About a month ago, I started searching for the league’s underthrown pitches. Pitches that despite inducing elite swing-and-miss, ground ball, and pop-up rates, are thrown with scarcity relative to other inferior offerings. It was as an enlightening a topic to research, as it dealt with untapped potential, as it was a fun series to write. Though to be honest, there wasn’t a whole lot of actionable fantasy advice to be gleamed. But in the process of writing those pieces, I had to grade each pitch. And arsenal scores, a subject of interest to the RotoGraphs community over the years, were just a stone’s throw from away from the groundwork I’d already laid.
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Today’s Prospect Stock Watch takes a look at a Blue Jays’ Futures Game representative, an early 2017 Rule 5 candidate out of the Dodgers and an underrated Minnesota Twins infielder.

Bo Bichette, SS, Blue Jays: A 2016 second round draft pick, Bichette barely made some publications’ Top 10 prospect lists for the Jays but, six months later, he’s jumped onto everyone’s Top 100 overall prospect lists. The teenaged shortstop is hitting more than .380 and has flirted with .400 much of the first half of the year. He’s going to the Futures Game this weekend and will move up to high-A ball (with 18-year-old Vladimir Guerrero Jr.) at the beginning of next week. Bichette has the ability to make uncanny consistent hard contact and leads the Midwest League with 32 doubles (only one other player – five years older – has more than 23). There are doubts over his ability to stick at shortstop but he’s a smart player that seems to pride himself at proving people wrong — so don’t underestimate him. However, even if he does move, he should have lots of arm and power for third base or right field.

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I dreamed I went on a baseball trip with my college team, and then I nearly broke an auto mechanic’s computer by dropping it on the ground. It was using Windows XP. I only noticed that detail after picking it up from the ground. Baseball?

AGENDA

1. The All Star Break
2. Weather Reports
3. Pitchers to Use and Abuse
4. SaberSim Says…
5. TDG Invitational Returns!

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Episode 278 – Double Or Nothing With Jose Urena

The latest episode of “Field of Streams” is live!

In this episode, Dylan Higgins and Matthew Dewoskin discuss how to pronounce Felix Jorge’s name, Ji-Man Choi finding himself in the Yankees lineup, Matt trying to make a case for Daniel Descalso, Junior Guerra getting Mike Fiers’ homeritis, Dylan possibly talking Matt out of Rafael Montero, what to do with Clint Frazier, Dylan’s mild interest in Luke Voit, Matt doubling down on Jose Urena, if Matt Davidson will DH for the White Sox in Colorado, how weird it is that the Cubs are bad, Fernando Rodney’s legacy, and spontaneously planning the next show’s schedule.

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For my next few articles, I am going to examine batters and pitchers who have changed their approach from the second half of 2016 to the first half of this season. Today, I will start with the hitters.

For hitters, I found how far their stats changed, in standard deviations, from the league average in these five categories:

• Strikeouts (K%)
• Walks (BB%)
• Groundball Rate (GB%)
• Pull Percentage (Pull%)
• Isolated Power (ISO)

Then I binned the change as good or bad. I determined “pulling the ball” (can be shifted) and groundballs (fewer line drives and home runs) to be bad. If a person disagrees, they can change the values found in this spreadsheet and create their rankings.

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We are officially in the second half of the season. I know, I know, people like to call the All Star Break the middle point. I can understand why, it is a natural (artificial) divider in the season in the same way a river or a mountain range may divide countries. Personally, I prefer to look at the game totals, and there are fewer ahead of us than there are behind us.

Players who got off to hot starts have mostly come back to Earth. Mostly. Aaron Judge is seems to have enough delta v to effect an Hohmann transfer, so he could be leaving Earth at any moment. Beyond that, players should be settling into their normal, expected production for the season.

Speaking of expected production, the halfway point seems to be a good time to take a look at power numbers, particularly home runs. For the past few years I have run a little side project called Citi Field Homeruns, where I meticulously track the home runs in Citi Field, aiming to measure the impact of changing ballpark dimensions. Okay, so this explanation is largely irrelevant to my goal here, other than to establish a few small pieces of information: Read the rest of this entry »

Mookie Betts does remarkable things pretty regularly on a baseball field, but what he did earlier this week struck me as particularly remarkable. On Sunday, Betts knocked in eight runners against the reeling Blue Jays. That is a rare feat. Only 19 other players have done the same since the start of the 2007 season. Meanwhile, Betts accomplished that rarity from the leadoff spot, which is even more unusual. He’s the only hitter who has done so over that same decade.

Betts is much more of a power hitter than a typical leadoff man, and so he was as good a candidate as anyone to make history. Also the Red Sox are in the AL and are in the upper third of teams in runs scored this season, so they should provide more opportunities for their leadoff men to plate runners than a typical team. But Betts’ accomplishment and the feat’s rarity bring up two contradictory thoughts. Is Betts good enough and is the Red Sox’s offense good enough to overcome the fantasy handicap in RBIs Betts should face batting first in the order instead of third or fourth? Or is Betts a little bit less valuable than he could be in fantasy, at least in that specific category (recognizing that the leadoff spot should counterbalance the loss of RBIs with some extra runs and extra plate appearances to add weight to Betts’ batting average)?

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It annoys me that baseball writers are expected to produce a couple dozen fresh puns per season while making liberal use of existing puns. It’s a contractual obligation. After years of writing professionally, I can no longer help myself. And so…

AGENDA

1. The Daily Decision
2. Weather Reports
3. Pitchers to Use and Abuse
4. Hitters to Use
5. SaberSim Says…
6. TDG Invitational Returns!

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Who cares about the LoMo and Gary Sanchez feud? I want a pitcher home run derby!

.@MrGrayWolf22 took #PitchersWhoRake to a new level. #Statcast pic.twitter.com/2nTL5y0WiW

— MLB (@MLB) July 6, 2017

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One day shy of the two-month mark for his stay on the DL, Zach Britton was activated by the Orioles on Wednesday. Buck Showalter wasted no time in getting Britton into a game, calling on him to pitch the seventh inning with a 4-0 deficit to the Brewers. To no one’s surprise, Showalter informed Britton that he plans on returning him to the closer’s role, but he would try to ease him back with a low-leverage situation in his first appearance off the DL.

Wednesday’s appearance certainly qualified, though Britton did not exactly ace this lower-stress situation. His velocity was down a tick, as he averaged 95.1 mph on his 16 two-seamers. Britton needed 19 pitches to get through the inning, throwing just eight strikes, a wild pitch and allowing a Hernan Perez single and an Eric Thames walk.
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