Archive for breakout

It’s like second Christmas.

From 2015-22, one player per year has put up first-round value from the 12th round or later (15 teamers):

2015: Keuchel
2016: Villar
2017: Judge
2018: Snell
2019: KMarte
2020: Voit
2021: Mullins
2022: Adolis

History says another does it this year. Who ya got?

— Ryan Bloomfield (@RyanBHQ) March 20, 2023

Ryan Bloomfield of BaseballHQ has conducted this exercise every year for some time now. It’s one of my favorite exercises, if only because it has yet to fail us in at least eight years. (I’m pretty sure there were representatives from 2014 and before, too, and Bloomfield has simply tastefully truncated the list for us.) But, also, it shows the possible potential impact of a late-round draft pick. Obviously, you don’t want to waste any picks. But if you know where to look, it feels less random.

The common thread connecting these players is at least one extreme outlier tool—or five well-above-average tool. Dallas Keuchel was MLB’s reigning ground-ball king. Jonathan Villar had 80-grade speed. Aaron Judge has 80-grade power; Luke Voit, 70-grade with above-average contact skills. Cedric Mullins and Adolis García are five-tool guys. Blake Snell was a burgeoning ace who spiked a lucky ERA and 21 wins but was otherwise deserved of his rank. The only questionable one here is Ketel Marte because of the timing: he hit 32 home runs when the ball was at its liveliest and has yet to replicate that kind of power. But his hit tool is plus-plus, and sometimes all it takes is lucking into a little bit extra in one of the other categories to push you over the top. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is it’s much easier to sike first-round value as a hitter than as a pitcher.

So, who could it be this year? Let’s use the general categories outlined above as the framework for identifying potential first-round silver bullets. Keep in mind this is mostly for fun, but also it is deadly, deadly serious. In order of National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) average draft position (ADP): Read the rest of this entry »

There are plenty of ways to characterize David Phelps‘ success in 2016. Among pitchers who threw at least 80 innings, he posted the 5th-best ERA (2.28), 6th-best xFIP (3.15) and 7th-best FIP (2.80). That’s a big deal, although it’s a decidedly smaller deal considering the bulk of Phelps’ innings came from the bullpen.

The reason for Phelps’ success — the cause to the effect, that is — is fairly obvious:

Phelps added more than 3 mph to his four-seamer and sinker as well as a tick or two to each of his off-speed pitches.* In an August edition of his NERD game scores, Carson Cistulli quipped, “As with most other pitchers, Phelps at 94-95 [mph] is markedly different than Phelps at 91.” Indeed, Cistulli. Phelps looked like a changed man.

It’s easy to attribute his sudden late-career success to his almost-full-time move to the bullpen. It’s how the narrative typically plays out: a pitcher’s velocity plays up better in short spurts. It’s why we expect failed starters can become elite relievers. It’s a cognitive bias, but it’s a bias we have because it tends to be true. This shorthanded logic, however, undersells Phelps’ gains both under the hood and on the mound.

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Dan Rozenheck recently published some interesting research via the Economist regarding the significance of spring training statistics. For the TL;DR crowd, there is some legitimacy to spring training breakouts and disappointments, although they correlate with only marginal improvements to in-season performance in terms of on-base plus slugging (OPS) and earned run average (ERA).

Our own Mike Podhorzer also conducted similar research of his own a couple of years ago. He found that a pitcher’s spring training strikeout and walk rates carry some significance in regard to in-season performance.
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