRS (+3). But what stood out most was his throwing arm. This throw made me a believer that among his many pretty good skills, he had at least one that was elite:

Petit out after challenge

He made an equally impressive throw this season to get George Springer trying to go from first to third, an out that proved pivotal in the Mariners securing a series win against the Astros:

Heredia nabs Springer at third

In just 705 innings in the outfield this season, Heredia has four outfield assists and +2.3 rating in the ARM component of UZR. His arm is an asset, and potentially one of the better throwing arms in the league.

Heredia’s scores in the range component of UZR were positive in 2016, and have been negative in 2017, for a total of -2.9 in 705 innings across three outfield positions. DRS is more favorable, giving him a +7 score across all three outfield positions, and exactly even at -1 in 251 innings in center. There’s no doubt he has the speed to play there, though his route efficiency is in question. Still, Heredia has nabbed 19 out-of-zone plays in center this season, and can outrun plenty of his poor jumps. Across all three outfield positions, he has scored +0.0 UZR, and +0.3 UZR/150. Even the most pessimistic evaluation of his defense would likely call him slightly below average in center.

If you’re someone that does hold the pessimistic outlook on his defense, then his bat would have to justify his playing time. The good news is Heredia now has a little more than two-thirds of a full season’s worth of plate appearances, and has steadily improved.

Heredia is hitting .271/.344/.368 (97 wRC+) in 450 career plate appearances, with a solid 14.5% strikeout rate, and decent 6.1% walk rate. He’s not riding an unsustainably high BABIP, either — his BABIP sits at .310, perfectly reasonable for someone with well above-average speed like Heredia.

In 34 games in the second half of 2017, Heredia has found a little more power: his first half ISO was just .091; it currently sits at .137 in the second half. Nine of his extra-base hits came in 208 plate appearances before the break, while 12 (11 doubles, 1 home run) have come after.

Even more encouraging is the fact that Heredia isn’t just a pull, or slap, hitter. Heredia’s career numbers split by where the ball is hit show that he can be effective hitting to any part of the field.

(Since walks aren’t put into play, this split is just AVG/SLG)

Pull: .333/.571
Center: .308/.342
Opposite: .323/.376

Essentially, Heredia only has power on his pull side, but can get on base hitting the ball in any direction.

There is one elephant in the room, though: despite his outstanding speed, Heredia just can’t steal bases. Perhaps he can learn how to get better jumps as he gains experience. It’s important to note that he missed his entire age-24 season trying to become eligible to sign with a team. But so far, Heredia has shown that he’s probably best utilizing his speed once the ball is put in play, rather than trying to advance via the steal. Between the minors and majors, Heredia has seven steals and has been caught 11 times.

Heredia can be an effective baserunner outside of when the ball is being pitched, though. He’s turned numerous singles into doubles by hustling out of the box, and shown that he can take two bases on a wild pitch If the catcher is lollygagging, as he did against Boston earlier this year:

Gamel scores on a wild pitch, ties the game

What the Mariners have in Heredia is a raw, speedy athlete with an absolute cannon for an arm, above-average on-base skills, and below-average, but developing, power. Heredia might never hit more than 10 home runs in a season. He might never steal more than 10 bases, either. But he’s amassed 1.2 WAR and posted a .344 OBP while playing at the very minimum passable defense in center field, with the upside for better.

He’s not Jarrod Dyson with the glove. He’s not Andrew McCutchen at the plate. What he is, though, is a competent offensive and defensive player with untapped potential. Even if he never improves, he looks capable of giving Seattle a 2-win center fielder going forward. Even a slight improvement could turn him into an above-average player, and one who is under team control for five more years.

I went over the starters version of dScore here, so I’m not going to re-visit that here. I’ll just jump right in with the list!

Risers/Fallers

Danny Salazar (+16) – dScore never gave up on him, despite him being absolute trash early on this year. He came back and dominated, launching him up the ranks even farther in the process. Current status: injured. Again.

Sonny Gray (newly ranked) – If there were any doubts about the Gray the Yankees dealt for, he’s actually surpassed his dScore from his fantastic 2015 season. He’s legit (again).

Alex Wood (-8) – Looks like the shoulder issues took a bit of a toll on his stuff, but dScore certainly isn’t out on him.

Dallas Keuchel (-8) – Keuchel’s stuff isn’t the issue. He’s still a buy for me.

Lance McCullers (-11) – Poor Astros. Maybe not too poor though; their aces have gotten hammered but haven’t fallen far at all. McCullers is going to bounce back.

The Studs

Some light flip-flopping at the top, with Kluber taking over at #1 from Scherzer. The Klubot’s been SO unconscious. Everyone else is pretty much the usual suspects.

The Young Breakouts (re-visited)

Zack Godley (11) – He’s keeping on keeping on. He barely moved since last month’s update, and I’m all-in on him being a stud going forward.

Luis Castillo (9) – He’s certainly done nothing to minimize the hype. In fact, he’s added a purely disgusting sinker to his arsenal and it’s raising the value of everything he throws. Also, from a quick glance at the Pitchf/x leaderboards, two things stand out to me. He seems to have two pitches that line up pretty closely to two top-end pitches: his four-seamer has a near clone in Luis Severino’s, and his changeup is incredibly similar to Danny Salazar’s. That’s a nasty combo.

James Paxton (15) 

The Test Case

Buck Farmer (20) – Okay, so to be honest when he showed up on this list, I absolutely thought it was a total whiff. By ERA he’s been a waste, but he’s really living on truly elite in-zone contact management, swinging strikes, K/BB, and hard-hit minimization. His pitch profile is middling (not bad, but not great either), so I really don’t think he’s going to stay this high much longer. He’s certainly doing enough to earn this spot right now, and I’d expect him to not run a 6+ ERA for much longer.

The Loaded Teams

Yankees – Luis Severino (12), Sonny Gray (17), Masahiro Tanaka (25) / Some teams have guys higher up, but the Yankees are loaded up and down.

Astros – Dallas Keuchel (14), Lance McCullers (19), Brad Peacock (18), Charlie Morton (23) / Similar to the Yankees. Morton and Peacock are having simply phenomenal years.

The Dropouts

Rich Hill (39)

Trevor Cahill (35)

Marcus Stroman (28)

Poor Rich Hill. Lost his perfect game, then lost the game, then lost his spot in the top 25. Cahill’s regressed to #DumpsterFireTrevor since his trade to the Royals. Stroman really didn’t fall that far…and his slider is still a work of art.

The Just Missed

Jordan Montgomery (26) – Too bad the Yankees couldn’t send down Sabathia instead. This kid is good.

Aaron Nola (27) – #Ace

Carlos Martinez (29) – Martinez simply teases ace upside, but frankly I think you can pretty much lump him and Chris Archer (30) in the same group — high strikeouts, too many baserunners and sub-ace starts to move into the top tier.

Dinelson Lamet (32) – He’s absolutely got the stuff. He could stand to work on his batted-ball control though.

Jimmy Nelson (34) – dScore buys his changes. He finished at #148 last year. I’ll call him a #2/3 going forward.

Notes from Farther Down

Jose Berrios is all the way down to 47. His last month cost him 19 spots, but frankly it could be much worse: Sean Manaea lost 39 spots, down to 87. Manaea really looks lost out there. I don’t want to point at the shoulder injury he had earlier this year since his performance really didn’t drop off after that…but I’m wondering if he’s suffering from some fatigue that’s not helped by that. He’s pretty much stopped throwing his toxic backfoot slider to righties, and that’s cost him his strikeouts. Michael Wacha is another Gray-like Phoenix: he’s up to 52 on the list, once again outperforming his 2015 year. I’m cautiously buying him as a #3 with upside. And finally, buzz round: Mike Clevinger (33), Alex Meyer (36), Robbie Ray (38), Rafael Montero (41), and Jacob Faria (43) are already ranked quite highly, and outside of Montero and maybe Meyer I could see all of them bumping up even higher. Clevinger’s really only consistency away from being a legitimate stud.

My next update will be the end-of-season update, so I think I’m going to do a larger ranking than just the top 25; maybe all the way down to 100. Enjoy the last month-plus!

The Twins are one of two teams in baseball competing for a wild-card spot without a qualified hitter inside the top 50 on FanGraphs’ WAR leaderboard. Venturing out beyond this window unveils two players the average baseball guru would guess are Thad Levine and Co.’s most valuable assets: Miguel Sano (injured; 2.5 fWAR) and Brian Dozier (2.7 fWAR). If “Thad Levine and Co.” was the name of an ’80s band — which I can’t confirm or deny — Eddie Rosario would be the rhythm guitarist capable of beautiful harmonies; forgotten, but essential to the end product.

Anytime a player of Rosario’s level comes into relevancy, the radar in my mind starts to tick, hoping to decipher what changed to bring about better results. Naturally, venturing to other outlets helps to answer that question quickly, leaving me satisfied and with one less idea for a future column. Other times, unsatisfied by the results of searching, a new narrative will linger in my mind long enough to expand such thoughts into a column. That’s exactly what took place with my thoughts on Rosario’s recent breakout.

If you’re looking for a deep dive into some of the finer aspects of Rosario’s changes, SB Nation’s Twinkie Town — unrelated to the apocalypse-proof snack — has what you’re looking for. I, however, was stuck on one general concept from a Star Tribune post at the end of April. In an attempt to not rob the outlet of its quote, I’ll paraphrase by citing that Rosario was looking to go up the middle and the other way more, in an effort to help him find comfort at the plate.

The midpoint of that sentence — “… go up the middle and the other way…” — is something I’ve heard so much in baseball circles that I’ve become numb to the concept. Most of the time when I see those words in citation of a change in approach, it’s backed up by said player’s batted-ball distribution. For Rosario, that was initially the case, but then something odd happened.

La Velle E. Neal III’s column for the Tribune — 80-grade name — was written at the end of April and jives with the barebones comparison of Rosario’s batted-ball distribution between 2016 and the first month of action in 2017.

2016 – Pull 36.1% / Middle 39.8% / Oppo 24.1%

2017 – Pull 26.9% / Middle 44.8% / Oppo 28.4%

Whether this created an intersection of adjustment and improvement, in a purely statistical sense, I would be skeptical. Rosario had a wRC+ of 86 in his full season of work from 2016 and April brought with it a discouraging 72 wRC+. He was pushing balls to the middle of the field more, but this dampened production wasn’t intended.

Even more spiteful of any theory linking Rosario’s batted-ball distribution the other way and casual success is breaking down the outfielder’s changes over time in relation to performance. Keep in mind the love for Rosario was spurred off the starting block recently, as the average fantasy owner got tired of struggling vets, and searched for the hot hand (Rob Arthur say what?!).

April 2017 – Pull 26.9% / Middle 44.8% / Oppo 28.4% / wRC+ 72 / 18.6% K

May 2017 – Pull 33.9% / Middle 38.5% / Oppo 27.7% / wRC+ 108 / 18.6% K

June 2017 – Pull 36.7% / Middle 38.3% / Oppo 25.0% / wRC+ 126 / 22.4% K

July 2017 – Pull 36.8% / Middle 35.3% / Oppo 27.9% / wRC+ 126 / 18.5% K

August 2017 – Pull 54.1% / Middle 29.7% / Oppo 16.2% / wRC+ 155 / 15.6% K

Total 2017 – Pull 38.0% / Middle 37.1% / Oppo 24.9% / wRC+ 118 / 18.7% K

Weird indeed. That statement about Rosario going the other way, and that concept leading to results, is a theory that just took a wrench to the gut in the form of this progression in 2017. A progressive tendency to pull the ball, met with better wRC+ numbers, and a fluctuating strikeout rate that — in the aggregate — is substantially lower than 2016.

Intuition took over as I began to formulate ideas on what exactly happened in this particular case of the missing culprit of success. One stuck, and to my dismay, it’s not as groundbreaking as I had hoped.

Seeing Rosario’s strikeout rate plummet this much, I theorized that staying up the middle, or to the other way, doesn’t always mean actually doing so in a way that results in tangible batted-ball changes. It’s all about the approach itself. By Rosario telling himself to approach the ball with anticipation of hitting it to the left-center gap, he was effectively saying see the ball deeper into the zone. This may have helped his ability to recognize pitches and judge the break on an offspeed pitch better, along with a plethora of other nuances that sum to cuts in his swing and miss tendencies of years prior.

But my theory wasn’t enough to inspire confidence in claim, so I went to an individual that I admired the presentation of at Boston’s Saberseminar, and subsequently connected with on the network that is Twitter: Dan Blewett, host of the Dear Baseball Gods podcast and pitching guru.

I asked him whether it made sense that when Rosario says he is going the other way, it may actually be a larger complex of changes taking place. His response was what I wanted to hear…

“Hitters who are dead-pull commit earlier to pitches, because they have to get their barrel farther out in front of the plate in the same amount of reaction time. This limits pull-hitters to only a small grouping of pitches that they can both hit hard and keep fair.

By taking an opposite-field approach to the plate, Rosario is watching pitches in deeper, and thus keeping his barrel in the hitting zone longer. For someone who was an extreme pull-hitter, ‘opposite field’ is somewhat relative, and lining balls up the middle with authority is a sign that his new approach is working, even if it’s not producing true opposite-field hits.

He’s making himself a vastly tougher out, and it’s a sign that he’s growing as a player.”

– Dan Blewett

The interesting thing about Rosario is that he wasn’t much of a dead-pull hitter last year, but still realized that his production lacked punch with the approach he carried. This concept of him staying toward the middle of the field and the other way is a roundabout way of saying what Dan Blewett points out above — Rosario is making himself a vastly tougher out, and growing as a player. He’s not going the other way more, but that middle/oppo approach allows him to see the ball deeper — fewer strikeouts — and recognize which pitches he can pull productively without creating the dead-pull approach that Blewett implies is futile for most.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens going forward with Rosario’s approach, as he has gotten pull-happy in the month of August, but has been unbelievably productive in the process. With hitting’s mental side as important as its mechanical side, I continue to think his April tweaks to take a left-center approach primed him for development as an asset, even as his batted-ball distribution changes like the weather.

Hearing that a player is trying to go up the middle, or the other way, is too general of a statement to capture all that a player is doing. Next time I hear those four words — going the other way — I’ll be a lot more inquisitive as to what else may actually be happening in the player’s approach. Cycles of adjustments are guaranteed in baseball; player analysis is catching those adjustments and hammering out the what and why.

A version of this post can be found on my site, BigThreeSports.com (to be published 8/27/2017).

I also tweet baseball… pretty much all the time — @LanceBrozdow

Rhys Hoskins is getting a lot of digi-ink recently. You may have read about him being only the third player ever to have eight dingers in his first 15 games. Or maybe the first player to have 19 RBI in those same games. Or how he’s walking nearly as much as he’s striking out. Or how he’s doing it with a BABIP flirting with the Mendoza line. Or how he’s done it all despite having only 64 plate appearances and after starting out 0-for-12. All these things are worth talking about.

None of those reasons acknowledge Hoskins in the context of the current Phillies lineup, though. Maybe it’s because the team is the clear-cut worst in the majors this year. Or how they’ve been so terrible the last few years that it mirrors their futility in the 90s. Or how they stand in such stark contrast to the organization’s great run from just a few short years ago. All of these things are worth not talking about.

But the way the this year’s team persists makes it important to look at Hoskins in their construct.

These numbers back up everything about Hoskins at the start of this piece. They also tell us a couple of other things about the rest of the current Phillies core, whose average age is 25. (Jorge Alfaro is excluded because he’s only played in nine games this year.)

Nick Williams has probably been the second-most exciting bat in the Phillies lineup this season, but his BABIP and K% also make him the biggest wild card moving forward. Cesar Hernandez is a worthwhile hitter who provides value in a few ways. Odubel Herrera goes through stretches that are equal parts brilliance and frustration. Freddy Galvis is a defense-first shortstop who isn’t a total black hole at the plate. And Maikel Franco may be genuinely concerning at this point, which could be why JP Crawford is seeing time at third base in AAA.

As members of the second-worst offense in baseball, do they provide a single reason to get excited when watching them? They can be compelling on a given night, but no one in that group has a game-altering skill that urges you to tune in or stick with them through a whole contest.

It’s more than not having a standout skill, though, and goes beyond being bad. It’s that this Phillies team’s greatest flaw often seems to be that they can handily beat themselves. How each individual performs at the plate can provide one example.

Galvis is the eighth-easiest out in baseball when he’s down in the count. Nick Williams would be up there if had enough at-bats to qualify. Odubel Herrera is in the top 50. Maikel Franco is 74th, but his overall game hasn’t struck fear into anyone in a couple years. Cesar Hernandez is quietly one of the better second basemen in the league, but he doesn’t offer nearly the offensive upside as Hoskins.

That likely makes Hoskins the best of the Phillies core at avoiding outs when behind in the count, and what contributes to him already being the team’s best hitter. Consider his crazy low BABIP and ability to walk and it gets easier to buy into. Yes, the sample size is small. But it’s also yielded results very similar to what his minor-league profile says to expect.

Hoskins isn’t just making outs at a lower rate than his teammates when down in the count. He’s shown himself to be adept at causing damage in such situations. That’s when he’s hit half of his eight home runs, meaning he doesn’t make it about just shortening up or taking a pitch. He simply doesn’t give a flip if he’s behind. He appears calm at all times. Combined with true talent, that is what makes for perhaps the most dangerous type of player.

Now, add that distinction to a lineup of other serviceable players where one or two of them grow. Add a pitcher or two to Aaron Nola, who’s becoming an ace. Think of other help coming from the minors. Things are looking much better for the Phillies, even if they come with conditions.

Rhys Hoskins has been excellent, but that’s not all. He’s clarifying Philadelphia’s path out of the basement, and possibly back to relevance, rather quickly.

Although strikeouts are at an all-time high, Kevin Pillar has continued to make consistent contact. Pillar’s swinging-strike rate is 8.0%, the 115^th highest mark out of 158 qualified major-league hitters. What makes Pillar interesting, however, is that he is near the top of the O-Swing% list (the percent of pitches outside the zone that a batter swings at), where he ranks 15^th in the majors with a mark of 38.1%. A low swinging-strike rate and high O-Swing% is an odd combination to have; it means that Pillar is making more contact than most, despite swinging at more would-be balls than most. It also means that he’s putting in play a lot of bad pitches to hit. Although some hitters are notoriously good at hitting pitches out of the zone (Vladimir Guerrero and Pablo Sandoval come to mind), Kevin Pillar is not, and it’s leading to a lot of weak contact for him.

Pillar’s 27.9 Hard% ranks 141^st in the majors. His 21.9 Soft% ranks as the 20^th highest. Here are Pillar’s average exit velocity, wOBA, and expected wOBA on balls in play, split into pitches in the zone and out of the zone (courtesy of Baseball Savant):

Clearly, Pillar’s weak contact is mostly coming on pitches out of the zone. I used Brooks Baseball’s zone charts to figure out exactly what pitches Pillar is chasing and hitting weakly. The main culprits appear to be fastballs in off the plate and fastballs above the zone.  He swings at these pitches 46.6% of the time and whiffs with only 11.5% of his swings. Here you can see how often he swings at fastballs in each location; here you can see how often he whiffs at them.

According to Baseball Savant, he has an average exit velocity of 73.1 mph, a .224 wOBA, and a .223 xwOBA on fastballs that are in, up, or both. For comparison, on all fastballs, he has an average exit velocity of 85.4 mph, a .302 wOBA, and a .332 xwOBA. Pillar is not only chasing fastballs out of the zone, but he’s putting them in play with regularity. This would not be a problem if he was squaring these balls up, but he’s actually one of the worst hitters in the majors when he puts these pitches in play. Out of the 135 right-handed hitters who have put at least 25 fastballs up and/or in in play, Kevin Pillar ranks 126^th in xwOBA. Meanwhile, only 15 other hitters have put more of these pitches in play.

Pillar’s biggest issue is his pitch selection. He not only swings at a lot of pitches out of the zone, but he swings at pitches that he is especially bad at hitting. However, his ability to make contact on these pitches also seems to be hurting him. Most hitters that chase pitches out of the zone as often as Pillar swing and miss much more often than Pillar does. So when they swing at a pitch out of the zone, it often only costs them a strike. Because Pillar tends to put these pitches in play with weak contact, it generally costs him an out. In fact, this is one of the reasons why we’re seeing so many hitters swing out of their shoes. Of course, part of the reason is a new emphasis on power and the belief that a strikeout is no worse than any other kind of out. But another reason is that with fewer than two strikes, swinging and missing is preferable to putting the ball in play weakly and making an out. Hitters certainly don’t come up to bat trying to swing and miss, but with fewer than two strikes, they would much rather swing and miss than make an out.

Now, I am not suggesting that Kevin Pillar should swing harder. Swinging harder would also lead to more swings and misses on pitches in the zone, which he currently hits very well. The best thing Pillar could do is lower his chase rate, as this would improve the quality of contact he makes while also putting him in more hitter-friendly counts. Of course, this is much easier said than done. While I am not going to try to predict the hitter that Pillar would be if he swung and missed more often — and I definitely won’t try to argue that he should try to miss when he swings — we can at least learn from Pillar that although contact is a good skill to have, it is not very useful without good pitch selection.

The Red Sox’s third-base problem was not solved by a veteran rental. No, it was solved by a sweet-hitting 20-year-old Dominican named Rafael Devers.

But before I explain Devers’ spectacular rise, I must set the stage for his entrance.

~~July 24th~~

It’s July 24th and the Red Sox have ground to a halt. Baseball’s non-waiver trade deadline is just eight days away and nearly the entire baseball community expects the Sox to trade for Todd Frazier.

Frazier, the third baseman for the White Sox, is in the midst of the worst season of his career. He’s hitting just .210 and his contract expires at the end of the year.

The Red Sox haven’t been able to gain traction since the All-Star break, going just 5-6. The Yankees, their ever-present rivals, are creeping up on them in the standings and have swooped in on a trade for Todd Frazier, even though many executives and analysts were sure the slugger would join the Red Sox.

Third base has been a huge issue for Boston, who has used eight (!) different players there. Collectively, Red Sox third basemen are slashing .227/.280/.320, marks that rank 27th, 29th, and 30th in the league, respectively. They have not only been terrible hitters, but they also lead the league in errors.

Dave Dombrowski decides to rectify the Red Sox’ third base issue by promoting top prospect Rafael Devers to the big leagues.

~~A Rafael Devers Profile~~

Rafael Devers was born on October 24th, 1996 in Sanchez, an aging port city in the Dominican Republic. He first started playing baseball at the age of five, inspired by his father, who played amateur ball. Devers grew up with baseball all around him and quickly showed immense talent.

In 2013, Devers signed with the Red Sox at just 17 years old. He was ranked as the number three international prospect in his class, and he signed with the Red Sox, his childhood favorite team, for $1.5 million. Devers entered the Red Sox organization as their 20th ranked prospect in a deep farm system.

Upon joining the Red Sox, Devers was placed in the Dominican Summer League (DSL), a place where new international signings go to work on their skills. Devers took the DSL by storm, batting .337/.445/.538 with three home runs in 28 games. He impressed everyone, by his ability to hit for both average and power, and also by his great batting eye — Devers walked more times than he struck out.

After tearing up the Dominican League, Devers was sent to the States, where he played in the Gulf Coast League. The Gulf Coast League, or GCL, is where first-year minor-league players are sent after being drafted or signed by their teams. Most of the players in the GCL have been drafted out of college or have just finished high school, meaning that at age 17, Devers was one of the youngest players in the league. Devers carved up the GCL, batting .312 with 11 doubles and four homers in 42 games.

After Devers’ wildly successful first year, he was rated as the Red Sox’ sixth-best prospect, and baseball’s 99th-best, all at just 18 years old. This was an incredible accomplishment, as Devers was the youngest player on Baseball America’s top-100 list that year.

In 2015, Devers was promoted to the Red Sox’ Low-A affiliate, the Greenville Drive, where he experienced full-season ball for the first time. There, he was matched up against much older opponents, being one of just seven position players under the age of 19 in the South Atlantic League. Devers played well in Greenville too, batting .288 with 38 doubles and 11 home runs in 115 games. During the 2015 season, Devers was selected to the Futures Game, an event during All-Star weekend that showcases baseball’s best young talent. After a season in Low-A, Devers was ranked as Boston’s second-best prospect, and baseball’s 18th-best. Devers jumped 81 spots on Baseball America’s top-100 in just one year, a remarkable achievement.

In 2016, Devers was promoted to the Red Sox’ High-A affiliate, the Salem Red Sox, at the age of 19. However, Devers hit a bump in the road in Salem. Among players much older than him, it appeared that Devers had finally met his match. In the first half of the season, he scuffled to a .233/.300/.305 line with just four home runs in 63 games.

However, Devers bounced back brilliantly after the All-Star break. He slashed an incredible .326/.367/.539, with seven home runs and 11 steals in 64 games. After this second-half breakout, Devers has not looked back in his meteoric rise to the majors.

In 2016, Devers’ defense finally started to catch up with his offense. Early on in his career, scouts considered moving him to first base, because of his heavy build. But Devers has worked hard on his defense, and has stayed at the hot corner. In High-A, Devers led all Carolina league third basemen in fielding percentage (.960), putouts (104), and assists (258).

After his outstanding second half in High-A, Devers earned a non-roster invitation to 2017 spring training with the Red Sox. This was a big step up for the 20-year-old Devers, but he wasn’t ready for it, batting 3 for 22 against big-league competition. Nevertheless, he earned a promotion to Double-A Portland, where he played for most of this year.

Devers was the Portland Red Sox’ standout player this year, socking 18 homers in addition to achieving an excellent .296/.366/.571 slash line. In 77 games, Devers jumped to number six in Baseball America’s most recent prospect rankings. He was also selected to participate in the MLB Futures Game for the second time.

Devers was promoted to Triple-A on July 14th, and continued to hit for both average and power while in Pawtucket. Devers became the third-youngest player ever to be promoted by the Red Sox to Triple-A, yet another reminder that he was playing extremely well for his age. The Dominican lefty hit an astounding .400 for the Pawtucket Red Sox, and he earned a promotion to the big leagues after just nine games in Triple-A.

When Devers debuted on July 25th, he was the youngest player in the major leagues, but you’d never know it. His first major-league hit was a home run (!), and during his 16 career major-league games, Devers has surprised everyone.

Scouting report

Devers has a very promising future, thanks to his ability to hit for both average and power. He has incredible raw power, and can spray the ball to all fields. His opposite-field power is unsurpassed among players his age. For example, when Devers hit two homers against the Indians on August 14th; one was a laser into the Green Monster seats in left field, and the other was a high drive into the Red Sox bullpen in right field.

Devers also has great bat speed, and he is able to hit pitches very far, and to any part of the field. On August 13th, Devers hit a 102.8 mph pitch into the Yankees bullpen, the fastest pitch ever hit for a home run in the pitch-tracking era.

Devers is not as polished as other recent Red Sox prospects like Andrew Benintendi, but he has a higher ceiling. I project that in his prime years he will hit around .285 with 30 home runs, 40 doubles, and five to ten stolen bases.

He has improved his defensive skills, but don’t expect him to be a Gold Glove-winning third baseman. I believe he will stay at the hot corner, as he is becoming more reliable and is improving his range. Overall, Devers projects to be an All-Star with a dependable glove and a reliable, middle-of-the-order bat.

Conclusion

As of August 15th, Devers is hitting .339 with six home runs, incredible statistics that show his ability is way beyond his years. I don’t mean to read too closely into Devers’ 62 career at-bats, but he has a very promising future.

Pairing Devers with other young Red Sox stars like Mookie Betts, Jackie Bradley jr. and Xander Bogaerts should help Boston stay at the top of the AL East for years. Devers gives Boston an entirely homegrown lineup, the dream of every major-league team.

Special thanks to Baseball Reference, Baseball America, and milb.com for the statistics I used in this post.

I would also like to thank NESN.com, the New Haven Register, and SB Nation’s Minor League Ball blog.

Prospect rankings are from Baseball America

Fenway Park Photo Credit: User: (WT-shared) Jtesla16 at wts wikivoyage [CC BY-SA 1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

At this point, we all know Joey Gallo. We know what he can and what he can’t do on a baseball field. We know his tendencies. We know his unidimensional approach to hitting. In short, we know Gallo is one of a kind and the true definition of an outlier, if anything. Drafted by the Texas Rangers in 2012, he’s been part of the Major League roster during various stints of the past three seasons, having played in just 157 games (as of August 13) since he made his debut, yet it feels like he’s been around forever probably given his uniqueness.

Gallo’s finally found a place in the Rangers’ lineup during this season. Playing most of games at third base thanks to an Adrian Beltre injury that kept him out of action for the first weeks of the season, then moving to first base and currently splitting time between the latter and the left outfield position, Joey is an irreplaceable piece of Texas’s roster at this point. He’s the second-most valuable player of the team by means of bWAR at 2.8, only trailing Elvis Andrus (3.4), while having stepped to the plate 108 fewer times, and all of this at just 23 years of age.

Anything of what has been introduced already may sound interesting and paint a good picture of a prospect, which – still – Gallo is. But it is looking at his numbers for the season when we truly find a gem of a player, or at least a unique one given his performance and how he’s achieving it. To the point, actually, that we can consider Joey Gallo’s 2017 season an unrepeatable one in the past, present and (maybe) the future of baseball. We have always had great players putting huge margins in different statistics between them and the field, but we have yet to see anyone accrue the overall stat line Gallo is putting together as a whole.

In order to try and find comparables to Joey’s season, I used batting data from 2002 to 2017, extracted from FanGraphs’ leaderboards. The timespan was selected due to batted-ball data being available at the site from the 2002 season on, giving us a finer grain of detail at the players and their batting profiles during the selected seasons. Just to kick things off, we can introduce Gallo as a not-so-good hitter by looking at his PA/H ratio, which ranks as the 11th worst (5.5 PAs per hit) among the 2413 player seasons contained in the subset. Basically, Gallo suffers to get a hit every time he goes to the plate, and not by little (the average PA/H sits at 4.1). What starts to make things interesting is that of the 11 worst PA/H hitters, Joey Gallo is the only one with more HR than 1B/2B/3B, with home runs making up 47.4% of his hits (the next guy of those 11 is 2012 Adam Dunn with a 37.2% percentage).

We already know Gallo struggles to get hits. We know that most of his hits – almost half of them – end up being home runs. But, has Joey Gallo been just unlucky when making contact with the ball? It doesn’t look like it. There have only been five players with a K% of 35%+ in the past 15 seasons. Joey Gallo leads the pack at 37.8%, followed by 2013 Chris Carter and 2017 Trevor Story (both at 36.2%), 2017 Miguel Sano (35.6%) and 2010 Mark Reynolds (35.4%). Sadly for Gallo, his BB/K ratio doesn’t look like anything great at 0.34, so he comes out pretty much as a hit-or-miss guy.

His BABIP sits at .238 right now (26th-lowest among 2413 player seasons) and combined with his power and the percentage of his hits that go over the fences, that’s pretty low production when his hit balls don’t go the distance. The good thing for Gallo, again, is that he barely hits grounders, nor even liners. His GB/FB ratio is 0.43, trailing only a couple of Frank Thomas (who was like a monster truck turned into a mountain turned into a human being) seasons when he put up values of 0.42 (2006) and 0.40 (2002) GB/FB. That may lead you to think that we have seen other players like Gallo during the history of the sport, and indeed we have if looking at isolated statistics. But what if we add the percentages of line drives, ground balls and fly balls into the equation, plus a couple more metrics?

Gallo’s hitting profile just hasn’t existed prior to this season and will probably never be replicated. It is weird. It is unique. It is just in its own universe. Not only does Joey posess the lowest LD% of the past 15 years; he also has some of the lowest marks in GB% and IFFB% at the same time, while posting the highest FB% and – by far – HR/FB ratio of that timespan. No one has ever reached a 30%+ HR/FB ratio while maintaining a FB% of batted balls over 44% except Gallo. That’s something insane, at the minimum. Just in case there was any doubt left about what hitting profile Gallo represents best, I think he is a clear go-big-or-go-home advocate.

So Joey Gallo is a strikeout machine, that’s taken for granted. But he makes up for it with an otherworldly approach to hitting and some power not seen to this point in time, even after more than a hundred seasons of baseball have been played. As of August 13, Gallo ranks 26th in Baseball-Reference.com’s oWAR/PA among players with at least 350 PA, and while he’s nothing out of this world in terms of defensive production, his offensive performances have been vital for the Rangers. Added to his ridiculous age, he’s one of the most promising and offensive-minded players in baseball, and one that truly stands out from the field of players that can be seen each day at the majors’ ballparks.

It all comes down to a simple two-option question with Gallo. You either hate him or love him. But most of all and on top of that, what we should do is appreciate it, because we have not seen and will probably never see something quite like what he’s doing any time soon.

A little more than 36 years ago, a pitcher by the name of Fernando Valenzuela, from Mexico, completed his first game with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Up to that point he had pitched 17.2 innings in 10 games, all of them during the 1980 season, giving up 10 hits, no earned runs nor homers, and accruing 16 strikeouts. But it was in 1981 when Valuenzuela would see his first start against Houston in a game that ended being a five-hit shutout for the Mexican, starting what became to be known as “Fernandomania.”

Fast-forward to 2016 and turn your eyes to Chicago. The Cubs had a season for the ages and won the World Series after one of the largest droughts you could imagine. At the catcher position, three players: Miguel Montero, David Ross and Willson Contreras. Montero and Ross ate virtually all of the games from the start of the seasons up to mid-June, the moment Contreras made his first major-league appearance for the Cubs after being acquired by the club in 2009 as an amateur free agent. Since he started his first game on June 20 against the St. Louis Cardinals, he became the go-to catcher for Chicago and established himself as the next big thing at the plate, given the expected retirement of Ross and the unexpected words of wisdom by Montero earlier this season that would end with him out of the clubhouse.

But let’s not get lost in the context of this story, and focus on our guy, Willson Contreras. The Venezuelan had a great stint in 2016, posting a more than respectable .282/.357/.488 slash line with a slightly high BABIP of .339. He walked and struck out above average, but was able to get up to 12 home runs to make up for it, while reaching a 126 wRC+. Definitely not a bad start of a career. The thing is, Contreras is having an even better second season with the Cubs in 2017, and the Willson-mania is starting to get – or should be getting – traction, with the catcher being named the National Player of the Week in early August.

Projection models expected Contreras to keep his pace during this campaign in most of the statistics, and none forecast a huge jump in his numbers from last year to this one. It could even be said that a little, even by a hair, regression was actually expected after what he did in 2016. The problem these projections are facing today is the same as always: Willson is killing them and outpacing the expected numbers they proposed when calculated over spring. Just for starters, and looking at FanGraphs’ Depth Charts projection system, it fixed Contreras at an expected 117 games, played with 490 plate appearances. As of August 10, he has already played 101 games and appeared 374 times at the plate. Yes, he’s been given the reins of Chicago’s catcher slot and his knees and holding out.

To paint a clearer picture of how Willson’s season is going in relation with what was expected from him, here is a simple fancy table.

Projection systems were right in that regression will make a living out of Contreras this season, not that it wasn’t to be expected, though. His AVG and OBP, along with his BABIP, have decreased to more average-ish values, true. But there are numbers that call for a great progression in the catcher’s game. He’s almost already doubled his home-run production from 2016, and will have a chance to even double his DC projection from now to the end of the season. He’s been able to accumulate 0.9 more points in WAR, and his wRC+ has lowered but is still on point, much higher than projections put it at at the start of the campaign, when they saw Willson as an slightly better than average hitter at best.

Moving onto other metrics not included in the table above and to put his improvement in context, what he’s doing this season — he’s doing it with a WPA/LI of 1.35 instead of the 0.6 he had in 2016 (this is, he’s producing more on toughest situations while giving his team more chances of winning games). Moreover, his Clutch value is 0.72 (1.6 points over his past season’s minus-0.88), midway between what we could consider an above average-to-great clutch player.

His batted-ball statistics are also worth looking at. In order to do it, I combined the data from 2016 and this season as of August 10. Here are the top ten players in terms of HR/FB over this period of time.

Contreras is a ground-ball hitter. There is nothing to discuss about that, and that is something he may want to change in order to improve his production on the long run. Of the ten players included in the table above, he has the third-highest GB/FB value at 1.79, the highest GB% at 53.4% and the second-lowest LD% at 16.8%. What is helping him, though, is his high HR/FB ratio, which is making is deep and high batted balls go over the fence over one quarter of the times he hits them. It is also interesting to see how his BABIP is still at a good .325 while having such a high ground-ball percentage and putting up hits to the infield 11.4% of the time.

All in all, Contreras is the third-best Cub by wRC+ this season, only behind Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo, while having considerably fewer plate appearances than those two. Chicago seems to have found a potential gem in their system after eight years of waiting, and the catcher position sure seems covered at Windy City. If only Contreras could hone the little things that may be holding his production back a hair, we would definitely experience the Willson-mania on full swing.