Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been looking into how a players’ stats, age, and prospect status can be used to predict whether he’ll ever play in the majors. I used a methodology that I named KATOH (after Yankees prospect Gosuke Katoh), which consists of running a probit regression analysis. In a nutshell, a probit regression tells us how a variety of inputs can predict the probability of an event that has two possible outcomes — such as whether or not a player will make it to the majors. While KATOH technically predicts the likelihood that a player will reach the majors, I’d argue it can also serve as a decent proxy for major league success. If something makes a player more likely to make the majors, there’s a good chance it also makes him more likely to succeed there. This hypothesis may be less true for players at the Triple-A level since such a high proportion of these players make it to the majors, but I still think it provides some insight. To address this issue, In the future, I plan to engineer an alternative methodology that takes into account how a player performs in the majors, rather than his just getting there.

For hitters in Low-A and High-A, age, strikeout rate, ISO, BABIP, and whether or not he was deemed a top 100 prospect by Baseball America all played a role in forecasting future success. And walk rate, while not predictive for players in A-ball, added a little bit to the model for Double-A hitters. Today, I’ll look into what KATOH has to say about players in Triple-A leagues. Due to varying offensive environments in different years and leagues, all players’ stats were adjusted to reflect his league’s average for that year. I also only considered what happened during or after the sample season. So if a former big leaguer spends the full season in Triple-A, he’s only considered to have “made it to the majors” if he resurfaces again. For those interested, here’s the R output based on all players with at least 400 plate appearances in a season in Triple-A from 1995-2011.

This output looks pretty similar to what we saw for Double-A hitters, including the “I(Age^2)” coefficient, which adds a bit of nuance into how a players’ age can predict his future success. But in this version, there’s also an interaction between ISO and age. Basically, this says that the ability to hit for power is much more important for older players than younger players at the Triple-A league level.

By clicking here, you can see what KATOH spits out for all players who logged at least 250 PA’s in Triple-A as of July 7th. . I also included a few interesting players who missed the 250 PA cut off, including Mookie Betts, Rob Refsnyder, Ramon Flores, and Kris Bryant. Here’s an excerpt of the top players from Triple-A this year. Joc Pederson tops the charts with an impressive 99.91% probability. Many of these players have already played in the majors, so these values can be interpreted as the odds that said player will play in the majors in the future.

Now that I’ve gone through all levels of full-season ball, I’ll start at the bottom and cycle through the short-season leagues. These samples will be pretty small, but perhaps not completely useless now that those players have a few weeks’ worth of games under their belts. At the very least, it will be interesting to see what KATOH’s able to tell us about batters so far away from the big leagues, even if it’s a little premature to ask KATOH about 2014’s players.

If you’re an East Coaster  — like myself — and you stayed up late enough to watch the Angels-Mariners game on Saturday night, you were in for treat. The game, based on the pitching matchup alone, would have been an exciting one to watch: Garrett Richards versus Felix Hernandez. There’s a fair argument that Hernandez is the best pitcher in baseball right now. The same could be said about Clayton Kershaw, but if you’re talking about pitchers who have been healthy for the whole season, then King Felix is your guy.

Richards has been no slouch either, turning himself into the bona-fide ace in Anaheim, pitching to a ERA/FIP/xFIP line of 2.55/2.69/3.21, which is good for a WAR of 3.2. This game previewed as more of pitcher’s duel than a slugger’s fest.

However, this game didn’t just feature the game’s best pitcher.  It also featured arguably the game’s best hitter: Mike Trout. So, how does the world’s best pitcher pitch to the world’s best hitter?

First Pitch

This is in the fourth inning, and it’s Trout’s second time facing Hernandez.  Hernandez starts out with a fastball. Sucre set up for a pitch low and away, and Hernandez misses with a 92 MPH up and in. A slight mistake, but definitely not a costly one. The count is 1-0.

Second Pitch

Like any great pitcher, Hernandez fixes the mistake he made on his first pitch. Sucre sets up for the same location, and Hernandez throws a 92 MPH fastball low and away. Hernandez nails it right on the money. The pitch was well executed, and Trout even thought about going around on it. Trout doesn’t go around, but that doesn’t matter because the pitch is a called strike. Hernandez evens up the count at 1-1.

Third Pitch

Clearly,  the Mariners had a plan: pitch Trout low and away. This is the third time that Sucre set up in that location, however this time Hernandez decided to flash his signature changeup. This hard changeup  probably would have bounced in the dirt had Trout not fouled it off. It seems as though Hernandez plans on going after Trout by  first establishing the fastball in a particular location, and then attack with the off-speed stuff. The count is in Hernandez’s favor at 1-2.

Fourth Pitch

Hernandez comes after Trout with another changeup, and Sucre sets up in the same location as the last pitch. Hernandez — like any pitcher — is clearly going for the punch out. Hernandez is trying to execute the same pitch, while hoping for better results. Unfortunately he misses inside for a ball. Trout has worked the count to 2-2.

Fifth Pitch

When you throw a pitch two times in a row, you run the risk of becoming predictable. Hernandez decides to break his streak of throwing changeups, and goes for the hard stuff. Sucre sets up in the same location that he always does, however Hernandez floats 93 MPH fastball up and away for a ball. The count is full. The best thing about a full count is that you know that one of three things will happen: strikeout, walk or the batter makes contact.

Sixth Pitch

Well, something did happen. Trout made contact, but it was nothing  meaningful,  as he fouled off a 94 MPH fastball from Hernandez. Nothing is really new from the Hernandez-Sucre side. Sucre sets up in the same location he has been setting up for the entire at bat, and Hernandez probably would have hit his spot had Trout not fouled it off. The count is still 3-2.

Seventh Pitch

Hernandez comes back with a 94 MPH fastball, hoping to hit the low and away location that Sucre sets up. However, Hernandez leaves the pitch up a little bit just enough to slightly miss the location that Sucre had set up. Trout is one of the best hitters in the game, and the best hitters in the game can take advantage of a pitcher’s slight mistake. Trout almost takes this pitch yard , as it bounces off the wall for a double. This double ended up being nothing significant, as Hernandez managed to work his way out of the inning without Trout scoring.

Crisis averted for Hernandez.

Trout happened to come out successful in that at-bat as he got himself a pretty big hit against Hernandez, however later on in the game Hernandez managed to strike out Trout.

Hernandez finally gets Trout on his signature nasty changeup that breaks on the inside part of the plate. If you look at Mike Trout’s heatmap,  you know that going inside on him is risky business. Dave Cameron even wrote a whole article about it. Luckily, Hernandez’s changeup is good enough that he can get away with pitching Trout inside.

One of the best hitters in the game faced off against one of the game’s best pitchers. You could see why these two are the best at what they do. They recognize mistakes, capitalize on those mistakes, and correct their own mistakes. There are a lot of at-bats each year in baseball, and to someone who knows nothing about baseball, this might look ordinary.  However,  if you look closely enough, you can see the intricacies of a particular at-bat. That’s when you start to realize how complex baseball is.

Mitchel Lichtman’s projection pieces on hitters and pitchers for the rest of the season were discussed quite a lot last month starting with this.  It is hard when you are rooting for a team, and subsequently its players, not to buy in when someone is doing well or poorly.  So let’s look at the heartless projecting system ZiPS to see if it is actually buying into some of the performances of 2014 so far.

To do this I pulled the 2014 pre-season wOBA projections and compared them to the ZiPS (RoS), rest of season, projections.  If you take the RoS wOBA minus what ZiPS was expecting prior to 2014 you should be able to see which players are now expected to hit significantly better or worse the rest of the way.  Here are the top/bottom-five players:

The bottom five, with the exception of Colvin, have been very disappointing and their respective teams would love even the RoS numbers at this point.  The projection still believes Brown can be an above average offensive player despite his putrid play to this point of 2014, but it is starting to look like Raburn’s age might be catching up to him and Gyorko’s rookie year might have been a mirage.  Schierholtz makes less sense, but he has been so bad that ZIPS can’t ignore it, and he was never a great player to begin with.

Others names of note that are projected to finish the year worse may not be surprising.  Raul Ibanez looks done with eyes and statistics, Jean Segura’s lack of plate discipline has really caught up to him, and Brian McCann may not be aging particularly well despite being a lefty with power in the Yankees’ home park.

There are a lot of players on the positive side, and you can see that the nominal and percent wOBA changes are larger for the improvement group too.  There are 31 players with RoS wOBA at least 5% above their pre-season projection while only 17 projected to be 5% or more worse than expected.  Does this mean that ZiPS is actually an optimist?

The Padres believe in Seth Smith as well, having recently signed him to extension.  He is a righty masher, though they only rarely let him face same-handed pitching.  Victor Martinez is 35 years old and decided to have a renaissance, and may end up with his best hitting season ever.  Baseball is weird.  I’m not sure what to make of Steve Pearce.  He has been around since 2007 without ever accumulating more than 200 PAs, but this season he finally has and the Orioles are making out like bandits.  The other two are what you expect on such a list, young players taking a step forward.  JD Martinez was who I was thinking about when I started this.  I have seen him play several times recently, and he seems to put together a quality plate appearance every time up. Mesoraco, like Martinez, is 26 and has had a huge power spike along with a lot more strike outs to the point where he seems like a different player altogether.

Two Cleveland Indians just missed the top five improvers: Michael Brantley and Lonnie Chisenhall seem to have finally taken a step forward too.  There were two notable Brewers as well.  ZiPS seems to have finally decided to believe in Carlos Gomez and Jonathan Lucroy.

Yes, believing in projections sometimes means we need to temper our enthusiasm when a player we like breaks out or be patient with someone slumping.  It can also be a good way to see when players are truly locking into higher levels of play.  For the older players here it is likely that they will come back to the pre-season projections again next year because Victor Martinez is probably not going to turn into a much better hitter year after year at this age, but for the younger guys we may be starting to see who is taking a step forward.

Mike Minor just keeps giving up home runs. To be fair, he’s a fly ball pitcher and home runs will come with that. And actually, he’s given up the long ball a little more frequently than he should (10.5% HR/FB) throughout his career, so maybe this shouldn’t come as such a surprise.

His 1.51 HR/9 this season is 7th among pitchers who have thrown as many innings as Minor has (83.1). But he’s had some bad luck this year – .343 BABIP, 14.9% HR/FB – and he’s been stricken with a… different kind of offseason injury plus shoulder tendinitis in Spring Training, so it’s reasonable to think that’s where the issue starts and ends. But after personally seeing him give up four home runs in a rehab game against Reds double-A squad Pensacola, it feels like something may be wrong. So I’d like to examine this a little more, if that’s ok.

I imagine that if the problem is something more than just arm trouble or bad luck, it should show up in his numbers somewhere. So I’ll compare his PITCHf/x, pitch type, and heat map data from this season – a not-so-good one – and last season – a quite good one.

First, I just want to show again that he’s been much less lucky this season. It feels to me like there’s something more to it, but luck could be the problem.

While that may be so, giving up more home runs could be the result of a change in the amount he’s throwing each of his pitches and the velocity of those pitches.

So there’s actually been a small uptick in Minor’s velocity since last season, and he’s been throwing more sliders and fewer changeups. He’s been showing that same trend since his debut and seemed to find a happy medium last year. Those changes from 2013 to this year seem significant, and I think they might be playing a part in his production.

First, we’ll compare how his pitches have been moving and how effective they’ve been the last two years. Rather than show four more tables with a bunch of numbers, here’s a quick summary: 1) His changeup is moving less than it did last year, and it’s getting crushed. 2) His fastball and slider are both moving more than they did last year – but only by a little – and are getting crushed. So those things aren’t great. The BABIP on his changeup is the only one that isn’t outrageous; it’s .281 this year. The opponent’s BABIP on his fastball and slider are .394 and .350, respectively, which are both pretty crazy. So those are two more points for just a ton of bad luck going Minor’s way, and perhaps some good signs pointing towards better luck in the near future. On to the next thing.

Maybe his issue has been locating the ball. He’s walk rate is up a little bit from last year, so it could be that he’s having trouble pitching where he did in 2013. I thought showing his heat maps might illustrate that, but, well…

They don’t. Not really, anyway. A lot of his pitches this year, like last year, are right around the middle of the plate, though they were spread out a little more last year. I’m not sure what exactly that means, but maybe he’s not locating quite as well this year.

From what I can gather, it seems like Mike Minor has seen several little changes. (A little higher release point turns into less movement on a pitch every now and then, which turns into everyone crushing your slider, etc.) And a lot of little changes can make a big difference – if things aren’t the same, they’ll be different, right?

Now for a little good news – though I hesitate to call it that. Minor’s historically been a “2nd half pitcher.” Hitters go from a .330 wOBA against him in the 1st half to a .300 after the break, and his FIP and xFIP see some drops as well. In addition, his xFIP is 3.61, which is actually a little better than it was last season. A turnaround doesn’t seem terribly far off for Minor. Cut out a little of that horribly bad luck, and Atlanta’s rotation gets better. Those things might not mean much at all, but maybe it can give Braves fans some hope.

With a payroll north of $200,000,000, you would expect the Los Angeles Dodgers to field a competitive team, and indeed they have. As we emerge from the All-Star break, they are neck and neck with the hated Giants, heading into a pennant chase that could be one for the ages. The Dodgers have four of the most watchable players in baseball (Kershaw, Greinke, Puig, and Ramirez) and a farm system with enough talent to supply reinforcements either directly or via trades. The team is not without needs, however. Like almost any team, the Dodgers has some bullpen depth issues, but just alleviated those somewhat by recalling Paco Rodriguez, a non-flamethrower who nevertheless generates a ton of Ks. Catching has been a riddle for manager Don Mattingly as well.  He’s had to use four backstops, none of whom have amassed enough appearances to qualify for the batting title, and of whom only the stalwart but venerable A.J. Ellis has provided anything even approaching an offensive contribution. (Well, Miguel Olivo made an offensive contribution of a different kind.)

But the biggest problem has been Matt Kemp, who dug a Tunguskan-size crater in center field before Mattingly more or less permanently shunted him to left. Kemp has the worst WAR (-1.3) for any position player qualifying for the batting title except Domonic Brown. Kemp’s hitting about as well as last year’s (modest) effort, but his defense has gone from bad (-0.6 dWAR) to eye-watering (-2.5). Whether you’re new school (zone rating) or old school (range factor), you will find nothing to like in Kemp’s defensive metrics. The move to left has probably mitigated the defensive damage he’s doing, but mainly by reducing his opportunities to come within proximity of the ball. His range in left is almost as far below the league as his range in center, although he’s making fewer errors. Kemp’s agent thinks he can still play center, and so presumably do Matt and his mom. That about exhausts the list.

In one sense this is a simple problem that the Dodgers can solve without any outside help. They could bench Kemp immediately. Center field prospect Joc Pederson is murdilating the PCL’s beleaguered pitchers to the tune of a 1.045 OPS, and yes, that’s good even in the PCL. Pederson is third in the league in OPS, behind two guys who are at least five years older. To the extent Pederson would struggle against major league lefties, he could be platooned with righty Scott Van Slyke, with Andre Ethier sliding between center and left. This is a rare situation where a manager can (almost) unilaterally boost his team’s playoff chances with a single lineup change.

And yet … Kemp can still hit. His .752 OPS is third on the Dodgers among batting qualifiers, and while that’s over 80 points off his career number, it still represents useful offense. At this stage in his career, Kemp’s value would dramatically increase if he didn’t have to put on a glove. The question is how to allocate that increased value among the Dodgers and their potential trade suitors. There are four playoff-contending AL teams whose DHs are either injured, ineffective, or both:

New York Yankees (Carlos Beltran .698 OPS)

Kansas City Royals (Billy Butler .675)

Cleveland Spiders (Nick Swisher .641)

Seattle Mariners (Corey Hart .611)

Kemp would immediately boost any of these teams’ offenses. The Yankees could take much of Kemp’s anvil-like contract ($20 m/yr through 2019), but have few if any prospects to offer. The Royals and Mariners are in the opposite situation: good talent to trade but limited ability to absorb such a huge financial hit. Cleveland, sadly, can’t really employ either approach, and in any case hitting is not their main need.

Dodgers president Stan Kasten’s general strategy upon assuming command was to throw immense amounts of Guggenheim money at the major league roster first, and then reinforce the farm system to ensure a steady stream of cost-controlled reinforcements for the future. Part I of the plan is working well, and Part II is underway with Corey Seager, Julio Urias and Alex “Van Gogh” Guerrero headlining a good collection of upper level minor league talent (non-Pederson division). The Dodgers could go either way here: begin their slow march away from the payroll tax penalty by banishing Kemp to the Bronx, or recharge the lower reaches of their farm system with talent from either of the smaller market franchises who could be in on Kemp. They may not succeed in moving Kemp, but if they can it would provide at least a small edge in a pennant race that looks sure to go to the wire.

The MLB is not facing a crisis yet, but it may be soon. In an age of instant gratification and the desire to see the biggest, loudest, and longest of highlights, baseball is getting slower and lower scoring. Although picking up the pace would be a simple task for the Commissioner’s Office, picking up the scoring would be much, much more difficult. The reason for the decline in runs per game is not obvious at first glance. But, like all things in the MLB these days, the key lies in the data.

At the turn of the century, the Steroid Era was going on strong. Even when league-wide PED testing was implemented in 2003, runs per game increased from 2003 (4.73) to 2006 (4.86). Since then, runs have dropped significantly, hovering just above four. Rather than looking to possible reasons, such as PED use, the real proof lies in observation. The major change from 2006 to now is the use of PitchF/x data. In 2006, PitchF/x became a staple in every MLB ballpark. The applications for the system are endless, but the focus for scouting hitters is Hot Zones.

Nearly every hitter has a “hole” in their swing. Even Mike Trout struggles hitting balls up in the zone. Miguel Cabrera has (some) trouble with balls on the outer edge, although limited. Pitchers meanwhile dictate the zone. Although they may prefer to throw to one side of the plate or a certain elevation, elite pitchers have no problem working the ball to all parts of the zone and outside it. The game’s most dominant pitcher this year (not up for argument) has scattered pitches everywhere, especially to lefties. For Kershaw of course, the Heat Map does little justice to his ability to locate the ball. Most hitters have a similar hole, so he is more likely to throw it there than he is all over the heat map. It does show his ability to pitch the ball to a spot better than a hitter can make good contact on a pitch in a certain spot. Let’s take a peek at an example.

Paul Goldschmidt is a really, really good hitter of white balls with red laces. If you don’t believe me, ask Tim Lincecum. First, let’s take a look at Goldschmidt’s Heat Map over his career. Nothing too surprising, he likes his baseballs on the inner half of the zone. Once you get out of the zone on the inside though, he becomes not-so-amazing. Now if we take a peek at DJ Pauly G (I will never call him this to his face because I like my current face structure) vs Kershaw, you can see that Kershaw has been pretty good at targeting his cooler zones. The result of this has been a batting average of just over the Mendoza Line. When you look at him against Lincecum, you see something a lot different. This is probably why Lincecum typically has a sore neck the day after he faces the Diamondbacks. While Kershaw has been able to get it out of the zone low and in, Lincecum has tended to leave them over the plate, resulting in the ball coming to rest in the stands.

At first glance, it may be a pretty simple difference that one pitcher is hitting his spots and one is not. At second glance, it might still look the same. If you really squint though, you can see that conventional wisdom would say very rarely throw it inside to Goldschmidt. Goldy would have been pitched around 10 years ago, and almost all the balls would have been dotting the lefty batter’s box. Prior to the installation of PitchF/x, pitchers would likely have been scared to throw it inside to the slugger. Advanced data available via Heat Maps can show something different, which Kershaw has capitalized on.

From a hitter’s perspective, you probably have a decent idea of what you can and cannot do at the plate. Prior to Pitch F/x, hitters kind of knew what to expect. There was once a hitter that pitchers really didn’t know what to do when they faced, so they walked him. His name was Barry, and a large part of why he couldn’t be pitched to was because pitchers had no idea what to do when he came to the plate. In a 2001 USA Today article, it got to the point where the question was asked “How do you pitch to Bonds?” Bonds had no holes, or so it was thought. I would venture to guess that Bonds, and other greats, would have hit far fewer home runs in an age where pitchers knew the specific places hitters could and could not put the ball over the wall.

Now, hitters are faced with more of a dilemma due to the hyper-advanced scouting. Back when it was a simple “he likes to chase sliders outside the zone late in the count”, hitters had some expectations of what they would likely face. Now, their approach has changed to, “I better look for the low and away slider, but he might try to get me with the high heat since I have a high whiff rate there. Or maybe he’ll go for the change since I have trouble when I am behind in the count and I have fouled off two pitches after seeing one or more sinkers on the outer half of the zone during night games played on the West Coast.” The moral is, pitchers have so much data they can know a hitter better than he can know himself. A hitter’s guess on what he may face is much less educated than it was prior to PitchF/x, making it a lot harder to put the barrel on the ball.

Although there are surely outside causes, PitchF/x is a large part of the reason that runs are on the decline. Pitchers have control on where the ball will end up 60’6” later, and if they are able to put it in a place where the hitter is poor, there will be fewer runs. The new data available has helped pitchers much more than hitters thus far, and until something changes in hitters’ approaches or new data comes along favoring batters, we can expect more of the same. Unfortunately for fans like myself who loved watching Barry knock them into the bay in high scoring affairs, it looks like the Steroid Era’s high scoring affairs are long gone. Low scoring baseball is here to stay.

As a Royals fan, I have subject to a horrific progression of shortstops during my lifetime that seems to have finally come to an end with Alcides Escobar.  That’s good because I am not sure I could have taken any more Neifi Perez, Angel Berroa, Tony Pena Jr., or Yuniesky Betancourt seasons.  Only Freddie Patek accumulated more than 10 WAR in his Royals career for SS with more than 1000 PAs, and he of course retired the year before I was born.  All the shortstops who meet that criteria for the Royals added together have 59.9 WAR from 1969 through 2013, so for the Royals existence they are averaging about 1.3 WAR per season at short.  Is that the worst organization at SS ever?  Let’s find out.

I went position by position to find which organization is the most inept historically at each.  Only players who had 1000+ PAs for the team though they didn’t need to play exclusively at that position and I am not including anything in 2014.

Catcher –

The Rays put up an impressively bad 0.55 WAR/year at catcher, but in the end I am going to give the Astros the nod for the first position of my All-Star team.  Over a 52-year span, their organization’s best catcher was Alan Ashby who only managed 9.7 WAR for the team.  Not even one player in double digits of WAR in half a century is pretty impressive.  All told this group managed 48 WAR for a paltry 0.9 per season, or the value of Humberto Quintero last year as a back-up.  It is hard to keep up that bad of a pace for so long.

1B –

First base is traditionally manned by a large person who can mash.  That has not been the case for the Nationals/Expos.  The Diamondbacks gave them a run here, but Paul Goldschmidt kept them from taking the position.  The Nats/Expos best first baseman by accumulated WAR has been Ron Fairly at 17.5 total.  If your best 1B option in 45 years slugged .440 for you, basically Jorge Cantu or Brad Wilkerson, then you are doing something wrong.  They did have better players, but at the wrong time.  They had young Andres Galarraga and old Tony Perez who did most of their stat accumulation elsewhere, and of course the rented Adam Dunn for a couple years.  Still they have only managed 80.1 WAR for a traditionally big bopping position, and that is about 1.8 per season.

2B –

There were some solid contenders at second, but in the end the Rockies despite being relatively new were bad enough to get the spot thanks to Jim Gantner and Rickie Weeks being just good enough to save the Brewers.  The Rockies have been around for 21 years now, and in that time their best player by WAR at second base is Eric Young at 9.5 total.  Even that is cheating since he only played at 2B about half of the time, but my arbitrary parameters for the team allow all  to be counted.  In second for them is Clint Barmes at 3.9, so it is quite a steep drop-off from not so lofty heights.  Their second basemen have only managed 14.7 WAR total in over 2 decades for a rate of 0.7 per year.  Babe Ruth once put up more WAR than that in one season.

SS –

I was truly expecting the Royals to run away with this, but Patek was enough to keep them out of short, though they still managed to make the team.  In the end, the Padres were just too weak to ignore.  In 45 years the best they have been able to manage from a player at short is the 8.7 WAR that Khalil Greene managed to amass.  Their BEST player at the position had a career slash line of .245/.302/.422, which is not so good.  They had the first four years of Ozzie Smith’s career, so at one point they had a future Hall of Famer at the position, but they even managed to screw that up by trading him for which they received Gary Templeton (second to Greene at 8.4 WAR), Sixto Lezcano, and Luis DeLeon.  Ouch, how is this trade not discussed more for its awfulness?  Total Padre SS WAR of 42.5 gives them a 0.9 WAR/season.

3B –

This was the only position where I selected a team with more than 2 WAR per year, though how they got there makes it less impressive.  I went back and forth on this, but the Tigers ended up getting it due to the more than 100 years of marginal to terrible play at third.  That is a long time to fail to produce any good players.  Their WAR leader at the position is Miguel Cabrera, of course, at 35.1, so to get a good player at third they had to trade for a stud and then play him out of position for two years to get to the plate appearance level I set.  Before Miggy, the best they had managed at third was Travis Fryman followed closely by George Kell who put up 24.6 and 23.4 WAR respectively for Detroit.  Those aren’t terrible players, but again they had over 100 years and that is the best they could do.  With Cabrera they ended up at 231.5 WAR in 113 seasons for just over 2 WAR per year, but before he moved to 3B in 2012 they were at 1.8 per year.

LF –

Another corner position where you expect some power production…unless you are a Mets fan.  The Mariners do get a nod for having a slightly lower WAR per season figure, but the Mets extra decade and a half gave them the edge.  Cleon Jones topped the Mets LF list at 18.1 WAR, which is not awful.  He played 12 seasons, 8 of them as a full time player, and hit only 93 HRs.  At left field that is pretty mediocre production from your best ever.  Kevin McReynolds is their only player at the position to break the 100 homer mark.  Their total was 96.9 WAR in 52 years for a rate a little shy of 1.9 per year.

CF –

The Marlins looked like a slam dunk at first here with their top guy being Juan Pierre, seriously that should get you spot on the team shouldn’t it?  Then the Rangers came along and stole the spot out from under them.  Josh Hamilton got 1400+ PAs to keep this from being a complete disaster of a position for Texas.  His 21.8 WAR while he was with the team is almost double their second place center fielder, 11.1 for Don Lock.  Prior to Hamilton the Rangers had managed one double digit WAR player in center over a 53 year span.  With Hamilton their total and rate are 79.5 and 1.5 per year, but prior to Hamilton (pre-2008) it was 57.7 and 1.2 per season.

RF –

After shortstop was done I thought my team was in the clear.  Then we got to right field.  The Royals have had some decent right fielders like Jermain Dye and Al Cowens, but they have also had Jeff Francoeur and Jose Guillen.  Danny Tartabull is tops with 13.9 WAR, and is the only one in double digits and he was only a Royal for five seasons and fought injuries a lot in the final three years only playing in 133, 88, and 132 games those years.  Right fielders for the Royals have accumulated 59.9 WAR over 45 seasons for a rate 1.3 per year, and I am now convinced that Wil Myers was traded to avoid losing this distinction.

SP –

For pitching I looked at each teams top 5 starters by WAR all time.  There were only 3 contenders for sum of those 5 divided by years for the organization, and they were the Brewers, Padres, and Rangers.  The Rangers already have center field and the Padres shortstop so I thought about giving it to the Brewers for no repeats.  Instead I am going to make the rotation all three teams because I can.  Here are their respective rotations.

Texas gets the first spot in the rotation.  They are tied with the Padres for the worst 2.2 WAR/season of existence for their top 5, but what sets them apart is that three of their 5 are players from other organization so only Kenny Rogers and  Kevin Brown were developed by them.  The Padres top three were all drafted and developed in house, so they get to go second.  The Brewers rate was a bit better at 2.6 WAR per year and go third.  Only the Rangers have a real chance of escaping their current position if Yu Darvish can continue being awesome, he already has 13.4 WAR and is only 27, so he could pass Ryan in a couple more years.  The top of the other two rotations right now are Yovani Gallardo, currently 5th for the Brewers all time, but he is trending the wrong way and is only controlled through next year.  Ian Kennedy is at the top for San Diego right now, which explains a lot about their season.

There you have it, historic ineptitude by position.  I am going to go ahead and leave the relief pitchers alone.  That will be my fan vote I guess, so go figure out your favorite and comment below.

A couple of months ago, I wrote a community post on FanGraphs stating that I felt as though Jedd Gyorko was a special player. I summed up the fact that Jedd Gyorko goes against the normal second baseman positional identity. Rather than being the slappy hitting second baseman,  Gyorko was a second baseman with some serious power. A second baseman with power is not something you see everyday. You can really only point to guys like Robinson Cano and Ian Kinsler in today’s game, that have played second base, and have had success because of their power.

Gyorko’s success last season was mainly driven by his power. Gyorko hit 23 homers to go along with a line of .249/.301/.444.  Gyorko’s contact rate was below league average in 2013 with a mark of 73%, and when you pair that with a walk rate of only 6.4%, you end up getting a player who makes most of his value from driving the ball a long ways.

This season has been a bit of a different story. Gyorko has been one of the worst hitters in the league. In just 56 games this season — before going down with a foot injury — Gyorko has hit an abysmal line of .162/.213/.270. Gyorko’s lack of production could be attributed to a below average BABIP of .192. Gyorko has been unlucky, but it’s also likely that he’s also just not been very good.

In 2013, Gyorko hit a slightly higher FB% than league average (39%), and that has remained the same for 2014. The difference this year has been that Gyorko has been hitting more groundballs, more IFFB’s, and less line drives. Whenever you’re hitting less line drives, you’re probably not getting as many hits.

If you look at Gyorko’s plate discipline, the story hasn’t actually been that much different from 2013. For the most part there’s only been a +/- 6% margin between his plate discipline stats from 2013 to 2014. The contact rate has been steady. Gyorko is swinging at less pitches outside of the zone, however of those pitches outside of the zone he’s making less contact than he did in 2013. For the most part it looks as though Gyorko’s plate approach has remained relatively consistent.

Jedd Gyorko » Heatmaps » RAA/100P | FanGraphs Baseball.

In 2013, Gyorko’s heatmaps indicated that he had success mainly on pitches low and inside. However, he hit pretty well on pitches inside most of the strike zone excluding pitches up and in or low and outside.

Jedd Gyorko » Heatmaps » RAA/100P | FanGraphs Baseball.

In 2014 nearly all of locations in the strike zone Gyorko has struggled with hitting. Gyorko has only had success with pitches that are  low and inside, and even that location has a pretty small area. For the most part Gyorko has not been able to punish anything inside the zone.

Overall pitchers have been able to get away with throwing Gyorko strikes. However, the thing that is also mysterious about Gyorko is that the power has been gone. Even if Gyorko hasn’t been making a whole lot of contact, you would at least think that when he did make contact it would be going a long ways. Thanks to Baseball Savant’s Pitch F/x tool, I was able to take a look at the velocities of pitches which Gyorko was hitting home runs. None of Gyorko’s home runs came off of pitches that were slower than 90 MPH.

Ironically,  despite all of Gyorko’s home runs having come off of high velocity pitches, he has struggled against fastballs this season. In 2013 Gyorko had a 3.6 wRAA against fastballs. In 2014, Gyorko has had a -8.3 wRAA against fastballs: nearly a 12 run difference.  The struggle against fastballs is something that is new for Gyorko, but what has remained steady for Gyorko between 2013 and 2014 has been the struggle against breaking balls. Gyorko has posted negative wRAA against every single type of off-speed pitch. When you can’t hit anything very well, and have never been able to hit off-speed pitches well, it makes the pitchers job very easy.

This dilemma is not something I know how to fix. It may be something mechanical or it may be something mental. Right now, Jedd Gyorko is on the disabled list taking care of a foot injury. Hopefully he can take advantage of his rehabilitation and make some adjustments to his swing. In my posts a couple of months ago I mentioned Jedd Gyorko in the same sentence as Dan Uggla. This season Gyorko might be showing that he may never reach Uggla’s ceiling. He’s played like Uggla’s floor. However the good news is that there is a whole second half of baseball, and Gyorko still young. There’s still the chance that Gyorko can fix whatever it is that is making perform terribly, and be the second baseman that breaks positional identities.

With the simultaneous (if temporary) collapses of the Yankee and Red Sox dynasties, the Baltimore Orioles hit the All-Star break with a very real chance of emerging atop the smoking wreckage of the AL East.  If they miss the playoffs it will be at least in part for one reason the Washington Nationals did so last year: too many bad plate appearances from second base. Jonathan Schoop, the O’s primary second baseman, is slashing  a putrid .219/.257/.322, good for the 16th best WAR among AL second basemen. While dumpster-diving Dan Duquette has found serviceable patches for catcher (Nick Hundley) and left field (the incredibly powerful alien inhabiting Steve Pearce), a solution at second base continues to elude him. Schoop’s head is barely above replacement level water thanks to his stellar defense, but his bat is missing more balls than Julio Cesar.

For now the organization publicly and vigorously defends Schoop, who may yet turn out to be a high-quality two-way player. Ryan Flaherty seems to have taken up residence in Buck Showalter’s split-level dog house, having started just 12 games in June and July. His unimpressive .647 OPS still beats Schoop’s by 50 points. The farm offers little immediate hope; the only O’s middle infield prospect beside Schoop in the team’s Baseball America top 30, Adrian Marin, appears overmatched for now in high-A.

Should the Duke decide look outside the current roster, here’s a review of cellar-dwelling second basemen who may be on the block (contract status from Baseball Reference).

Chase Utley (.297/.354/.452   3.2 WAR) Signed thru 2015, 2 yrs/$25M (14-15) & 16-18 vesting option

Enjoying a Chipper Jonesian late-career resurgence, Utley remains the phace of the phading Phils. He also has a brutal contract and a full no-trade, so he might be cost-prohibitive even if Ruben Amaro was willing to trade him. (Utley has said he won’t waive is no-trade, but most players say that – Baltimore would be about the only place he could be traded and still spend homestands mostly at home.) If Amaro did trade Utley he would need to sleep in kevlar pajamas, so this move seems unlikely.

Darwin Barney (.224/.261./316 0.2 WAR) 1st-Year Arb Eligible, 1 yr/$2.3M (14)

Here’s something about Darwin Barney you might not have known: he doesn’t just do crosswords, he creates them. Here’s something about Darwin Barney you almost certainly know: he just can’t hit. At all. With essentially the same skill set as Schoop is showing this year, he’s not an option for the O’s. Another Cubs middle infielder, Arismendy Alcantara, would probably make Duke salivate, but AA would cost the Orioles at least two of their top three pitching prospects. With Kevin Gausman now firmly entrenched in the rotation (thanks to Ubaldo Jimenez’ heaven-sent trip to the List) he is almost certainly off the block. Dylan Bundy and Hunter Harvey together may be too high a price to pay for a still-raw position player, and one of them alone probably won’t be enough for Theo to pull the trigger.

Aaron Hill (.238/.273/.351 -0.9 WAR) Signed thru 2016, 5 yrs/$46M (12-16)

Aaron Hill’s principal remaining function in baseball is to serve as a warning to others. Disappearing bat speed, immobility in the field, and an albatross contract mean there’s really nothing to see here. Perhaps the O’s think they can fix Hill’s bat, but his 4:1 K/BB ratio suggests otherwise.

DJ LeMahieu (.279/.337/.346 1.1 WAR) Pre-Arb Eligible, 1 yr/$501k (14)

No one has unlocked the secret to winning at Coors yet, but loading up on heavy-groundball starters and assembling a stellar infield defense might be one of the few approaches that Dan O’Dowd hasn’t tried yet. LeMahieu would be a key component of any such strategy. LeMahieu is only 25 and still plays for the MLB equivalent of free; it would almost certainly take a significant package for the O’s to pry him away from the Rox. One problem the Orioles face is that their top-heavy system makes it hard to go after a guy like LeMahieu. He’s not worth any of the top 3 pitchers, and the O’s have little else that would entice a team to part with a solid but unspectacular player. (Christian Walker is raking in AA; maybe he could be part of the answer.) The Rox also have Josh Rutledge, who plays all the infield positions badly but can hit a little. He could form an offense/defense platoon with Schoop, and might be available at a reasonable cost.

Ben Zobrist (.268/.353/.406 2.7 WAR) 5 yrs/$23M (10-14) & 15 team option

In theory, Zobrist is the perfect answer for the Orioles — a short-term rental who could spur their pennant run while Schoop sorts things out at AAA. In practice, of course, he’s in the Orioles’ division. While the Rays have said they are even willing to trade David Price within the division, they have also said they will exact an intra-division premium. The same is presumably true for Zobrist. If he’s traded to a team with orange on their uniforms, it will probably be the Giants.

Brian Dozier (.237/.340/.414 2.7 WAR) Pre-Arb Eligible, 1 yr/$540k (14)

Dozier went from afterthought to asset by jumping his walk rate up this year (12.6% as compared to his career rate of 8.6%). Eddie Rosario’s plan to be the Twins’ starting 2B in 2015 went up in smoke earlier this year, and he has struggled in AA this year after returning from his suspension. (According to one of the better baseball headlines this year, Terry Ryan has offered “high praise” for Rosario since his return.) So Dozier is both more valuable and less expendable now than he seemed in spring training. The Twins minor league system is one of the best in the majors, so it’s hard to see a match here except in the unlikely event the O’s would be willing to part with one of the Big Three for Dozier.

It seems unlikely that any second baseman on the Texas Rangers would be a good trade fit. Rougned Odor, though struggling now, is presumably untouchable. Luis Sardinas has a bright future, but right now it’s unlikely he would be much of an upgrade over Flaherty, who the O’s can start without giving up any talent.

This list is obviously not exhaustive, but it suggests that Duquette’s options outside the organization may be little more appealing than the internal ones. In his tenure as Orioles GM, Duquette has shown a surprising ability to pull rabbits out of his baseball cap. How he solves the O’s second base conundrum will be one of the small but fascinating dramas to follow as this year’s trade deadline draws near.

The Cubs are a team that is best described in the future tense. That is not to say that they are completely unwatchable at the major league level; they have a budding star 1st baseman in Anthony Rizzo and an enigmatically talented shortstop in Starlin Castro. But it is the players that have not yet reached The Show that intrigue baseball fans. Since trading Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel for wunderkind SS prospect Addison Russell and others, the mystique and potential of the Cubs system has increased dramatically. They have an amazingly talented and deep farm that according to prospect wizard Keith Law has the number 5,8,9 top prospects along with many more in the top 100. Almost all of those players having something in common-their jobs are to crush baseballs and eat planets.

Besides C.J. Edwards, (acquired in the Matt Garza heist) the future of the Cubs being a great team will be based on if those prospects hit. This is why many thought that Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer would target a club with pitching prospects to send back in a trade. It seems however that such a deal never materialized so the front office did the smart thing and traded their two talented pitchers for the best over all assets which ended up being Addison Russell and co. In the process they created an interesting case study on rebuilding teams farm system composition. For the piece I’ll look at the Cubs with their hitter heavy system, the Astros with their more balanced system system and the Oriole’s pitcher heavy system.

What is perhaps the most important caveat to remember though is that GMs don’t get their way every time; assembling a farm system does not happen in a vacuum. The Cubs, Astros, and Orioles composed their farm systems with the parts that were available to them and who knows how each decision maker would build his ideal farm system. Each of the three franchises however do have amazing talent in the minor league systems and if everything breaks right those clubs will be well equipped to compete for the foreseeable future.

The way the Cubbies have constructed their farm could be described as putting all of their eggs in one basket, after all it’s great if you can average 5 runs a game but if you can’t get anyone out its a moot point. But the kind of eggs the Cubs are investing in are much less fragile than the pitching prospect variety. We live in a baseball age where fans fear the words “elbow soreness” and worry about their favorite pitcher throwing too many breaking balls. That is not to say that hitting prospects don’t get injured, just look at Miguel Sano and Carlos Correa, but as a whole hitters seem less likely to spontaneously explode. The Cubs front office knows that can’t-miss prospects do indeed miss all the time, but by having such a large amount of hitting talent they can hope a few of them at least will reach All-Star levels.

The Astros farm system is also very deep and talented like the Cubs but their top players are a mix of pitchers and hitters. Including the recently graduated Springer, Singleton and Santana (who promptly spilled his cup of major league coffee on himself) they still have Correa in the minors along with Aiken, Appel, and Foltynewicz to make a pretty enticing next generation of Astros. This is a more even approach than the Cubs that allows for the inevitable disappointment of a couple of those big names by having depth in both batters and hurlers. Unfortunately, Aiken apparently has a elbow ligament injury and has not even taken the mound yet. This along with the Correa injury takes out the headliners of both their pitching and hitting departments.

To be fair, those two players just happened to get hurt around the same time of this piece so in a sense I am cherry picking a bit. But it goes to show just how much has to go right for prospects to make an impact in the majors and by diversifying your assets you can sometimes spread yourself a little thin. Nothing is worse than watching a player get hurt but thankfully modern medicine has come along way and odds are that both of those prospects will be again be healthy and productive. However, nothing is a sure bet and injuries that require surgery are serious by definition.

The Oriole’s minor league system is not in the same class as the Cubs or Astros, but it does have three pitchers that are considered to be top of the line starters, if not outright aces. Dylan Bundy, Kevin Gausman, and Hunter Harvey are the pitchers Baltimore is hoping to have anchor its staff by 2016. Those guys each have filthy stuff and in a hitter friendly environment like Camden Yards, having dominant pitching is especially valuable. While the Oriole’s hitting prospects are nothing to write home about not many other systems (if any) can boast the top of the line pitching the Orioles have on hand.

But like any top heavy system there is the concern of injury wiping out the crème de la crème and being left with next to nothing. Already Bundy has gone under the steady hand of Dr. James Andrews (and has looked great so far, especially considering it hasn’t been a full year since he underwent surgery) and Harvey is still in Low A ball with plenty of time between now and the majors. Gausman on the other hand has already pitched for the Orioles and at times has been excellent which makes the teams handling of him curious to say the least. While having all three of those guys become aces seems unlikely, even if only two of them reach their potential that would still give Baltimore a pair of feared fire breathing hurlers to hold court in the AL East. On the other hand I’m sure most still remember Generation K back in 1995 with the promise they showed and while that is an oversimplified comparison it is a reminder of how pitching prospects can break your heart.

Another factor that I believe demonstrates building a farm system with mostly hitters is the way to go is based on the players who are likely to test free-agency in the next couple of years. Rarely do elite position players enter free agency and if they do, they do so with their best years likely behind them and cost the GDP of countries to sign. That is not to say that elite pitchers are flooding the free agent market, but the talent of pitching that will be in the free agent market is indubitably better than the hitting. For your entertainment, here are a couple of the best hitting free agents-to-be in the 2015 class and their 2014 WAR so far in parentheses (I have not included players that have any sort of option for 2015)- Victor Martinez (2.5), Adam LaRoche (1.1), Chase Headley (1.1), Hanley Ramirez (2.4), Russell Martin (2.1), Melky Cabrera (1.8).

If your eyeballs still work after reading that remind yourself that all those guys are going to be at least 30 years old when the 2015 season starts and many have injury histories. Sure V-Mart is a great hitter but he is 35 and almost strictly a DH at this point. Ramirez can be a real difference-maker when healthy, but he unfortunately hasn’t been able to stay on the field the last two years. The free agent pitching class is headlined by Max Scherzer, James Shields, Jon Lester and the immortal Edinson Volquez. While Scherzer, Shields, and Lester all have their warts, they have the potential to anchor a staff for at least a few more years. And in 2016 there are some incredibly attractive starting pitchers who could test the market.

So while having the arms the Orioles can trot out or the excellent combination of hitting and pitching the Astros have on the farm is an enviable position for a GM, having a surplus of athletic hitting prospects who can play multiple positions like the Cubs have seems to be the safest approach to building a major league roster. For a club like the Cubbies that has suffered for years you can’t help but hope this incoming tsunami of talent will be the core of their next great team. And in the process perhaps the idea of hoarding hitting prospects in a time when scoring runs is at a premium will be copied by other franchises looking to rebuild. Until then the Cubs doubling down on bats will be a fascinating storyline.