It’s prospect time! The Royals organization heard their fans and Jac Caglianone fantasy owners clamoring for his call-up, and finally, they acted. We could see more top minor league performers and high-end prospects getting the call in the coming weeks as well. So let’s review the wRC+ leaders that currently play at Triple-A, with their mark aggregated between all minor league stops this year. Is a callup imminent? If so, how might we expect them to perform? Let’s try to answer those questions.

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Just like any other metric we monitor, like average exit velocity, pitch velocity, etc, a hitter’s bat speed fluctuates throughout the year. As exciting as it is to see your favorite breakout pick to raise his bat speed during the first month of the season, it might be just as disappointing to discover he was unable to sustain the jump during the season’s second month. So let’s find out which hitters have gained and lost the most bad speed in May compared to the period through the end of the April.

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American League

Angels

• Chris Taylor (.408 OPS) started three straight games in the outfield. Read the rest of this entry »

American League

Angels

• Since being promoted, Matthew Lugo (.931 OPS, 3 HR, 38% K%, 0% BB%) started in eight of 12 games. Read the rest of this entry »

Here are the latest significant playing time projection changes for position players since May 13. The Rockies stink, but hey, at least Jordan Beck is hitting!

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Yesterday, I reviewed a handful of hitters whose actual AB/HR marks are significantly different from what ATC had projected during the preseason. What was driving the discrepancy between actual and projected? That was the question I was determined to answer. Since there are a lot of breakouts and busts from an AB/HR perspective, plus a number of names on yesterday’s lists had low home run totals, in which a difference in AB/HR would result in an insignificant change in home run total versus expectations, I’m going to do this again.

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We’re almost a quarter of the way through the regular season, and we still find some surprising names among the home run leaders, while others are mysteriously sitting toward the bottom. Since there are a number of components that drive a hitter’s home run total, I like to understand what’s providing the fuel. Identifying the changes in inputs will give us a better idea of whether the current performance is sustainable or we could expect a reversion back to what the hitter had been projected to do all along. So with that in mind, let’s review the AB/HR breakouts and busts.

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American League

Angels

• Matthew Lugo (2 HR in 13 PA, only 4 HR in 168 PA in AAA) started in three of the last five games in the outfield.

• Yoán Moncada is now batting third.

• Luis Rengifo (.533 OPS) and Tim Anderson (.475 OPS) are splitting time at second base. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I discussed the hitter average bat speed risers and fallers. Thanks to frequent commenter Anon, I discovered that I must have kept the default “Qualified” filter on, which resulted in lots of interesting names being missed. So in today’s review, I’ll discuss the names that would have appeared in yesterday’s list, but were left off. Note that there are lots of bat speed changes, so I’ve kept these posts to changes of at least two miles per hour. Also note that since I relaxed the swing minimum, the lists are now more hand-picked based on fantasy relevance.

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