Getting talked up as a second baseman can be hard. Jose Altuve, Brian Dozier, Daniel Murphy, and Jonathan Schoop occupy a lot of that conversation. Other, older guys like Robinson Cano and Ian Kinsler are still kicking around. Whit Merrifield says hello from Nowhere, too. And then there’s Cesar Hernandez, who seems to get talked up most for how underrated he is.

He’s one of only two holdovers on the Phillies since he came up in 2013 — the other is Luis Garcia — so even after this offseason of the team shedding some of that sluggish rebuild weight and adding some bona fide muscle, they must see something in him. He’s not just an asset to turn. This is true even after signing Scott Kingery, whose primary position is the same as Hernandez’s, to a six-year extension before he’s even played a single game in the Majors.

Hernandez is remarkably consistent. He strikes out less than 20% of the time, walks more than 10%, will display occasional pop, and can handle the glove at the keystone. But even consistency needs to evolve sometimes in order to keep pace, and we may have seen the next step from Cesar Hernandez last year.

The change, in a word: discipline. Per Pitch Info, we can see how Hernandez apparently decided to just stop chasing pitches out of the zone. In the first half, he ranked 29th in MLB, directly ahead of Edwin Encarnacion, and fourth at his position. That’s already pretty good. But in the second half, he shot up to eighth in MLB and tied with now-teammate Carlos Santana, and second at his position.

It’s one thing to see a relatively sharp change in a stat and be able to acknowledge how a player’s performance improved or declined. It’s another to process how directly it possibly influenced his overall production. Consider that Hernandez swung at 5.2% less pitches in the second half. Nearly 80% of that decrease was the direct result of letting pitches outside the zone go. That’s four balls for every called strike.

The difference in Hernandez’s approach fueled a drastic increase in OBP and was a big reason he became 25% better than league average at creating runs. It’s no wonder he went from being worth less than a win before the All-Star break to 2.4 after it.

Check out the gifs below. They’re both of the switch-hitting Hernandez swinging from the left side at a pitch to the same outside third of the plate:

The first is against a Yu Darvish fastball in May and resulted in a weak groundout to Elvis Andrus. It has a nice Fox Trax spot to show you how it was out of the zone. The second is against a Robert Gsellman fastball in September, around the same outside third of the plate, and was a double. This one doesn’t have a tracker showing you it was more over the plate, but, per Statcast, it was.

If you’ve heard of pitchers working the plate side to side, Hernandez does a little bit of the same with his swing, working horizontally. He pulls out his hips behind him and lets his bat drive through the zone on a similar plane. The small difference in pitch selection between the two gifs was the difference between a dribbler and an extra-base hit, and Hernandez made this a regular thing from mid-July and on.

It appears as though he didn’t make any mechanical change that allowed him to better cover the plate or access the ball when it got there. This is true whether he batted lefthanded or righthanded. His plate discipline, then, really does seem to be the result of simply choosing to swing at only what’s within the zone. Last August, I wrote about Rhys Hoskins being exciting in the context of the current Phillies, and how he offers a threat that the rest of the lineup doesn’t. If Hernandez’s plate discipline sticks in 2018 — the handful of games so far hasn’t allowed for a stable sample size yet — then he, too, will offer a skill that makes the lineup tougher and more of a threat.

It’s been a weird year for the Phillies already. Between Gabe Kapler and younger talent making a push for playing time, it could get much weirder. But an eye like Cesar Hernandez’s at the plate every day could help steady the ship.

—

Pitch Info Data from FanGraphs. Gifs made with Giphy. 

One of my favorite things about baseball is its deep reverence for history. While the relatively recent advent of sabermetrics is sometimes scorned by “traditionalists,” baseball has always been a data-loving sport. So much so, the man credited with inventing the box score all the way back in 1859 — a full year before Abraham Lincoln was elected President — was given a prestigious spot in the Hall of Fame. Any discussion of “who’s the best?” is always going to be subjective, and that’s part of the fun.  Whether you’re a casual fan, avid Fangraphs reader, or true baseball historian, I think this article will offer some insight (and fun debate) for everyone.

As it happens, the term “WAR” meant something very different then.

Even casual baseball fans have an understanding of batting average, home runs, runs batted in — all statistics that have been around for more than a century — and still have plenty of relevance even in the era of analytics. Some might say, baseball’s respect for tradition runs so deep, that there was (and still is) a great deal of mismanagement and inefficiency in areas like scouting, player utilization, and player valuation. Perhaps one thing that worries traditionalists is that the game is being reduced to a “science” such that we are removing the fun of debating things like “who’s the best?” While I hope even staunch traditionalists understand that on-base percentage is more important than batting average in determining offensive value, allow me to put your mind at ease: we are a long, long, way from being able to predict with any reasonable accuracy/confidence how a player will perform. Suffice it to say, there is still plenty to debate when it comes to comparing players from past and present, and projecting the future. As you read, take part in the polls to cast your vote in the head-to-head “best family” debate. At the end, you can cast your overall vote.

In more than 140 years as the National Pastime, fewer than 20,000 players have ever played in a Major League Baseball game. For some perspective, only about 10% of players who are drafted will ever reach The Show; and even among first-round picks — youngsters so highly sought after that they are made millionaires before they even play a game in the minor leagues — only about two-thirds will make it the majors, and even most of them won’t amount to much. With so few players to ever make the big leagues, with so many barriers to success, it’s amazing to learn just how many had parents or siblings in the majors. Unlike a sport such as basketball where most players are very tall, thus heritability playing an obvious role, Major League Baseball players are mostly normal-sized human beings (the average player is about 6’1 190) with no immediately evident genetic superiority compared to the average Joe.

Pictured: elite professional athlete whose dad also played in the MLB (photo from Men’s Health)

Interestingly, genetics may actually play an even more vital role in success in baseball than in basketball. You have probably heard that hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in all of sports, and that’s probably true (Ted Williams said it, who am I to argue?). It’s not enough that pitchers throw the ball as hard as they can with pinpoint control, they also throw the ball as hard as they can with pinpoint control and make it move. 

Good luck! (Source: MLB GIFS)

When it comes to hitting a baseball at the professional level, it requires an elite combination of hand-eye coordination, strength, reaction time, visual acuity, and I assume some sort of animal sacrifice. It turns out, the average MLB player has 20/12 vision. If you’re not sure why that is so insane, consider that the best possible vision a human could have is somewhere between 20/10 and 20/8. When your decision whether or not to swing — and how to position your hands and body for that swing — is within a window of literally milliseconds, the difference between elite and unknown could depend on a few extra milliseconds of pitch recognition. While vision is only one factor, it does appear to be an important prerequisite in success at the highest level. When you have such extreme outliers genetically, it at least somewhat answers the question “why have there been so many siblings/parents to play Major League Baseball?” Which brings us to the real question:

Who is the best family to ever play?

Here are the basic criteria I looked at in my research:

1. Grandparents, parents, siblings — minimum 5 seasons played
2. Fangraphs WAR
3. Minimum of 6 “third-WAR” combined
4. No family member active in the minor leagues

While WAR (wins above replacement) may be an imperfect statistic, it is a great place to start, as it allows us to compare players from different eras and players from different positions with one number. I decided to, admittedly somewhat arbitrarily, use the player’s third-best season in terms of WAR (third-WAR) to value them. To me, this fairly encompasses how good the player was in their prime, while excluding outlier seasons. It also avoids the difficulty of understating a player’s greatness just because they enjoyed a long career, as might happen if you simply used a career average or median, or overrating a player who was good for awhile but never great. Based on this, let’s take a look at some of the greatest baseball families:

third-WAR is the player’s WAR in their third-best season. While somewhat arbitrary, it is a metric that reflects a player’s skill in his prime, while removing outlier seasons.

From this, as expected, the Bonds family is far and away the most impressive. While you may be thinking “but Barry’s career should have an asterisk” don’t forget that even before his alien stretch starting with 73 home runs he had already had some of the best seasons in baseball history. And his father Bobby was responsible for five of the first ten 30 home run/30 stolen base seasons in MLB history. After the Bonds family, who would you take on your father-son-sibling squad?

Before I did any research, the obvious answer seemed like the Griffeys. In a lot of ways, the Griffey family mirrors the Bonds’ in that dad was great but under-appreciated in his era, while Junior’s greatness had him in the conversation of “greatest of all time” during his prime. Of course, injuries plagued Ken Jr., while Barry enjoyed a long, healthy career. As I delved deeper though, I was surprised to find that the Griffeys may not even be the best baseball family in Cincinnati Reds history.

This Boone-Larkin-Boone-Larkin infield actually appeared together, but just once. Stephen Larkin, younger brother of Hall of Famer Barry, only played in one MLB game. (Photo credit Cincinnati Reds)

Four Boones or two Griffeys?

Now comes the discussion of quality over quantity. No one would argue that Ken Jr. in his prime wasn’t superior to any of the Boones, but the Boone package includes four very good players. To complicate matters in this very serious cross-generational debate, Aaron, Bret, Bob, and Ray even played unique positions for much of their career (3B, 2B, C, and SS respectively).

So who would you take? Below are the “third-WAR” seasons for each family.

Bret Boone, 2B: .278/.339/.462 (3.9 WAR) 24 HR/107 RBI, Gold Glove
Aaron Boone, 3B: .267/.327/.453 (2.1 WAR), 24 HR/96 RBI/23 SB
Bob Boone, C: .256/.310/.337 (3.2 WAR), 7 HR/58 RBI, Gold Glove
Ray Boone, SS: .295/.376/.466 (3.9 WAR), 20 HR/85 RBI/4 SB

Ken Griffey, LF: .294/.364/.454 (3.5 WAR), 13 HR/85 RBI/23 SB
Griffey Jr CF: .309/.408/.617 (8.4 WAR), 45 HR/109 RBI/17 SB, Gold Glove

Is there a wrong answer here? Looking only at WAR, the Boones edge out the Griffeys. The case to be made for the Boones is that you’d be able to fill four very important positions with all-star caliber players. But if you want to get technical, not all WAR is created equal (for example, one 8 WAR player is better than four 2 WAR players, because 2 WAR players are easier to replace). A superstar Junior and an all-star Senior is a very tough duo to pass on. But at the risk of repeating history and trading four players for Griffey (more on Mike Cameron in part two — dads with prospects) I’m going to go with the quartet of Boones.

What do you think? Go here to vote.

I’m not sure if “launching knuckleballs for game-winning home runs to send your team to the World Series” is a stat, but I know who leads it. (Photo credit: InsideSoCal)

What about the Alous?

Not to be outdone, the Alou family has an important place in this discourse, too. By the third-WAR metric, they actually edge out the Boones for the #2 spot. The four big leaguers from their family present a noteworthy, even if less well-rounded bunch than the Boones:

Moises Alou, OF .339/.397/.592 (4.7 WAR), 22 HR/78 RBI/7 SB
Felipe Alou, OF .297/.338/.481 (5.1 WAR), 23 HR/78 RBI/8 SB
Jesus Alou, OF .324/.345/.417 (0.4 WAR), 2 HR/19 RBI, 3.3% K%
Matty Alou, OF .338/.372/.413 (3.4 WAR), 2 HR/28 RBI/16 SB, 7.2% K%

Moises and Felipe make for a formidable tandem themselves, but the high average and contact rates of Jesus and Matty are what makes this foursome competitive with the Boones. Ignoring the fact that we have four outfielders (Matty and Felipe both played some first base as well) this group compares favorably to the Boones on paper; Moises and Felipe would be preferable to any of the Boones, while Matty is a fun guy to remember and had a nice career too. But for me, the fact that the Boones cover three premium positions (C, 2B, SS) makes up for the less impressive offensive numbers. Perhaps I’m biased in that I grew up watching Aaron and Bret, while Moises is the only Alou I had a chance to see play.

In any case, the WAR (which does take into account positional value) disagrees with my opinion — what do you think? Vote here.

“Your opinion is wrong” is how every good debate should end.

Bells and Alomars

Moving on to the trios, we’ll start with the Bell family. We have Buddy, one of the most underrated players in history, leading the group; Buddy won six gold gloves as a third baseman, hit for average and power, but never received much attention (or Hall of Fame consideration) because he played for some bad teams and was a contemporary of the best third baseman in history. David was a true journeyman, playing for 7 teams in 12 seasons, but put together some very good years as a utility infielder. Grandpa Gus was lucky enough to play for the Redlegs when they actually changed their name to “Redlegs.”

Youngest brother Mike appeared in a few games in 2000, but didn’t qualify for this list. (Photo credit: Blavity)

The Alomars, led by Hall of Famer Roberto, would make for an elite defensive squad in any era: Sandy Jr. behind the plate with Sandy Sr. and Roberto as the double play combination at short and second.

While Sandy Jr. certainly looked the part of a power hitter (he’s listed at both6’3 and 6’5 but was remarkably athletic for his size) he never hit more than 21 HR in a season. I was surprised to learn, that other than his breakout .324/.354/.545 season during which he mashed those 21 homers, he was mostly an average offensive catcher for his career. Sandy Sr. had a very long, successful career in the MLB as a speed-and-defense middle infielder, though he was never feared at the plate. Roberto, meanwhile, was one of the most valuable players of the era; he played a premium position at second base (and did so quite well — hence the ten gold gloves) while also hitting for average, power, and being a force on the bases. For a stretch of ten seasons from 1992–2001, Roberto hit .300 nine times, posted a double-digit walk rate six times, and in each of those six seasons he walked more than he struck out. He also won nine gold gloves, and stole more than 300 bases in that time frame. The Alomar versus Bell comparison is tough, if only because Roberto was so damn good.

Buddy Bell, 3B: .329/.379/.498 (6.0 WAR) 17 HR/83 RBI, Gold Glove
David Bell, 2B/3B: .261/.333/.429 (3.1 WAR) 20 HR/73 RBI, 12.7% K%
Gus Bell, OF: .299/.349/.465 (1.8 WAR) 17 HR/101 RBI/5 SB, 8.5% K%

R. Alomar, 2B: .310/.405/.427 (6.1 WAR) 8 HR/76 RBI/49 SB, Gold Glove
S. Alomar, 2B/SS: .239/.277/.305 (1.0 WAR) 2 HR/39 RBI/28 SB
S. Alomar Jr., C: .288/.347/.490 (2.0 WAR) 14 HR/43 RBI/8 SB, 9.7% K%

As hard as it is for me to do — given my preference for guys who play up the middle (and totally healthy baseball man crush on Roberto Alomar) — the Buddy-David-Gus combination is just too solid for me. I think Buddy is very underrated, and although not on the level of greatness Roberto, I’d take David and Gus over Sandy Jr. and Sr. You could just as easily make the case for the Alomars, as I did for the Boones, that despite lower WAR you might prefer the premium positions.

Would you pick the Bells or the Alomars?

If you don’t have a baseball crush on Roberto Alomar, I didn’t do him justice. (Photo credit: El Nuevo Dia)

Martinezes and the importance of pitching

Yes, it’s true, that is how you make “Martinez” plural. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the family that I think will be the toughest to categorize.

So far, we’ve only had families of position players on our list. While theStottlemyres represent an impressive pitching duo, it’s hard to compete with Pedro and Ramon. While Pedro’s highest WAR seasons don’t match up to those of Bonds, he has a real case for the best pitcher of all-time, coming from an era that was totally unfair to pitchers. To complicate matters, we are faced with the fact that pitching wins championships. And now we are faced with some limitations of the WAR statistic. Just for fun, which season do you think was better? (follow link to vote):

Griffey Jr CF: .309/.408/.617 (8.4 WAR), 45 HR/109 RBI/17 SB, Gold Glove
Pedro Martinez, P: 17–8, 241.1 IP 1.90 ERA/2.39 FIP (8.5 WAR) 32.2% K%

Considering that these seasons are even from the same era, we aren’t even tasked with grading on a curve. WAR would give a slight edge to Pedro in this category — though basically a tossup. Here’s the Martinez family compared to the Griffeys:

Pedro Martinez, P: 17–8, 241.1 IP, 1.90 ERA/2.39 FIP (8.5 WAR) 32.2% K%
Ramon Martinez, P: 17–7, 206.1 IP, 3.66 ERA/4.21 FIP (2.2 WAR)

Ken Griffey, LF: .294/.364/.454 (3.5 WAR), 13 HR/85 RBI/23 SB
Griffey Jr CF: .309/.408/.617 (8.4 WAR), 45 HR/109 RBI/17 SB, Gold Glove

From this, the Griffey family seems far superior to the Martinezes. Why, then, do I really want to pick Martinez family? I think that depends on how you think about the question “who is best?” If you view the question as an observer, and are merely comparing groups of stats, the Griffeys are the clear choice. But if you are like me, and for some reason imagine yourself picking these families to participate on your “team” then you might find yourself taking the dominant, ace pitcher over a Hall-of-Famer and All-Star combo.

Go here to vote between the Martinezes and Griffeys. 

If there was a 0.000001% chance it would work, I’d build the shit out of some fields (Field of Dreams).

Greg and Mike Maddux

Speaking of dominant aces, the Maddux family creates an almost impossible choice between pitching families. While Mike had a successful career, mostly as a reliever for ten different teams across fifteen seasons, it was younger brother Greg that puts this duo in the same category as Pedro and Ramon.

For an era dominated by batters that were bigger, faster, and stronger than ever before, it’s suiting that one of the purest finesse pitchers in history shut them down so consistently. Like Pedro, Greg did not have what most would consider ideal size for a pitcher; unlike Pedro, Greg never posted gaudy strikeout numbers, and relied on pinpoint command and pitch movement. 

This tailing fastball, combined with pinpoint command, helped make Maddux absolutely dominant.

The young, lanky version of Maddux topped out in the mid-90s according to scouting reports at the time. However, many of those same scouts doubted his ability to make it as a starter in the Majors. He struggled mightily in his first season with the Cubs, and again the following season even with extended innings: his ERA was north of 5.5 both seasons. Even still, scouts were turning the corner on their evaluations, noting his solid “stuff” and athleticism — in those rough two seasons he was only 20 and 21 years old. He broke out in a big way the following season, evolving into the “Mad Dog” we know today, largely thanks to his improvements in command and less reliance on a hard fastball.

After five more great seasons with the Cubs, Greg left via Free Agency for the Braves. The already great Maddux somehow got even better with the Braves. Across a span of ten seasons, Maddux posted — get this — more than 72 WAR. While Pedro was more dominant at his peak, Maddux was elite for a much longer span, posting a WAR over 5 for a full twelve seasons. For comparison, we have to lower the bar to 3 WAR to find twelve seasons for Pedro. At 3 WAR, Greg had nine-freaking-teen seasons (as in, 19) where he cleared that. And I guess the eighteen gold gloves that Greg won are worth mentioning, too.

This is what makes the Pedro vs. Greg debate tough: is a long span of elite performance more impressive than a shorter span of flat dominance? If you think the two are close, does the fact that Ramon was more valuable than Mike make a difference in the best pitching family debate?

Pedro Martinez, P: 17–8, 241.1 IP, 1.90 ERA/2.39 FIP (8.5 WAR) 32.2% K%
Ramon Martinez, P: 17–7, 206.1 IP, 3.66 ERA/4.21 FIP (2.2 WAR)

Greg Maddux, P: 15–11, 245 IP, 2.72 ERA/2.73 FIP (7.8 WAR), Gold Glove
Mike Maddux, P: 7–2, 5 SV, 98.2 IP, 2.46 ERA/3.08 FIP (1.4 WAR)

Go here to vote between these two pitching families.

Ripkens

While Ryan Ripken is still an active minor league player, which would technically make the Ripkens a part of my part two discussion of families with active prospects (will be linked once article is complete) I decided to include them here because Ryan doesn’t seem to have much promise as a 24 year old struggling in A ball. Barring some very late blooming, it’s just Cal and Billy representing the Ripkens. I have to admit, while I enjoy all of the research I’ve done to put this article together, the most enlightening research has been on that of Cal.

As a relatively young baseball fan, this is about the beginning of my experience watching Cal play. (Photo credit: NY Daily News)

While his durability and the number 2632 are probably the first things that come to mind when you think of Cal Ripken Jr., this amazing consecutive games played record (which I believe will never be broken) may actually be a disservice to him, in that it overshadows just how great of a player he was. He is credited with being the progenitor of offensively-capable, taller shortstops, but he is still in my opinion the greatest shortstop not named Rodriguez to ever play. He hit for average, power, took walks, didn’t strike out much, and was highly regarded defensively (2 Gold Gloves, and probably would have had more if not for Vizquel). In terms of longevity, Cal posted fifteen straight seasons of 3.5+ WAR. In terms of an elite prime, he had a stretch of nine years in which his WAR was 5+ in eight of them.

As far as greatness goes, this is a rare time when “Hall of Famer” doesn’t do a player justice. (Photo credit)

When you tell your children of Cal Ripken, lead with the numbers that show his greatness…then tell them he didn’t miss a game for more than sixteen full seasons.

Cal Ripken, SS: .317/.371/.517 (8.5 WAR) 27 HR/102 RBI, MVP
Billy Ripken, 2B: .239/.284/.305 (0.9 WAR) 2 HR/26 RBI/1 SB

Billy was a rightful big leaguer — which isn’t always the case when it comes to family members with famous last names — but mostly a light hitter who made himself valuable by being a very good defender.

Since Cal Ripken and Greg Maddux both had long, glorious careers with a period of dominance, let’s compare their families. Who would you take?

Gwynns, Uptons, Fielders, and Cruzes

As for the honorable mentions, there are some impressive duos, and I’m sure I inevitably missed some.

Tony Gwynn, RF: .329/.381/.467 (6.2 WAR) 14 HR/59 RBI/37 SB
Tony Gwynn Jr., CF: .256/.308/.353 (1.6 WAR) 2 HR/22 RBI/22 SB

Gwynn Sr. might have been the purest hitter ever. His career average was an astonishing .338, and he walked (7.7%) far more than he struck out (4.2%). His final season in the league, at age 41, he went .324/.384/.461 and still walked more than he struck out. There’s no doubt that he could have contributed for longer, had he chosen to do so. Gwynn Jr. had a few solid seasons of his own, with great speed and plate discipline, but never hit for much average or power.

Justin Upton, OF: .300/.366/.532 (4.9 WAR) 26 HR/86 RBI/20 SB
Melvin Upton, OF: .237/.322/.424 (3.8 WAR) 18 HR/62 RBI/42 SB

The book on Justin hasn’t really changed since he was drafted #1 overall in 2005: great hitter, good speed. His brother Melvin (formerly B.J.) was drafted #2 overall as a shortstop in 2002. While Justin Upton still has plenty of years ahead of him at just 30 years old, older brother Melvin looks to be nearing the end of an intriguing career. After holding his own offensively as a 20 year old, but with some difficulties defensively at SS, Melvin was moved to CF where he thrived. At age 23, he broke out with a .300/.386/.508 slash line — with 24 HR and 22 SB. He followed that up with a less impressive .273/.383/.401 season, but added 44 SB. The power, speed, plate discipline, and defensive abilities were all there; though he never quite became a superstar he did have a productive career. It’s worth mentioning Dmitri and Delmon Young, who did not reach the minimum third-WAR threshold, but were drafted #4 and #1 overall respectively, and were the first brothers to be taken in the top 5.

Prince Fielder, 1B: .299/.415/.566 (4.7 WAR) 38 HR/120 RBI, 15.5% BB%
Cecil Fielder, 1B: .244/.325/.458 (2.5 WAR) 35 HR/124 RBI, 10.8% BB%

It’s safe to say that Prince made his dad proud with his career, even if it ended a few years too soon due to injury. While the notoriously chubby Prince stole more bases (18) than his hulking father (2) these guys were paid to mash. Prince was the better overall hitter, but his dad still holds the family home run record with 51 (Prince topped out at 50). By some wild coincidence, both father and son finished their careers with the same number of home runs — 319. While Prince only ever played first base, Cecil was wedged into the lineup at third and even second base, giving us this great box score:

Dammit I love baseball: Cecil Fielder and Kelly Gruber swapping positions 18 times, even mid at-bat. (Source)

Jose Cruz, OF: .315/.376/.460 (4.8 WAR) 10 HR/83 RBI/37 SB
Jose Cruz Jr., OF: .241/.358/.433 (2.5 WAR) 14 HR/45 RBI/14 SB, 15.5% BB%

In this case, junior didn’t quite live up to the legacy of his dad — but it was a high bar to reach. Cruz Sr. had seven seasons of 4+ WAR, and twelve consecutive seasons of 2+ WAR. Cruz Jr. had a 30/30 year and a few other productive seasons, but it was a tough era to stand out as a bat-first outfielder. Which leads us to…

The forgotten family of baseball

In putting together this list, I almost neglected to include the Gileses, and that’s a major oversight. It’s a mistake I don’t want saavy baseball fans who value knowledge about random baseball history to make. Most of the other articles I found on the topic don’t even mention the Giles family at all — it seems the “underrated” moniker has stuck with them long into retirement. Check out these third-war seasons:

Brian Giles, OF: .315/.432/.594 (6.3 WAR) 35 HR/123 RBI 16.6% BB%
Marcus Giles, 2B: .311/.378/.433 (3.0 WAR) 8 HR/48 RBI/17 SB

Unlike Marcus who had a few great seasons and was gone, perhaps a beneficiary of the “third-WAR” metric, Brian was a truly elite outfielder for about a decade.

Brian’s career began in the unenviable position of being an unheralded prospect — drafted in the 17th round — stuck in the minor leagues behind an outfield consisting of Ramirez, Lofton, Belle. On top of that, the acquisition of veterans (and future Hall of Famers) Dave Winfield and Eddie Murray to fill the Indians’ DH vacancy effectively blocked Giles from any chance at-bats. Once Murray was traded in mid-1996, Giles played in 51 games, posting an impressive .355/.434/.612. He showed enough to earn a full-time outfield job when Belle left in free agency the following year. Despite posting a great .269/.396/.460 line, the Indians traded him to the Pirates for usable reliever Ricardo Rincon, straight up.

A few years later, the A’s would trade someone named Marshall McDougall to the Indians for Rincon. The Indians did not do well in Rincon trades. (Photo: Moneyball)

The Indians’ loss was the Pirates’ gain. Giles went on to post five straight seasons with an on-base percentage of .400+ including a historic .298/.450/.622 in 2002.

The extent to which Brian was unappreciated despite such elite production is best elucidated by the fact that he only made two All-Star games in his entire career, despite eight consecutive seasons of 4+ WAR, and a shiny career line of .291/.400/.502.

Brian posted double-digit walk rates every year he played, and the only year he struck out more than he walked (his 14th season) was the year he called it quits. For perspective, only five players had more walks than strikeouts in 2017: Votto, Turner, Trout, Rendon, and Rizzo — an impressive list, for sure; none of those players accomplished that feat the previous year. Among his contemporaries, the only other players to post double-digit walk rates with fewer strikeouts than walks with a .500+ slugging percentage in consecutive seasons were: Bonds, Sheffield, Pujols, Chipper, Giambi, Helton, Palmeiro, Thomas. I thought about excluding first basemen from the list, but this helps make the point of just how great Brian was, and for a long period of time.

As mentioned above, younger brother Marcus did not enjoy the long career Brian did, but was extremely valuable in his own right. While Brian was unheralded as a youngster, Marcus was mostly disregarded; Marcus was drafted way down in the 53rd round in 1996. He cracked the big leagues for the first time in 2001 at age 22, and put up a terrific .262/.338/.430 in about half a season of work, and he posted similar numbers in 2002. Even if that were the whole story, that’s still a remarkable achievement for a 53rd round draft pick — but of course, there’s more. For his stretch from 2003–2005,Marcus was by far the best second baseman in the game. In fact, among all middle infielders, only the nearly immortal Alex Rodriguez rated higher than the diminutive Giles during that span (that includes guys like Tejada, Jeter,Rollins, and teammate Furcal).

From 2003–2005, Marcus Giles was basically a better defensive version of Derek Jeter (Source: Fangraphs)

This is not to say that Marcus had a better career than any of the aforementioned stars, as this dramatically understates the significance of longevity (these were actually Marcus’ only three noteworthy seasons). But as far as 53rd round picks go, a run of three elite years like this is pretty wild. This puts the Giles family rightfully in discussion of top 5 baseball families.

Across three full seasons, the Giles brothers were among the top players in all of baseball (Source: Fangraphs)

Of these five-honorable mention families (Gwynns, Uptons, Fielders, Cruzes, Gileses) who would you take? Vote here.

The ultimate question:

Who do you think is the best non-Bonds baseball family? Go here to take the poll.

The best thing about Spring Training statistics for fantasy owners is that you can spin them whichever way is convenient for you, the owner. If you’re heavily invested in a certain player who is struggling in Spring Training, you can always say “It’s only spring, these numbers don’t count!” Or, on the other hand, you can use a hot spring to justify reaching for a player who you believe will breakout. So yes, largely spring statistics are meaningless. Except, Jeff Zimmerman wrote an article earlier this year highlighting batted ball data to spot potential breakouts. With limited Statcast data provided at many Arizona and Florida ballparks, the ground out/fly out ratio may be the best indicator for hitters to spot those breakouts. Luckily MLB.com provides the GO/AO ratio for all spring statistics, so we can put Jeff Zimmerman’s hard work to use now that 2018 Spring Training is in the books. Let’s look at three players that look poised to breakout in 2018. I’ll write a part-two portion including three or four players who had previously broken out (relatively speaking) in 2017 but are projected to regress some by the masses.

Let’s start with Brandon Nimmo, the young outfielder for the Mets. Nimmo had a hot spring and with Michael Conforto starting the season on the DL, Nimmo got the nod to leadoff and play centerfield for Opening Day. Conforto is progressing much quicker than expected and should be back before the end of the month. halting Nimmo’s playing time. Thanks to the Mets signing on Adrian Gonzalez, effectively blocking Jay Bruce from moving from right field to first base, Nimmo is left without a spot. I won’t speculate on injuries (too much) but Yoenis Cespedes rarely plays a full season and I don’t expect Adrian Gonzalez to be at first base all season.

Back to Nimmo, he hit .306 with three home runs and whooping nine extra-base hits in Spring Training. In addition to all those loud numbers, his GO/AO ratio sits at 0.87 for the spring. For context, his minor league ratio is 1.32 and so far in limited major league experience (250 at-bats) it’s 1.12. Based on Zimmerman’s conversion table, we are looking at a ground ball rate of between 42% and 43%. Throughout his minor league career his ground ball rates have ranged between 45% to 56%, let’s call it 50%. That difference in groundball rate could mean an improvement in fly ball rate to near 40%. Nimmo has never been considered a power hitter but he’s been graded with a 50 in raw power, so a change in approach may unlock 20+ home runs. His previous career high is 12 in 2016, mostly in AAA and one at the major league level. His plate discipline is already fantastic evidenced by his incredible minor league walk rates. If he were to unlock average to above average power, Nimmo could become a Matt Carpenter-type leadoff hitter for years to come.

Steven Duggar is a name I haven’t seen on many people’s radar this offseason. He performed well this spring and has impressed the coaching staff of the Giants. But alas, he was Optioned to AAA to receive everyday at-bats. The Giants believe he is the centerfielder of the future and given the health track record of players like Hunter Pence and the mediocrity of Gregor Blanco, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Dugger by June (if not sooner). Duggar is a good athlete with a good hit tool and above average speed. His raw power is only graded out as average but I’ve noticed an approach change that began in High-A last year where he, like many others began elevating the ball more. He missed some time last year but also saw a solid HR/FB% at about 13% along with the increase in fly balls. This is a good sign. So let’s compare some numbers for Duggar.

In his first two seasons of minor league ball, his GO/AO ratio was 1.52 with fly ball rates typically below 30%. In 2017, again he dealt with injuries and only played in 42 games, but improved on his GO/AO ratio and fly ball rate to the tune of 0.82 and 43% respectively. This spring he’s continued elevating the baseball with a GO/AO ratio of 0.92 along with 4 home runs and six extra-base hits. His patience at the plate is incredible, much like Brandon Nimmo and his outfield defense is good enough to play centerfield for the Giants right now. He’s been a doubles machine in the minors and it’s possible those doubles start turning into home runs. I don’t see the upside in terms of home runs compared to Nimmo but I think Duggar can steal more bases, so both can be solid fantasy contributors, especially in OBP formats.

Based on all the hype in Ozzie Albies’ direction this offseason, you would be under the impression that he already broke out. However, he was only up with the Braves for all of 57 games and 244 plate appearances. In that short amount of time, he performed admirably with a triple slash line of .286/.354/.456 with six home runs and eight steals at the ripe age of 20 years old. Impressive to say the least, but before 2017 he had hit a total of eight home runs in 293 games. So, should we just chalk up the 15 he hit between AAA and the majors in 2017 to luck or an outlier?

How about neither, you know better than that! Ozzie was a ground ball machine in the minors which is typical for a speedster with 70-grade speed and five foot nine inch, 160-pound frame. Prior to 2017, Albies’ minor league GO/AO ratio was 1.5. Last year between AAA and the majors, it was 0.9 which matches his approach this spring at 0.85. Albies has hit over .300 with three homers and six extra-base hits this spring. I realize that Albies only played in 57 games in 2017 but I set some parameters for comparison sake to Ozzie Albies’ short time in the Majors, because why not? It’s fun. Take a look. Not bad, right? I set the walk rate above 8%, the K rate below 17%, the flyball rate above 39%, and the Hard contact above 33%. The player I want to highlight of this group is fellow five foot nine inch Mookie Betts. Let’s compare Mookie’s 200+ PA cameo at age 21 to Albies’ 200+ PA cameo last year.

I should point out that Betts didn’t strike out as much as Albies did in the minors but still impressive, to say the least. New SunTrust Park plays much better in terms of power for left-handed batters and yes, Albies is a switch hitter, but should bat from the left side at least 65% of the time. Hitting from the left side should help his power production. The infatuation with Albies continues to grow. If he builds on his success from 2017, there’s nothing in his batted ball profile that would prevent him from hitting 20+ home runs as he reaches his peak. The kid’s a star! I envision multiple seasons of 20 home runs and 30 steals with a great average for Albies.

Trading away your team’s best players is never going to make you popular. You’ve probably read plenty about how the return for Marcell Ozuna was pretty good for the Marlins, while the return for Stanton was pretty thin. But savvy baseball fans understand that when you trade players, you’re not only trading their production, but also their contracts – so offloading an insane 13-year $325M contract might not return as much as a team-friendly contract for a lesser player. Add in the fact that Stanton had a no-trade clause (thus, a ton of leverage over to whom he was traded) the fact that the Marlins got anything in return for Stanton is actually impressive. The Yankees took on practically all of Stanton’s remaining contract; so in context, this was a fine deal for the Marlins. Dee Gordon, though contact-and-speed types typically don’t sustain a lot of value into their 30’s (as Gordon enters this year at 30), has put together 3.8 WAR/162 across his last 4 seasons, so maybe they could’ve gotten a little more out of that deal, but again – they were able to get rid of Gordon’s entire contract, which is guaranteed until his age-33 season of 2020.

The trade that stuck out most to me was the one for Christian Yelich. Yelich is an established star in the league who is still very young and has lots of upside, won’t be a free agent until 2023 (accounting for a team-friendly option in 2022), and seems like the type of player you might want to keep, even in a rebuild. They did receive top prospect Lewis Brinson and others in return, but of all the deals they made this one was, to me, the most indicative of “holy crap Jeter has no idea what he’s doing.”

And then, I realized, maybe he’s a genius.

Well, it doesn’t take a genius to recognize that Yelich is a future star, if he isn’t rightfully considered one already. It takes some genius (and perhaps a few gift baskets for your fans?) to say tear it all down. The Marlins could’ve kept any or all of Yelich, Ozuna, and even Stanton, but they’d still have been bad for the foreseeable future. The past four seasons they won 77, 71, 79, and 77 games. It’d have been easy to continue to toil in mediocrity, maybe even make a wildcard or two. But mediocrity is pointless in a business that overtly rewards losing.

You’re saying you want us to lose? No, we’ve BEEN losing. What I want is for us to finish dead last.
-Derek Jeter (probably).

It’s not a secret that tanking is now an actual strategy employed by “rebuilding” teams. I was surprised to learn in my research that tanking is probably not a new phenomenon (the percentage of teams who win 70 or fewer games is fairly consistent over the past several decades) but the game has changed so significantly in the era of free agency, “service time,” and revenue sharing, that the financial benefits of tanking should probably not be legal (but that’s for the CBA to determine). 2018 could be the worst year ever in terms of the number of teams not trying to compete.

Is that wrong? “Tank and bank” isn’t a purely theoretical exercise anymore. As you probably know, the past two World Series winners were responsible for some of the most blatant, disgusting, glorious middle-fingers-to-the-league you could ever imagine – and their paths coincide almost directly.

2008: the Cubs were an aging but solid team that led the NL in wins, with a dangerous lineup and a restored version of Kerry Wood, now a closer. They were bounced early in the playoffs however, in the same year Joe Maddon came up just short of an unlikely World Series title with the Rays. That same year, the Astros were competitive – winning 86 games – but came up short of a playoff birth.

Both teams achieved Marlins-esque mediocrity in 2009 and 2010, and that’s when the tanking rebuilding began. The Astros were the most aggressive and flagrant in their process, and many people forget just how bad they were. They won just 56 games in 2011, followed by campaigns of 55 and 51 wins (that’s three straight seasons of 106+ losses). Their payroll went from $77M in 2011 to $67M in 2012 to $25M in 2013 and then – somehow – cut it in half during the season by shedding even more salary. Notably, and not coincidentally, the Astros got a new owner in 2011. That historically bad 2013 for the Astros was actually historically great: they had the most profitable season in MLB history.

While the Cubs also lost a bunch of games during that same time period, they had a pretty big advantage over the Astros: they hired Theo Epstein (all due respect to Jeff Luhnow, whose roundabout career path is worthy of its own article). I’m not going to try and give Jeter or his staff a current/future grade as it pertains to winning lopsided trades but let’s just assume the Marlins are more like the 2011 Astros than the 2011 Cubs. Their “competitive advantage” over teams who may have better guys in analytics/baseball ops is that they can lose lots of games.

Currently, the Marlins are projected to win the fewest games in baseball which would of course net them the #1 overall pick. Picking first is certainly no guarantee of success (ahem, Kris Bryant went #2 to the Cubs in 2013 while the Astros picked up Mark Appel at #1) but it’s objectively better to pick in the top 2 or 3 than, say, outside of the top 5. There is also the correlated benefit of turning a bigger profit by fielding a lower payroll. To put it simply: if you’re going to miss the playoffs anyway, make as much money as possible while getting the best draft pick you can. It’s easy to say “I wouldn’t have traded Yelich/Ozuna/Stanton” in an attempt to appease your fan base (who aren’t coming to games anyway) while not having personally invested hundreds of millions of dollars into a team; but when your expensive team has little chance of even making the playoffs (never mind winning a World Series) the business side of things becomes even more important.

Based on the aggressive trades the Marlins have made to shed payroll, expect them to mirror the ’11-’13 Astros financially: they have about $80M committed this year, about $50M in 2019, but only $23M in 2020; 22M of that is to Wei-Yin Chen who I’m sure the Marlins hope can stay healthy long enough to generate a little interest from a contender. Righty-specialist and all-time home run preventer Brad Ziegler (making $9M) should have enough appeal to anyone who gets tired of giving up homers to the right-handed heavy Yankees or Angels lineups, and Junichi Tazawa (making $7M) might have a few buyers as well. Justin Bour (age 30, $3.4M, arb-eligible) should find a home with a competitor  – possibly best fit with the aforementioned Angels or even Yankees depending on how Greg Bird recovers, given their respective needs for some left-handed power options. Perhaps they can package the no longer desirable Martin Prado (2yr, $28.5M) with the very desirable J.T. Realmuto (age 27, $2.9M, arb-eligible) to shed some more salary.

By year 5 of their rebuild, both the Cubs and Astros blossomed into legitimate competitors, before winning their World Series in years 6 and 7 respectively (and being in great position to compete for years to come). Marlins fans probably don’t want to year “2022” as the best case scenario for their team to begin competing…but competing for a World Series doesn’t come easy. And as I’m sure Astros and Cubs fans could attest, it’s worth the wait.

During one of my recent visits to the Fangraphs home page, while scrolling across the leaberboards, I was confronted by a fact I had once known but had long ago forgotten over this slow and tired off-season. Aaron Judge led the league in WAR! as a rookie?! and by quite a wide margin. That happened last season? Shoot just over a year ago Judge was still relatively unknown and Jeff Sullivan was telling us not to underestimate his power.

This realization conjured up memories of last season’s AL MVP vote, how one of Sabermetrics’ patron saints shook the foundations of Sabermetrics’ most prominent statistical achievement, and how article after article were written about clutch hitting.

This, in turn, reminded me of another leaderboard Judge topped last season, this one more dubious. He led (lagged?) the league with the lowest Clutch score. He was fourth in WPA/LI with 5.85 Wins, trailing only this generation’s Mickey Mantle, Judge’s clone, and some guy who plays for the Reds and just a fractional win behind the leader. In contrast, he ranked just 38th in WPA tied with some guy who used to play in Korea. Add this up and he had by far the lowest Clutch score at -3.64 wins, a full win lower than the rest of MLB save for one blue-eyed Cub.

Which led me to ask the question: What would Aaron Judge have had to do to be a clutch batter? And I don’t mean the obvious answer, “Hit better in high leverage situations“. Duh! He batted an astounding 190 wRC+ in low leverage situations to just a 107 in high leverage at bats. But that’s not the answer I was looking for. I wanted to know specifically, what would Aaron Judge have had to do to be a clutch batter? as in what could we change from his epic near MVP season to bring his Clutch stat into the positive?

So I set to find out.

Using Fangraph’s own Play Log, and with plenty of assistance from BaseballSavant.com and Statcast, I decided to play as one of the “Baseball Gods” and see if I could tweak a few of Judge’s plays to make him more clutch. As a “Fair and Just Baseball God” I wouldn’t be aiming to increase Judge’s overall stat line. If I nudge a groundball a little to turn an out into a single in a high leverage situation, I’d do the opposite in a low leverage situation (Judge had nearly 50 PA’s with a Leverage Index, LI, of effectively 0) nudging another grounder into a fielder’s glove for an out.

Thus his overall stat line and his WPA/LI would remain effectively the same, and since in those low leverage situations no (or nearly no) WPA was added, we’ll only be looking at how the play’s I change increase Judge’s WPA.(And I’ll only be going through the plays I add not the ones I’d need to take away.) I also won’t worry about any of the time traveler unintended consequences stuff, I’ll assume that only the single event changes without it affecting other plays in the same game or others. (I’ll let some of the other “Baseball Gods” worry about that stuff…)

Recall the Equation for Clutch:

Clutch = (WPA)/(pLI) – (WPA/LI)

With my rule that Judge’s pLI (0.95) and WPA/LI (5.85) will remain fixed we are just looking to increase Judge’s WPA.

With that lengthy explanation out of the way, let’s begin!:

Judge Initial WPA = 2.10
_________________________________________________________
Situation #1:

July 27th, Bottom 9, 1 Out, Runner on Third, Yankees down 1.
LI = 5.81 – Actual Play – Judge Fly’s Out to Right. – WPA = -.252

We’ll start with a big one, in fact Judge’s second highest leverage play of his season!
With a chance to tie the game in the 9th, Judge just miss-hits the ball sending it not quite far enough to allow the speedy Brett Gardner to score from third. As you can see, similar hit balls all had the same result:

But as my first act as “Baseball God” I’m gonna adjust this hit ever so slightly, notching Judge’s bat up a millimeter to two to lower the Launch Angle of this hit and allow it to carry just a bit further. Something more like this:

That should be far enough out to score Gardner giving Judge a Sac Fly.

New Play – Sac Fly – New WPA = .112 – Net WPA Change = .364

Judge’s New WPA = 2.46
_________________________________________________________
Situation #2:

August 2nd, Bottom 8, No Outs, Runner on Second, Yankees down 2.
LI = 2.72 – Actual Play – Strike out swinging. – WPA = -.08

Sometimes the job of a “Baseball God” is rather easy. In this case I’ll just need to do some umpire convincing. In this at bat Judge struck out on a 3-2 slider, but earlier in the at bat, after three wild pitches, here was the 3-0 offering from Bruce Rondon:

Ok, sure, most umpires probably call this a strike on a 3-0 count, but I’m gonna go ahead and give this one to Judge. Ball Four!

New Play – Walk – New WPA = .087 – Net WPA Change = .167

Judge’s New WPA = 2.63
_________________________________________________________
Situation #3:

September 19th, Bottom 2, 2 Outs, Runners on Second and Third, Tie Game.
LI = 2.03 – Actual Play – Fly out to Center. – WPA = -.061

Judge crushed a Jose Berrios offering at 107 MPH:

Here’s what it looked like.

He was just a little under this one, wouldn’t take much more to send this ball out. So we’ll make the charge and turn this loud out into a bomb.

New Play – Three Run Home Run – New WPA = .249 – Net WPA Change = .310

Judge’s New WPA = 2.94
_________________________________________________________
Situation #4:

September 9th, Top 9, No Outs, Runner on First, Tie Game.
LI = 3.40 – Actual Play – Fielder’s Choice to third, out at second. – WPA = -.084

Judge grounds one to third, and nearly into a double play.
Here’s what it looked like.

Thing is, Rougned “De La Hoya” Odor is in such a hurry to turn two that it almost looks like he jumps off Second too early. Take a closer look:

Your guess is as good as mine, but here’s the thing: As a “Baseball God“, I don’t have to guess. I’ll just make the throw from third just a little higher and wider pulling Odor off the bag and leaving both runners safe on a throwing error. Did you know that errors count as positive WPA plays?!

New Play – Reach on Error, Throwing Error at Third, Runners safe at First and Second – New WPA = .109 – Net WPA Change = .193

Judge’s New WPA = 3.13
_________________________________________________________
Situation #5:

August 18th, Top 6, 2 Outs, Bases Loaded, Yankees down 1.
LI = 4.52 – Actual Play – Ground Out to Shortstop. – WPA = -.119

Judge hits a sharp ground ball at 103 MPH.

Here’s what it looked like.

Hit hard, but right into Xander Bogaerts‘ glove for a routine out. But per Statcast balls hit at that Velocity and at that Launch Angle become hits about half the time.

One can imagine Judge hitting this ball just a little closer to the pitcher’s mound, and seeing it get past a diving Bogaerts. With the runners going, that hit would easily score 2.

New Play – Ground Ball Single up the Middle Scoring 2, – New WPA = .275 – Net WPA Change = .394

Judge’s New WPA = 3.53
_________________________________________________________
Situation #6:

June 14th, Top 7, No Outs, Runners on First and Second, Tie game
LI = 2.89 – Actual Play – Fly Out to Left. – WPA = -.085

Judge ropes one into left field, where Eric Young Jr. makes an awkward dive for it.

Here’s what it looked like.

Young makes the out, but just barely. Imagine if his dive is just a little more awkward… That ball probably gets by him and clears the bases.

New Play – Bases Clearing Double to Left Field – New WPA = .219 – Net WPA Change = .304

Judge’s New WPA = 3.83
_________________________________________________________
Situation #7:

June 15th, Top 9, No Outs, Bases Empty, Yankees down 1.
LI = 2.88 – Actual Play – Strike Out Looking. – WPA = -.073

Were picking up steam now! And as a “Baseball God” I haven’t had to work very hard changing these last few plays. Now it’s time to work just a little harder.

Leading off a do or die ninth, Judge took three easy balls, then saw and fouled consecutive fast balls. This set up a full count pitch where Santiago Casilla froze him with a beautiful knuckle curve. Here’s what it looked like.

No doubt that’s a beautiful pitch. But guess what? Umpires sometimes miss calls, especially when they get some inadvertant dust in their eye…

New Play – Walk – New WPA = .110 – Net WPA Change = .183

Judge’s New WPA = 4.02
_________________________________________________________
Situation #8:

September 10th, Top 3, 1 Out, Bases Loaded
LI = 2.26 – Actual Play – Sac Fly to Right. – WPA = -.002

In an RBI situation, Judge blasts one.

Here’s what it looked like.

So Judge clearly gets under this pitch… but he still hit it over 300′ and scores a run.
The thing is the next two times up he did this and this!
I’m just gonna do a little rearranging on when these homers take place…

New Play – Grand Slam to Right – New WPA = .256 – Net WPA Change = .258

Judge’s New WPA = 4.27
_________________________________________________________
Situation #9:

April 18th, Bottom 9, 2 Outs, Bases Loaded, Yankees Down 3
LI = 3.86 – Actual Play – Fielder’s Choice to Shortstop, Out at Second. – WPA = -.100

Judge ends the game on a weakly hit grounder to shortstop.

Here’s what it looked like.

Looks like a routine grounder, but per Statcast similar balls become hits about a third of the time. And we don’t really need a hit here, Tim Anderson looks a little shaky fielding the grounder as it hops to his glove. In a critical situation like this who’s to say he doesn’t boot one? The answer is me, the “Baseball God“. I say he boots it…

New Play – Fielding Error at Shortstop, 1 Run Scores – New WPA = .090 – Net WPA Change = .190

Judge’s New WPA = 4.46
_________________________________________________________
Situation #10:

July 21st, Top 3, 1 Out, Runners on First and Third, Tie Game
LI = 2.12 – Actual Play – Sac Fly to Center. – WPA = +.016

Another well struck ball that just stays in the yard for a sac fly.

Here’s what it looked like.

But Judge would get one more try at Andrew Moore that game, and you may remember it. Judge’s next at bat was that time he broke Statcast!

I’m just gonna move that Statcast breaking smash up one AB if you don’t mind…

New Play – Three Run Home Run – New WPA = .216 – Net WPA Change = .200

Judge’s New WPA = 4.66
_________________________________________________________
Ok, awesome we’re 10 plays in, and as a “Baseball God” I don’t feel like I’ve had to work all that hard. But were still only at 4.66 WPA, nearly a win short of our target. It’s time to pull out the big guns. It’s time to perform a MIRACLE!

Situation #11:

July 30th, Bottom 9, 1 Out, Runners on First and Second, Yankees down 2.
LI = 4.78 – Actual Play – Foul out to First. – WPA = -.112

Representing the go ahead run, Judge pops up in foul ground to the first baseman. You can see his hit in blue in the image below.

(As to why this shows up as a -57° LA I think sometimes Miracle Work messes with Statcast…)

Just a lazy pop-up. Not much a “Baseball God” can do to affect this play without revealing myself to the world. So I’ll just void the play and blows this ball a little further to the right and into the seats where Trevor Plouffe can’t catch it!

So I’ve just given Judge a new lease on this particular at-bat. I hope he uses it wisely. I’ll just assume it goes something like this!

New Play – Walk Off Three-Run Home Run – New WPA = .793 – Net WPA Change = .905

What?! You don’t think that’s fair. Tough! I am Beerpope the Baseball God and this is my Miracle, don’t tell me what’s fair!

Judge’s New WPA = 5.57

And with that spectacular finish, we check Judge’s Clutch score:

5.57 / 0.95 – 5.85 = +.01 Wins

And there you have it. Aaron Judge – CLUTCH BATTER. My work here is done.

So what does this all mean? Really I’m not sure. Does the fact that it took 10 twists of fate and one walk-off miracle just to bring Judge barely into the positive show just how deeply un-clutch he was last season? Maybe. But it may also show us how futile it is to focus of how clutch or un-clutch a batter is if an ump call, miss hit, or bounce here or there in just 10 at bats can invalidate the other 600 plus plate appearances in a player’s season.

I’ll leave that determination to the readers.

Now enough with the 2017 Season. It’s time for me to begin contemplating what Miracles to perform thus upcoming season…

Cheers!

(Editor’s note: this post was submitted prior to the start of the season but it seems rather timely now)

I can’t shake myself from latching onto spring training hype trains. Even after all we’re taught about small sample sizes, I find myself watching games and wondering whether this could be the year for any number of players.

Watching the Braves and the Nationals last weekend, something about Dansby Swanson seemed different. I started digging and emerged on the other end of a rabbit hole that brought me from hitting guru Jason Ochart (@Jason_cOchart) to Coach Bobby Stevens Jr. (@StevieBobbins, BattersBoxChicago.com, GoWindyCityBaseball.com) to gif-ing up everything and more.

I’ll admit, I forgot Dansby Swanson was sent to the minor leagues in late July. The former number one pick relinquished his major league role after mustering only a .287 OBP in just under 400 plate appearances. Two weeks later he was recalled with little more than generalities to sift through in hopes of unearthing what the Braves wanted to change mechanically if anything at all.

After Swanson’s return to the major leagues tinkering began.

Video via MLB.com – 1, 2

It’s a relatively simple adjustment, but the ramifications and reasoning behind the alteration bubbles numerous points to the surface.

“Getting [your front foot] down too early can mess up timing and alter the kinematic sequencing of the swing.” Jason Ochart quickly summed up via Twitter what I speculated might be true.

For almost all of Swanson’s 2017, before his change in late August, his front foot was down earlier than your standard hitter (in the video on the left above).

“For most hitters, the pressure shifting onto the front foot is what initiates their swing. Force plate data shows that the forceful heel drop works as the trigger of the swing and works as a brake to send energy upward through the body… to accelerate the bat late in the swing arc, as all the best hitters do.”

Breaking down Orchart’s points make a complex explanation simple. A hitter’s front foot is used to initiate their swing. When this foot plants, it helps transfer energy from one’s lower body to upper body. Eventually, that energy affects a hitter’s bat.

“Force plate data” sounds complex, but it’s nothing more than a plate on the ground that measures exerted force. In this case, the force from a hitter’s front foot. (YouTube is always here to help as well).

Ochart went on to state research shows that shorter time between the peak of one’s front-foot force and contact with the baseball can lead to greater exit velocity. If your front foot peaks early, as a hitter’s might if they’re planting as early as Swanson was, the effects could be detrimental on the one variable most hitters are focused on.

Stats, however, have a tough time backing up a substantial performance boost solely through the hovering of Swanson’s front foot.

Upon Swanson’s return to the majors in August, there was a strong uptick productivity that lasted until the beginning of September. This correlates nicely with his front-foot alteration but doesn’t sustain through the end of the season, as one would hope a material adjustment would. A variety of other factors could counter the change: production uptick being artificial, fatigue, comfort with the new approach, etc.

But what about other components of Swanson’s swing that might have been affected by this change?

“Hitting is controlled all through the back hip in relation to controlling your weight and ‘staying back’ on pitches. The issue is in the explanation of ‘stay back’. Stay back in what position? With your foot off of the ground? With your front foot on the ground? In your stance? That is where understanding is lost in my opinion.” Stevens took a different route to a similar conclusion that buoys the case Swanson had beneficial intentions, even if stats cloud improvement.

“A hitter must ‘stay back’ in their hip with their foot off the ground or hovering. This does not mean that you lift the front foot off the ground and balance on your back leg, though. It means that we load or coil into our back hip, then as our lead leg begins to stride out towards the pitcher, we want to ‘stretch’, or use our back muscles, to hold our weight back until we decide it is time to launch the swing.”

Stevens’ broadening of terminology related to “staying back” unearths numerous other factors related to what Swanson did. Each of his points made me consider other aspects of Swanson’s kinetic chain, particularly how the most visible change – foot down early to hover – could be covering up other, more important changes to help the former college star, acting as the low-hanging fruit.

So why bring this front-foot change up now, six months late? Because Swanson’s lower body alteration was actually the second thing I noticed, behind another change that caught my eye on his long home run off Max Scherzer in spring’s first weekend of action.

Video via MLB.com – 1, 2

First his lower body, now his upper body. While the above camera perspective when comparing is slightly askew thanks to spring training parks and their uniqueness, Swanson is starting his hands lower and bringing them up into his load. In 2017, he started his hands higher and kept them there for the duration of his pre-swing rhythm. Now, his momentum is built up into the hitting position, yet the path and aesthetic of his swing after his load are nearly identical to the naked eye. This feels like a conscious attempt at relaxation in the box, with the foresight to alter the path to his load as opposed to how exactly he is loading. What could be invisible, however, to my untrained scouting eyes are the concepts Stevens talked about above relating to a hitter’s back hip and launch into his swing.

Swanson’s adjustment is similar in direction to Zack Cozart’s alteration from 2016 to 2017, one that brought Cozart a substantial uptick in power. Some might say Billy Eppler’s new third baseman’s breakout came demonstrably because of health, but Cozart admitted last Spring he wanted to start his bat on his shoulder to relax himself at the plate and come up into the hitting position. What Swanson is doing above mimics that concept – coming up into his load – even if the point at which the process begins is different. Swanson’s relaxation also reminds me of Anthony Rendon’s gradual adjustment, as the All-Star began to push his hands further south when comparing his swing at Rice University to that of later in his career.

Most relevant to my gracious sources, Ochart and Stevens, Swanson retains his front-foot hover from late in 2017 in the gif above.

While the stats seem doubtful a tangible change in the Braves shortstop, numbers can often be blind to progression mechanically that hasn’t manifested on the spectrum of production. My confidence in an improved Swanson is driven by the theory around adjustments he seems to have made, starting with the hover of his front foot to the repositioning of his hands preload. Add him to the list of players I’ll be watching closely in one month’s time.

A version of this column can be found on BigThreeSports.com.

You should do that thing where you follow me on Twitter – @LanceBrozdow.

Matt Davidson was not good last year. He got 443 plate appearances in his first full MLB year on a rebuilding White Sox club, and it didn’t go well as he posted a WAR of -0.9. That mark was seventh-worse in MLB for position players with at least 400 PA. There’s little mystery how he got there, as he combined DH-only caliber defense with a paltry 83 wRC+.

Davidson achieved that uninspiring number by hitting like a three-true-outcomes guy without the walks, more or less a poor man’s Chris Carter. Good news first: last year, he ran a pretty decent ISO of .232, putting him close to good-to-great hitters like Francisco Lindor, Anthony Rendon, and Anthony Rizzo, cracking 26 homers along the way. His raw strength is very real: he blasted a tape-measure 476-foot moonshot out of Wrigley with a 111MPH exit velocity in July. Big power is a good trait to have, but it’s been devalued in today’s game, where guys like Carter and Logan Morrison can hit 35+ homers in a year and then can’t find contracts of even $5M the following offseason.

Still, significant pop is necessary for a high offensive ceiling, so what’s holding Davidson back? In a word, strikeouts. He struck out a horrifying 37.2% of the time in 2017, second-most in the majors.  Unsurprisingly, his whiff rate was a scary 16.3%, sixth-highest among his peers; for reference, that’s identical to how often hitters swung and missed against Andrew Miller last year. The walk rate that keeps most K-prone sluggers’ OBP somewhat afloat wasn’t in evidence, as Davidson walked only 4.3% of the time. You won’t be shocked to find that he finished second-worst in K/BB with an ugly 0.12. Although he did hit the ball hard (we’ll come back to that), his flyball-heavy batted ball profile and below-average speed kept his BABIP suppressed to .285. That mark was in close agreement with his xBABIP of .283.

The astronomical K% and below-average BABIP held him to an ugly .220 AVG, which combined with the poor BB% led to a truly abysmal OBP of .260, second-worst among hitters with 400+ PAs. The only guy worse in that column was Rougned Odor, who has a similar offensive profile, but at least he can partially blame a particularly unlucky .224 BABIP.

Looking at last year’s stats, there appears to be approximately zero reason for optimism for Matt Davidson. He hit for power well, but was near the top of all the peripheral leaderboards that you really don’t want to be at the top of.  So why is this post being written at all? In short, Davidson seems to have turned over a new leaf this spring.

Now, I know the sabermetric kneejerk reaction to that last sentence: spring training means nothing and spring training stats mean less than that. But that’s not entirely true, as this excellent piece in the Economist way back in 2015 details. If you don’t want to read the whole piece, that’s fine, because it can be summed up very briefly: a hitter’s strikeout rate in spring training actually has a pretty high correlation with their strikeout rate in the regular season. Of course, one of the chief objections to drawing conclusions from spring training stats is the tiny sample sizes with which we’re working. Fortunately, strikeout rate is one of the fastest-stabilizing peripheral rates there is; Fangraphs itself puts the threshold for stabilization of strikeout rate at about 60 PA.

That piece was linked somewhere recently and I read it for the first time. A couple days later, being entirely starved for any form of baseball through this long winter, I reached the rock bottom of scouring the spring training stats of the team I supported, the White Sox. To my own surprise, there was actually something interesting buried there; as you might guess, it was in Matt Davidson’s stat line.

Luckily for us, and this piece, Davidson’s played the most of any White Sox this spring, totaling 60 PA as of March 20. He’s struck out twelve times, a K rate of 20%. He has walked seven times, for a walk rate of 11.7%. In this small sample, he’s almost halved his strikeout rate and nearly tripled his walk rate from 2017. On the one hand, that sounds like an insane improvement that cannot possibly be maintained; on the other, those rates from spring training are by themselves quite unremarkable for a major league hitter. Using BBRef’s summed 2017 stats to calculate league-wide rates, 20% K and 11% BB would have both been slightly better than average league-wide in 2017.

A significant walk rate improvement wouldn’t actually be terribly surprising. If you peruse Davidson’s player page, you’ll find that before last year he never posted a BB% worse than 9.1%, ranging up to 12.0%, from Double-A onwards, a total of five seasons spent mostly at Triple-A plus a month in the majors with Arizona. His walk rate at least doubling this coming year wouldn’t be coming out of left field; rather, it would be him returning to the player he has been in that sense for pretty much his entire professional career minus last year. It will probably come down from 11.7%, given that MLB pitchers likely have better control than those he’s faced this spring, but still, a big jump in walk rate seems likely for him this year.

That strikeout rate is a different animal, though. He’s always struck out a lot, never posting a K rate below 20% at any stop in the minors, and the whiff rate mentioned previously supports that. On the other hand, the sample size is now at the point where this being a complete fluke is pretty unlikely. Is this a real improvement or a mirage? I don’t know, and we don’t have plate discipline numbers in ST to see underlying patterns, but according to Davidson himself, making more contact is exactly what he’s trying to do. It sure seems like he’s succeeding in that thus far. As another small data point, he doesn’t seem to have a pattern of ST flukes in K rate, as in 58 PAs during last year’s spring training he struck out in 37.8% of his plate appearances, a number that echoes his full-season 37.2%.

This wouldn’t be as interesting a case if Davidson did nothing well offensively. He’s a large and very strong man, which is why he hasn’t just been released by the White Sox years ago. Take a look at his contact profile. Basically, last year, he pulled balls, hit more fly balls than ground balls, and vaporized balls in to play, with a quality-of-contact triple-slash line of 15.7% Soft/46.1% Med/38.2% Hard. His HR/FB% was a robust 22.0%, rubbing statistical shoulders with established sluggers like Nelson Cruz and Edwin Encarnacion. In short, when he actually did hit the ball, he looked for all in the world like a poster child for the fly ball revolution. Those underlying numbers hint at a lot more offensive potential than anyone outside of the White Sox organization sees in him, if he could just reduce that giant 32.9 K-BB%.

Now he’s showing signs of significant improvement in that fatal flaw of plate discipline. It doesn’t seem like the improvement in K% and BB% thus far in spring training has cost him much in power, considering that he’s demolished ST pitching to the tune of .358/.433/.679 (1.113 OPS & .321 ISO). Obviously, he’s not going to keep hitting quite that well, but the still-rebuilding White Sox aren’t about to outright bench or demote him either. Maybe it’s all a lot of noise, and he’ll be bad again this year. Or maybe Matt Davidson, at the age of 26, is about to be the Next Big Breakout™. Just as a reminder, it took J.D. Martinez until 26 to figure it out and become the “King Kong of Slug”; Justin Turner was 29-year-old replacement-level utility infielder who suddenly blossomed offensively in 2014; Jose Bautista was almost 30 before he turned into a nightmare for AL pitchers in 2010. So, here’s an prediction I would have laughed off for 2018: Matt Davidson is about to bust out in a big way.

UPDATE 3/29: Davidson hit three homers on a cold day in Kauffman Stadium, every single one of them with a 114+ MPH exit velocity. He also walked and did not strike out. Jump on the bandwagon now while there’s still room.

Another off-season has come and gone, and your favorite team practically sat out free agency citing some combination of small-market budget concerns or vague allusions to the luxury tax, hoping you won’t mind another season of mediocrity. Why couldn’t they just get some of those cost-controlled star players? You know, the kind [team you hate] has! What were they thinking in the draft when they passed on all those late round gems?!?

It may be tempting to think you could assemble a truly unbeatable team with the benefit of hindsight, but even with some form of crystal ball or time machine, many players will never be available to you. Maybe a bargain free agent doesn’t like the weather in your city, international free agents might not see your system as their best option, and depending on your draft position, dozens of the most highly regarded young players will already be taken.

What follows is a hypothetical team constructed from a pool of players any team would have access to: domestic players drafted outside the first 30 picks. Steamer projections based on a full season of playing time were used to control for the differences in playing time these players might be expected to get on their real teams. Signability may still be of some concern so draft bonuses (as listed on thebaseballcube.com) are included for reference and players are split into arbitration eligible and pre-arb categories if a slightly more expensive upgrade is available. In some cases, your team may have needed to pass up on a free agent signing to avoid losing a first round pick.

All pre-arb team:

C: Austin Barnes (2.2 WAR, LAD) Drafted 9^th round, 283^rd overall in 2011. $95,000 Bonus.

1B: Rhys Hoskins (3.4 WAR, PHI) Drafted 5^th round, 142^nd overall in 2014. $349,700 Bonus.

2B: Whit Merrifield (1.9 WAR, KC) Drafted 9^th round, 269^th overall in 2010. $100,000 Bonus.

3B: Travis Shaw (1.6 WAR, MIL) Drafted 9^th round, 292^nd overall in 2011. $110,000 Bonus.

SS: Paul DeJong (2.4 WAR, STL) Drafted 4^th round, 131^st overall in 2015. $200,000 Bonus.

LF: Cody Bellinger (2.7 WAR, LAD) Drafted 4^th round, 124^th overall in 2013. $700,000 Bonus.

CF: Chris Taylor (2.1 WAR, LAD) Drafted 5^th round, 161^st overall in 2012. $500,000 Bonus.

RF: Aaron Judge (3.9 WAR, NYY) Drafted 32^nd overall in 2013. $1,800,000 Bonus.

SP: Zack Godley (3.4 WAR, ARI) Drafted 10^th round, 288^th overall in 2013. $35,000 Bonus.

SP: Joe Musgrove (3.4 WAR, PIT) Drafted 46^th overall in 2011. $500,000 Bonus.

SP: Tyler Glasnow (3.2 WAR, PIT) Drafted 5^th round, 152^nd overall in 2011. $600,000 Bonus.

SP: Steven Matz (3.1 WAR, NYM) Drafted 2^nd round, 72^nd overall in 2009. $895,500 Bonus.

SP: Bryan Mitchell (2.6 WAR, SD) Drafted 16^th round, 495^th overall in 2009. $800,000 Bonus.

RP: Chad Green (1 WAR, NYY) Drafted 11^th round, 336^th overall in 2013. $100,000 Bonus.

RP: Edwin Diaz (0.9 WAR, SEA) Drafted 3^rd round, 89^th overall in 2012. $300,000 Bonus.

RP: A.J. Minter (0.9 WAR, ATL) Drafted 2^nd round, 75^th overall in 2015. $814,300 Bonus.

RP: James Hoyt (0.8 WAR, HOU) Undrafted, signed in 2013.

RP: Scott Alexander (0.7 WAR, LAD) Drafted 6^th round, 179^th overall in 2010. $125,000 Bonus.

RP: Drew Steckenrider (0.7 WAR, MIA) Drafted 8^th round, 257^th overall in 2012. $137,900 Bonus.

RP: Carl Edwards Jr. (0.7 WAR, CHC) Drafted 48^th round, 1464^th overall in 2011. $50,000 Bonus.

Even assuming a replacement level bench, this team is a wild card contender with a combined 41.6 WAR from the listed players. With a full replacement level team expected to win 48 games, our best guess for this team would be 90 wins. All for a payroll around $15,000,000 and a total of $8,211,900 in bonuses, although you might expect to pay higher bonuses if you had selected some players in higher rounds.

Add in some arbitration-eligible players and you’ve got a real contender;

All under 6 years service time team:

C: J.T. Realmuto (2.4 WAR, MIA) Drafted 3^rd round, 104^th overall in 2010. $600,000 Bonus. 2018 Salary: $2,900,000.

1B: Anthony Rizzo (4.4 WAR, CHC) Drafted 6^th round, 204^th overall in 2007. $325,000 Bonus. 2018 Salary: $7,000,000.

2B: Brian Dozier (3.5 WAR, MIN) Drafted 8^th round, 252^nd overall in 2009. $30,000 Bonus. 2018 Salary: $9,000,000.

3B: Josh Donaldson (5.8 WAR, TOR) Drafted 48^th overall in 2007. $652,500 Bonus. 2018 Salary: $23,000,000.

SS: Paul DeJong (2.4 WAR, STL) Drafted 4^th round, 131^st overall in 2015. $200,000 Bonus.

LF: Aaron Judge (3.9 WAR, NYY) Drafted 32^nd overall in 2013. $1,800,000 Bonus.

CF: Kevin Kiermaier (3.7 WAR, TB) Drafted 31^st round, 941^st overall in 2010. 2018 Salary: $5,500,000.

RF: Mookie Betts (5.3 WAR, BOS) Drafted 5^th round, 172^nd overall in 2011. $750,000 Bonus. 2018 Salary: $10,500,000.

SP: Noah Syndergaard (5.8 WAR, NYM) Drafted 38^th overall in 2010. $600,000 Bonus. 2018 Salary: $2,975,000.

SP: Corey Kluber (5.2 WAR, CLE) Drafted 7^th round, 134^th overall in 2007. $200,000 Bonus. 2018 Salary: $10,500,000.

SP: Jacob deGrom (4.6 WAR, NYM) Drafted 9^th round, 272^nd overall in 2010. $95,000 Bonus. 2018 Salary: $7,400,000.

SP: Robbie Ray (4.5 WAR, ARI) Drafted 12^th round, 356^th overall in 2010. $799,000 Bonus. 2018 Salary: $3,950,000.

SP: Chris Archer (4.2 WAR, TB) Drafted 5^th round, 161^st overall in 2006. $161,000 Bonus. 2018 Salary: $6,250,000.

RP: Dellin Betances (1.3 WAR, NYY) Drafted 8^th round, 254^th overall in 2006. $1,000,000 Bonus. 2018 Salary: $5,100,000.

RP: Ken Giles (1.1 WAR, HOU) Drafted 7^th round, 241^st overall in 2009. $250,000 Bonus. 2018 Salary: $4,600,000.

RP: Zach Britton (1 WAR, BAL) Drafted 3^rd round, 85^th overall in 2006. $435,000 Bonus. 2018 Salary: $12,000,000.

RP: Chad Green (1 WAR, NYY) Drafted 11^th round, 336^th overall in 2013. $100,000 Bonus.

RP: Justin Wilson (0.9 WAR, CHC) Drafted 5^th round, 144^th overall in 2008. $195,000 Bonus. 2018 Salary: $4,250,000.

RP: Edwin Diaz (0.9 WAR, SEA) Drafted 3^rd round, 89^th overall in 2012. $300,000 Bonus.

RP: A.J. Minter (0.9 WAR, ATL) Drafted 2^nd round, 75^th overall in 2015. $814,300 Bonus.

This youthful juggernaut combines for 62.8 WAR – 111 wins for the season – with a payroll just under $120,000,000 and a total of $9,300,000 in draft bonuses.

Surely most readers don’t need any additional convincing that drafting and player development is incredibly hard, but the presence of so many late-round picks on this list should be some cause for optimism for fans of teams that leak either the means or desire to sign from the top tier of free agent talent. If you do happen to come across a time machine, congrats on all your future World Series rings.

It’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on with a player when their numbers get skewed. Sometimes its injury, others could be due to team/manager/front office resentment, more often than not it can be attributed to bad luck. However, when numbers begin to become conventional or eclipse career norms on a regular basis, under certain conditions, it behooves me as a curious self-proclaimed ‘baseball scientist’ to look into that.

Today’s subject is one Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels. Observe his monthly OPS through his seven seasons in Major League Baseball.

Before I proceed, this is not an indictment or deposition on Trout. This is a scrutinization that will attempt to answer why his OPS drops so sharply once we hit the dog days of summer.

Trout is a great player, no one can deny that. You ask just about any baseball player if they’d like to have numbers like Trout and they’d answer before you even finish the question.

A simple assumption through basic observation would be that it’s the fault of the three true outcomes; striking out more and walking less while his power remains the same or takes a dive as well. Since I don’t have a better explanation yet, we’ll stick with that.

But first, I wanted to see if Trout was any sort of outlier; does the average player peak mid-season, then drop off as Trout does? Sort of.

I see the same dip, somewhat as steep for Trout, in July but followed by a resurgence into August. OK, so nothing extreme; basically the same start with a disjunct finish.

Going back to his monthly performances, what also stood out is that as his at-bats increased, his OPS seemed to decrease. However, that only occurred once he surpassed 500 ABs. In the scatter plot below, the coefficient of determination reveals that just about 60% of Trout’s OPS change is attributed to his increase in ABs. That’s a pretty good interrelationship.

So far we know that Trout seems to fade in late summer and that his OPS plummets as his at-bats go up. Is it as simple as that? I can somewhat understand that as the season progresses, players get worn out and, sometimes but not always, their production drops. But the ABs situation makes it more intriguing; you’d think a great hitter is usually always great regardless of the number of times he comes to bat. It doesn’t always follow that the more chances you have the more likely you are to fail.

Remember my original supposition of K/BB/HR variation causing his OPS drop? That’s an invalid inference because we have the same thing happening; as ABs increased, his strikeouts and walks did also. Home runs bounced a little with no correlation to AB figures.

Trout’s strikeouts did jump quite a bit from June to July while his walks increased at the same rate as his ABs. However, his biggest OPS drop-off was from July to August, so we can’t parallel that to a conclusion. The following month (July to August), his ABs increased at the same 11% with both walks and strikeouts growing at the identical rates.

Not satisfied, I needed a couple of player comps to see if they showed any of the similar tendencies I see with Trout. Using his career wRC+ (the best all-inclusive offensive stat) of 169, I see Joey Votto, Miguel Cabrera, and David Ortiz in his range.

• Votto- 162
• Cabrera- 158
• Ortiz- 151

Now, lets move back to their OPS. I took the quad’s career monthly average and created a comparison chart. Keep in mind we aren’t concerned about the numbers, only the trends.

And, because I’m a cheapskate, I have to use Google Sheets to create this chart which will not let me customize the labels.

 So you have: Trout, Cabrera, Votto, Ortiz

Cabrera dips about the same time as Trout but his trend line is much more stable. Votto seems to get better as the season goes on, while Ortiz seems to match pretty well except for his minor improvement in Sept/Oct.

So, is Trout and anomaly? Not really; Oritz has very similar tendencies, but also played twice as long as Trout has. To say for certain they match will take more playing time for Trout. In any case, for a player as good (and highly regarded) as Trout, that drop-off is still vexing.

So, I moved on to check and see if his hitting tendencies change. We can view Trout’s career monthly contact figures to determine if there are any obvious signs that could give any sort of explanation for the drop. Things like putting more balls on the ground instead of the air, contact type such as line drives which end up as hits more often, any infield pop-ups indicating a change in swing path, and directional hitting in regards to beating any sort of “shift” to his hitting proclivities (e.g. more balls are finding well-positioned fielders).

A couple of things stand out. The first being his line drive rate; dropping from 23.6 to 19.2 from June to Oct. Secondly his hard contact; while not a huge difference, we can see less potential for barreled contact. Lastly, as you would expect, his BABIP and OPS drop sharply from June on; .395 to .333 and 1.036 to .919 respectively.

Perhaps looking into what causes line drive as well as his hard contact regression will provide the answer; are there changes in exit velocity and/or launch angle? As a reminder, we only have the data that is available through the Statcast era (2015-2017), so take this with a grain of salt; I’m not sure we can glean much from it but its worth looking because it covers roughly half of his career.

• June- 13.8 degrees/91.6 mph
• July- 13.9 degrees/91.4 mph
• August- 14.3 degrees/91.3 mph
• Sept/Oct- 14.7 degrees/91.1 mph

There are drops but the change is slow; launch angle changes by nearly one degree and exit velocity declines by .5 MPH. Can we claim that as the cause? It’s hard to say because as I noted, it only covers his last three years.

To reinforce the lack of apparent swing path/tendencies, observe the gif that goes in chronological order from June through Sept. Do you see any pronounced change, because I don’t?

Perhaps I’m thinking about this too hard. Perhaps I’m asking the wrong question(s). Perhaps its just the way it is; sometimes you eat the ball and sometimes the ball eats you. As I said before, this isn’t a judgment or doubt on Trout’s ability; when he’s at his worst, he’s still better than most of the other hitters in the league.

This post and others like it can be found over at The Junkball Daily.

Fluctuation of prospect value during the offseason is a mental exercise. Given the lack of activity to substantiate one’s changing opinion, hype can often be attributed to reputable names in the industry praising players, or the release of top prospect lists into the wild. Nate Pearson’s name has generated helium in the recent months, but instead of dismissing a storyline and citing our historically slow offseason for the surfacing of this hype, I wanted to understand the origin of praise surrounding our budding prospect.

Jim Czajkowski, the Vancouver Canadians pitching coach helped put into perspective how bullish the Blue Jays organization is on their first-round pick from 2017’s draft. Pearson carries a 6-foot-6, 240-pound frame onto the mound, his arm balancing out the offensive firepower Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. bring to a system loaded with top-end talent.

Having groomed the likes of Aaron Sanchez, Marcus Stroman, and Noah Syndergaard, Czajkowski’s reps with advanced skill sets and assessment of their potential needs no introduction.

“[Nate] is better at his age than any of those guys were…. If I were to rank those guys, Sanchez probably had the best pure arm action and a good curveball, a good sinking fastball too, but Nate has all four [pitches].”

Pearson transferred from Florida International University (FIU) to Central Florida Junior College for the 2017 season for personal development reasons, and the gamble paid off as he posted 118 strikeouts in 81 innings with only 23 walks. Even with his stellar stats, one could assume Pearson may have been passed on last June due to his size.

“It’s a chunky 240 [pounds]. And in high school he was up to 300… he’s thinned down some… It was definitely his workout regiment; it was phenomenal.”

As his time at FIU was largely in a relief role, it was inevitable that discussion arose between Czajkowski and myself regarding how to condition the 6-foot-6 righty to shoulder a progressively larger workload. The focus was more on optimization – the sequencing of Pearson’s innings and coinciding off days – than sheer control of inning quantity.

“He probably pitched once a week [in college], and then he’d have six days to recover… we got him down to one less [recovery] day in Vancouver, and then wherever he goes next year, he’s going to be on a five-man rotation, so he’ll really need to adjust his regiment and take care of his arm care.”

Preparation for the next level is front of mind for Czajkowski and the Blue Jays. Focusing on routine and laying the groundwork to ease Pearson’s adaptation to higher levels lead to necessary and subtle tweaking.

“When we talked to him about his routine, we actually thought he might be overdoing it right after the game with his arm care. We wanted him to tone it down a little bit.”

This restructuring of Pearson’s off-day regiment and arm care was not suggested to his detriment. It became a vital step to eventually ease him into Lansing or Dunedin’s standard, five-man rotation, dealing with less off days in the process.

While any arm possesses the inherent risk of injury, Czajkowski admitted that himself and management are more optimistic with Pearson’s arm health knowing the primary generator of velocity comes from his lower half.

Adding audible intimidation to Pearson’s presence on the mound is a less statistical reason hitters struggled mightily against his offerings.

“There is not a lot of herky-jerky in [Pearson’s] motion, there are times where he pitches and he’ll grunt. And when he does that, he throws 100 [mph]. There are times early in counts where he grunts because he’s trying to make a statement, and he’ll overthrow a couple pitches… he was almost trying to strike guys out early in counts; trying to not let them touch the ball, that’s when he would lose a little bit of command and come out of his delivery a little bit.”

Pearson’s delivery is unique. His 6-foot-6 frame barrels downhill towards a hitter, as the harmony of his kinetic chain capitalizes on the energy stored in his lower half. A strong front leg allows him to stabilize after the energy released from his torso’s aggressive tilt forward finishes his motion. Exceptional is an understatement when describing the extension he achieves; the eye is tricked for seconds as one forgets the amount of mass supporting the big righty.

(Gif from YouTube, video credit to Niall O’Donohoe)

“If you watch him play long toss you know where he gets his power; his power is from his legs.” Czajkowski was quick to confirm what is visually consistent.

Pearson’s work ethic and natural ability, continually touted by Czajkowski in our talk, remain one reason why concerns over inconsistency fell to a simmer from the boil that eclipsed his potential pre-draft. An unusual detriment associated with this level of velocity is how advanced it can be for the pitcher’s level.

“At the lower levels they can’t catch up to his 100[-mph fastball]… The higher Nate goes, to Double-A and Triple-A, his changeup will be able to play because those guys will be able to catch up to his 100.”

Velocity differential between a pitcher’s fastball and changeup remains one of the key factors to predicting the value of the feel-dominant pitch and whether it behaves like a sinker, generating ground balls, or a true changeup, generating whiffs. While Czajkowski rated each of Pearson’s four pitches – fastball, slider, changeup, and curveball – above average, he was quick to disclose his high expectations for a pitch that was hit around for Pearson in his 19 innings with Vancouver.

Pearson’s arm speed is another reason why I’m bullish on his changeup. His body’s aggressive motion towards the plate can deceive hitters from an aesthetic standpoint. Add that to the fade he’ll be able to generate as he evelates his feel for a pitch and his mastery will quickly exceed the talents of his seniors.

But Pearson’s calling card is a two-plane slider; an unfair pitch when backed up with his command. He seamlessly changes the eye level against hitters, leaving most Class A Short Season hitters to guess if they stand a chance of hitting either pitch. The offering below is at this hitter’s belt, which gives a better idea of the pitch’s depth, rather than the late, “fall off the table” break noticeable when he buries the pitch at a hitter’s knees.

(GIF via YouTube, video credit to Blue Jays Prospects)

Is there a point where overuse of such an advanced pitch could hurt a young arm?

“If we think he is overusing his slider, just for strikeouts, we’ll talk about the percentage he throws his pitches. [Nate] gets a breakdown… and I think he did a very nice job this year in utilizing everything.”

Czajkowski reiterated the themes of our talk, bringing up a final thought that adds to his appreciation for the righty.

“He has four major league quality pitches, he has size, but the one thing he doesn’t have yet is stamina. He hasn’t built up the innings to be a starter at the major league level. Roberto Osuna pitched a couple years in the minor leagues as a starter and then became a reliever. So Nate Pearson as a closer at the major league level, I can see that too. Because of his regiment; the way that he throws, and the way that he bounces back tells me that he can handle a relief role, too.”

If the Blue Jays window of contention opens quicker than some anticipate, Pearson’s services may be needed at the major league level sooner than later. With Czajkowski’s suggestion that Pearson could reach Double-A New Hampshire by season’s end if the stars align, opportunity for Pearson to make an impact in 2019 isn’t off the table. His adaptation to higher levels and a five-man rotation are what I consider the largest factors dictating his future role.

Czajkowski’s final words to me on the record epitomize what we’re all thinking about Pearson.

“The sky is the limit for him.”

Special thanks to Jim Czajkowski for allowing me to steal some of his vacation time to chat Canadians baseball and Pearson. I wish the Blue Jays organization, and each pitcher he grooms, the best in the coming season.

I can be found on Twitter – @LanceBrozdow

A version of this post can be found on BigThreeSports.com