Monthly Archives: March 2017
Los Angeles Angels Top Prospects
The Angels commitment to winning a World Series while Mike Trout is still affordable has led to a lot of money and prospects being spent, in most cases, unwisely. Among those lost included future starter and future bullpen piece Sean Newcomb and Victor Alcantara. Furthermore, the team’s hesitancy to draft high upside players in favor of high floor athletes has kept the team as the worst system in Major League Baseball. However, the team does have some promising players acquired via the draft. 2015 second rounder Jahmai Jones may have a ways to go, but the team has put a solid value on his toolsy approach. 2016 first rounder Matt Thaiss may be blocked by Albert Pujols and CJ Cron, but his bat has shown why he was taken with the 15th overall pick. And should 2016 picks Brandon Marsh, Nonie Williams and Chris Rodriguez show the upside that had the team sold on them, the system could start climbing out of the cellar.
Los Angeles Angels Top Prospects
Adam Wainwright Needs His New (Old) Curveball
The St. Louis Cardinals’ Ace Adam Wainwright returned from a brutal Achilles injury in earnest in 2016. With four top 3 Cy Young finishes since 2010, Waino is one of the most talented (and underrated) pitchers in the modern era. His success can largely be traced back to his nasty curveball, and even his Twitter handle (@UncleCharlie50) pays homage to his dominant offering. Wainwright’s 2016 performance did not exactly ring success with the same dominant Uncle Charlie that has earmarked his career.
Wainwright’s 2016 season was somewhere between pedestrian and ugly. He was healthy, starting 33 games, but ran just a 4.62 ERA and led the league in both hits and earned runs allowed. He struck guys out less frequently than his career average and also posted a career worst WHIP. But Waino thinks he figured something out, and it all goes back to his curveball.
MLB.com ran a story that, while watching an MLB Network special featuring himself, Wainwright discovered that he had inadvertently shifted his curveball grip while coming back from that Achilles injury. Following a few tosses with his wife, his optimism heading into 2017 was renewed.
Friend of the blog and mlb.com beat writer David Adler (_@dadler on Twitter and worth the follow) did some digging and found that Wainwright’s 2016 curveball was likely to blame for some of those 2016 struggles:
To continue reading about Adam Wainwright’s 2016 curveball, please visit offthebenchbaseball.com
Sully Baseball Daily Podcast – March 8, 2017
Photo: Kevin Sullivan
All things being equal, I would have been a Pirates fan. I have always gravitated towards them.
The current version of the Bucs are at an agonizing crossroads.
Celebrate the Fam A Lee in this episode of The Sully Baseball Daily Podcast.
Sully Baseball Daily Podcast – March 7, 2017
Jim McIsaac/Getty Images North America
Rays pitcher Chris Archer has some admirable sentiments about the WBC. But I think that a real unifying lesson can be found with how baseball is already set up.
It is a melting pot episode of The Sully Baseball Daily Podcast.
CINCINNATI REDS’ FARM SYSTEM
There are some very exciting players to be found within the Reds organization. Last year’s first-round pick Nick Senzel appears to be the real deal. Amir Garrett has the ability to lead a rotation. Jesse Winker, Luis Castillo, and Sal Romano provide a very solid foundation upon which the Reds can raise their floor, and the system contains a great deal of upside with players like Aristides Aquino, Taylor Trammell, and Alex Blandino.
There are few sure things in their Minor League ranks, but the farm is headed in the right direction. With a few breakout seasons from key prospects, the talent is present for this to be the group that leads the Reds back into the postseason for the first time since 2013.
Cincinnati Reds Top Prospects
Get to Know Pirates Outfielder Austin Meadows
We all know the Pittsburgh Pirates starting outfield, Gregory Polanco, Andrew McCutchen, and Starling Marte, in part because they are so good and in part because they have been the subject of so many contract rumors, trade rumors, and now position shifts in the last few years. McCutchen is also one of Off the Bench’s 5 players to watch this spring.
But there’s a new name to know: Austin Meadows.
Meadows has reportedly made a good impression on the Pirates this spring and is set to see more playing time between now and Opening Day and will start the season in Indianapolis, at the top of the minor leagues. Coming into last season, he was ranked right around the 20th best prospect in all of baseball and last season the 21 year old made it as high as AAA. This year, some have him as the best prospect in the whole Pirates system and the 6th best in the sport.
Jonathan Schoop Needs to Stop Swinging So Much
Every successful big-league hitter goes down their own path toward becoming productive at the plate, but the method in which that happens is normally rooted in plate discipline.
It takes certain players longer than others to make improvements in that area, but when the light switch goes off, everything falls into place — they start hitting the ball hard with more frequency and see a rise in multiple offensive categories. Or, if they were already an established hitter, something unexpected could result from it, like an increase in power.
Jose Altuve and his unique 2016 campaign is a great example, but that’s not the only way a hitter can find success — sometimes, being more aggressive is the key, like it was for Robinson Cano.
However, a lack of plate discipline can also prevent some from potentially taking their game to the next level, and that’s what’s happening to Baltimore Orioles second baseman Jonathan Schoop.
Compiling a career-high 647 plate appearances in 2016 enabled him to set a few personal highs in various offensive categories, like in home runs (25), doubles (38) and RBI (82). But despite ranking amongst the top-7 among qualified hitters at his position in each of those categories, his wRC+ (97) and fWAR (2.0) don’t even rank among the top 15.
The key to watching his offense kick it up a notch is by improving that plate discipline.
Sully Baseball Daily Podcast – March 6, 2017
Some teams find themselves in flux between identity shifts. I illustrate that by shaving my beard.
I take blade to face on this episode of The Sully Baseball Daily Podcast.
The History Of Spring Training
Ever wonder how spring training started, or why? Well, here’s a little history lesson after watching a recent repeat of Ken Burn’s Baseball on the MLB Network.
The Early Years
Stories are a bit conflicting with some claiming the first spring training taking place in Hot Springs Arkansas in 1886, by the Chicago White Stockings (today’s Chicago Cubs) and team President, Albert Spalding and Hall of Famer Cap Anson. Others claim that it was started back in 1870 by both Chicago and Cincinnati Red Stockings down in New Orleans. A third story starts with the Washington Capitals in 1888, holding a four-day camp in Jacksonville. Regardless of which story you hear and believe, we know that teams started training down south in the late 1800’s to prior to the start of their seasons.
Now back in the early years of spring training, most players could not survive on just a baseball salary, so they’d go home after the season and find a job somewhere. Those jobs would take a toll and players would be out of shape and out of practice by the start of the season. When it came to playing spring games, it meant mostly against colleges, semi-pro, and at times another Major League team.
In the early 1903, Connie Mack had his Philadelphia Athletics train in Jacksonville, however after a disappointing season; Mack blamed the outcome on the tropical weather and teams focus and didn’t return for 11 years. One of my favorite stories around the A’ in Florida, was about a very eccentric star pitcher named Rube Waddell who wrestled an alligator while down in Florida.
St. Louis Cardinals Top Prospects
Right now the thing that jumps out at you about this system is the number of big arms that populate the various levels. I will rank Alex Reyes on this list, but he is far from the only guy who will light up a radar gun in this system. Sandy Alcantara, Dakota Hudson, Junior Fernandez, Rowan Wick, Ryan Helsley, and Ronnie Williams all are radar gun delights who can push triple digits in short spurts. The Cardinals philosophy in regards to pitching has always been to teach fastball command to all four quadrants first and foremost, so even if a pitcher is showing high strikeout rates and posting quality ERA’s, they may not move quickly if they cannot demonstrate fastball command first and foremost. They tend to favor athleticism in their pitchers first and foremost, believing they can teach consistent mechanics if they have the requisite athleticism. The Cardinals look for loose, fast arms, as they believe this is an indicator of an ability to create spin on a baseball- needed for great breaking balls. Finally, they look to the changeup as their secondary offering of choice. Pitchers who can locate a changeup and keep their deception are less prone to platoon splits against either right-handed or left-handed hitters.
ST. LOUIS CARDINALS TOP PROSPECTS
Sully Baseball Daily Podcast – March 5, 2017
It is Sunday and time for The Sunday Request.
@sullybaseball If you pull all MLB pitchers from the WBC, it will cease to exist. Is that what you’re going for?
— Michael (@MichaelT162) February 27, 2017
The WBC is well meaning but even its supporters can’t separate it from a spring training game.
I have ideas how to fix it, but if it goes away, I won’t be sad.
Evolve or become extinct on this episode of The Sully Baseball Daily Podcast.
Sully Baseball Daily Podcast – March 4, 2017
Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images
THE TEAMS THAT SHOULD HAVE WON: The 1993 Braves had the momentum, the pennant chase, the build up and the perfect combination of beloved players. They should have been the team to win it all, not the 1995 team.
A what could have been episode of The Sully Baseball Daily Podcast.
Sully Baseball Daily Podcast – March 3, 2017
Maddie Meyer/Getty Images North America
The vastness of the cosmos is helping me deal with the inevitability of the Red Sox losing David Price for the season.
We are all on the pale blue dot on this episode of The Sully Baseball Daily Podcast.
Wil Myers Can’t Keep Disappearing on the Road in 2017
The 2016 season was one Wil Myers and the San Diego Padres had been waiting for.
After failing to play in more than 88 games during each of his first three MLB seasons, the outfielder turned first baseman suited up for a career-high 157 ballgames and earned his first-ever All-Star selection last year. It seems as though this kind of performance took forever, but that happens with top prospects — we hear about them for so long that we forget how young they actually are.
Myers is a perfect example — he’ll be just 27 years old on Opening Day with the sky being his limit as he prepares to embark into the physical prime of his career. San Diego is very much in the midst of a rebuild after selling off most of their MLB talent, but the front office wants to build around their first baseman.
At least, that’s what it seems like after the two sides agreed on a six-year, $83 million extension this past winter instead of going through the arbitration process.
But while his overall stats from 2016 make it appear as if he’s arrived, it wouldn’t be telling the whole story.
Ranking the Worst MLB Teams From Each Season Since 2002
By the time each MLB season comes to its conclusion, there are only certain things we remember. Our thoughts are mostly dominated by who just won the World Series or how our favorite team performed. Unless it directly impacts us, we rarely remember who exactly was the worst team in baseball for any given year.
Win-loss record and winning percentage are what’s mostly used to determine who takes home this dubious honor — along with the top overall pick in the following summer’s draft — but it should go a little deeper than that.
So, while taking this particular trip down memory lane, we felt it was more appropriate to use run differential as the determining factor, which is the number of runs a team allows subtracted by the number of runs they score. After all, the whole point of baseball is to score more runs than you allow each night.
More often than not (11 out of 15, actually), the worst record in baseball was accompanied by the worst run differential, but there were a handful of times when a team didn’t accomplish both.
Below are the worst teams in terms of run differential from each season since 2002, ranked from least to most soul crushing.
Sully Baseball Daily Podcast – March 2, 2017
Jason O. Watson/Getty Images North America
Baseball is meant to be a diversion or a distraction from every day life. But often the players, the key distractors, have real life interfere with their production on the field. Jake Peavy, dealing with a prolonged divorce is the latest example of reality colliding with fantasy.
Finding the truth half way in this episode of The Sully Baseball Daily Podcast.
Sully Baseball Daily Podcast – March 1, 2017
Rob Carr/Getty Images North America
The NL East will be won by the team that doesn’t break down. Meanwhile new Washington reliever Joe Blanton has turned his nice career around and could become a closer option.
Reinventing one’s self in this episode of The Sully Baseball Daily Podcast.
Enjoy Joe Blanton’s home run in the 2008 World Series.
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