Sully Baseball Daily Podcast – March 7, 2017
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
The 60 Players I look Forward To Watching Spring Training
Yes, we’re finally here with spring training games starting!! Spring training can be such a fun experience from guys running poles during games, trying out new pitchers, or a new stance, to youngsters trying to grab attention, to guys duking it out for a few roster spots on their club.
With that, every spring I like to put a list of out of players that I look forward to watching during spring games. There’s no rhyme or reason to be honest, as it could be a prospect getting a few innings on a big league roster, a guy coming back from injury, a key acquisition, or that teams top player. Regardless, I love watching and listening to spring training games and am always surfing the web or tv to check these players out.
Here’s my list:
Atlanta Braves
Dansby Swanson: #1 draft pick in 2015, major steal in the trade for Shelby Miller, makes his debut a year after being drafted and hits .302 in 38 Major League games.
Ozzie Albies: I don’t think the 20-year old will have a ton of time in Major League camp, but from everything I know, I can look forward to a youngster with very good lead off potential and an outstanding glove
Arizona Diamondbacks
Taijuan Walker: Walker was part of the trade that sent Segura to Seattle, has show flashes of big potential in the past, but has had a hard time putting it together. At 24, Taijuan has had 2 full seasons of Major League starts, along with 2 other partial seasons. This could be the year he takes a big step forward…if he can keep the ball in the yard (1.8 HR per 9 in 2016)
Archie Bradley: Bradley had been a high profile prospect for some time before his debut in 2015 and looked to be ready to back it up as he was 2-0 in his first three career starts with a 1.48 ERA and 12 K’s. Then Bradley got smoked in the face by a 115 MPH Carlos Gonzalez line drive on April 28th, 2015 and seems like he hasn’t been the same since. I’m hoping that we see the guy this spring that was on all the top prospect reports and what we saw early in the 2015 campaign
Continue reading @ Sons of ’84 – You will be dropped off on my AL/NL West List and can link to the Central and East from there
Boston Red Sox
Coming into the 2016 season, the Boston Red Sox were positioned as well as any team in baseball to be a consistent force in the coming years. With a great team filled with young stars like Mookie Betts, and veterans who would be in the clubhouse to help guide the up-and-comers, like Dustin Pedroia, things were looking up. Bolstering this argument was a farm system that was a consensus top-10 in league with top-to-bottom talent, including the number one prospect in baseball, Yoan Moncada. It’s amazing what Dealin’ Dave Dombrowski can do to a farm system over the course of 12 months. The Sox are still a force to be reckoned with in the MLB, but their farm system has been changed dramatically, after trading away Moncada, and Michael Kopech to land Chris Sale. Boston still has a decent, albeit top-heavy farm system, headlined by budding star Andrew Benintendi and slugging third base Rafael Devers.
Red Sox Top Prospects
Sully Baseball Daily Podcast – February 28, 2017
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Mike Trout might never be universally recognized and that MAY just be a product of the current way we consume culture. Meanwhile Mike Scioscia might have outstayed his welcome.
Adapt with the times in this episode of Sully Baseball Daily Podcast.
5 MLB Starting Pitchers Who Need to Build off a Strong Second Half
With Grapefruit and Cactus League games officially underway, everyone in baseball gets that coveted clean slate. The 2017 season presents endless opportunities for players and teams, no matter how good or how bad 2016 was to them.
Some are taking the field with the hopes of completely changing the narrative surrounding them, while others simply want to continue showing the progress they displayed just a few months ago is indeed the new normal.
The MLB regular season is a grind — as if 162 games in about 180 days doesn’t say that enough — and quick starts don’t always mean certain performances are sustainable over the long haul. The same also goes for poor starts, too.
The five starting pitchers below each saw their respective 2016 campaigns start on the wrong foot, but that didn’t stop them from having a strong finish in the second half.
Now, they’ll each try to use that momentum to produce from start-to-finish this season.
Sully Baseball Daily Podcast – February 27, 2017
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From the World Series to the election to the Oscars, nothing seems predictable anymore… and a certain amount of predictability is critical for baseball.
Black is white and up is down in this episode of Sully Baseball Daily Podcast.
The Boston Red Sox’s 2017 Payroll Has Lots of Dead Money
The Boston Red Sox are one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. Their consistent winning ways, playing in a big market and having a broad fan base all translate to them annually having one of the highest payrolls in the sport. As long as the team is winning the particulars of where the money is going never seems to matter as much. However, some of the players Boston will be cutting checks to in 2017, and the amounts, may come as a surprise.
Sully Baseball Daily Podcast – February 26, 2017
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It is Sunday and time for The Sunday Request.
@sullybaseball Sunday request. If Scherzer has 3 more top 5 Cy Young years, has he had an under the radar HOF career?
— TheStartingBloc (@thestartingbloc) February 24, 2017
Max Scherzer certainly has had a peak and highlights worthy of Hall of Fame merit.
But he needs several more years of it and some early warning signs are troublesome.
Courting immortality in this episode of The Sully Baseball Daily Podcast.
Phillies Top Prospects 2017
The Phillies farm system has some outstanding talent at the top of the list highlighted by top baseball prospect J.P. Crawford and the #1 overall draft pick from last season in Mickey Moniak. The farm is pretty deep as we go down the top 25 and the Phillies have a lot of pitching prospects that are very near Major League ready and have a sort of logjam at Triple-A as far as the rotation goes. The Phillies have invested a lot of money in the international free agents in the last few years, and they are starting to see the results of those investments. The Phillies may not have the best farm system in the Major Leagues, but they have young enough, solid pieces in the farm that will help them become a good team in the Majors again.
Phillies Top Prospects 2017
Sully Baseball Daily Podcast – February 25, 2017
THE TEAMS THAT SHOULD HAVE WON: The first part of a series on the podcast that I will do for the next 31 Saturdays.
I look at the teams that if they had won the World Series, they would have done so under the best circumstances and with the best collection of players. First team I cover are my Red Sox and I look at the 1978 squad.
First of a month of Saturdays with this episode of The Sully Baseball Daily Podcast.
Sully Baseball Daily Podcast – February 24, 2017
Universal Pictures
A lot of people don’t like Field of Dreams. I get it.
I still love it and the reasons why I do reflect that what we love and what we consume, including baseball, do not exist in a vacuum.
No guilty pleasues in this episode of Sully Baseball Daily Podcast.
Jean Segura Isn’t the Only Hitter Fighting Regression Following a Unique Performance
After being a pleasant surprise at the plate for the Milwaukee Brewers during the 2013 season, Jean Segura‘s production completely went down the drain — until he got a fresh start in 2016 with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
He didn’t earn an All-Star selection for his efforts, but it was such a unique performance that the Seattle Mariners acquired him in one of the 1,000 trades they made this winter.
How unique was it, exactly? Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto accurately put the middle infielder’s accomplishments into perspective to Bob Dutton of The News Tribune:
“The year that he had is one of just five seasons in this century where a hitter was able to throw out 200 hits, a .300 batting average, 20 home runs, 40 doubles, 30 stolen bases and 100 runs scored.”
Since he literally doubled his wRC+ (63 in ’15 to 126 in ’16), there’s a lot of attention on Segura with his new team. Is this the type of hitter they can expect to see moving forward? Dipoto said himself that given the rarity of this particular performance, it wouldn’t be realistic to expect it to be sustainable.
While Seattle’s new shortstop is one of just five players this century to produce like he did in the above six categories, he wasn’t the only hitter to do it in 2016 — Jose Altuve also accomplished the same feat.
5 Must Watch Players in Spring Training
Spring Training is finally here! Thank god; I don’t think I, as an individual, nor we, as a nation and a planet, have ever needed baseball more.
But we are not the only ones! Every year, players use Grapefruit and Cactus league games to cement their status as starters, finally earn a trip to the majors, or, in some cases, disrupt the status quo and commute chaos upon fans and front offices.
Of course, Spring Training games are far from predictive of future performance, just look at Jackie Bradley Jr. a few years ago. He tore it up in March and then struggled to hit well enough in his first season in the MLB to justify keeping his stellar glove in the lineup at all. He was eventually sent to the minors and only last year recaptured his starting spot. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t learn an awful lot from some of these early showcases. The pre-season can help us get an early feel for players poised to bounce back from a tough season, or not, and those who need to justify their team’s (semi-inexplicable) faith in them.
Let’s take a look at 5 of the guys whose spring performance can be particularly instructive about what their 2017 seasons might hold.
Shelby Miller, starting pitcher, Arizona Diamondbacks
Talk about a bounce-back candidate.
After an All Star season in Atlanta in 2015 (despite leading the league in losses), Miller was shipped to Arizona in exchange for Dansby Swanson, Ender Inciarte, and others. Then things took a turn.
To continue reading about the must watch players this spring training, please click on oveer to Offthebenchbaseball.com
Sully Baseball Daily Podcast – February 23, 2017
Building up to Oscar season, I watched the only film connected to baseball: Fences.
Besides being a great showcase for two wonderful stars, Denzel Washington and Viola Davis, it also allows a supporting cast (especially Stephen Henderson) to shine.
As a baseball fan, it also shows how we use our own experiences to paint how we appreciate the greatness of players in the past and the present.
Yeah it is worth seeing.
Also listen to the great podcast Denzel Washington is the Greatest Actor of All Time Period.
It is an honor to be nominated in this episode of Sully Baseball Daily Podcast.
The Bizarre Ending to Pitching’s Longest Winning Streak
In addition to winning twenty-six games in 1912, Marquard was unbeatable throughout the campaign’s first three months. He won an astounding nineteen consecutive games for the Giants from the time he defeated Brooklyn in the opener on April 11 until he beat the Superbas in the first game of a doubleheader on July 3. Rube was finally vanquished on July 8, during a game at West Side Grounds, which was won by the Chicago Cubs, 7-2.
While the main story line from the afternoon should have revolved around the Cubs ending Marquard’s winning streak, a perceived jinx perpetrated by a demented woman seemed to grab the headlines. While a large crowd was in attendance watching New York and Chicago battle, much of the attention was directed at a woman perched in a tree outside the ballpark, overlooking the playing field. READ MORE
MLB’s 10 Best MVP Seasons Since 2000
What makes a player so valuable?
The answer to this question varies depending on the person asked. However, it always becomes a hot-button topic of debate in baseball throughout the latter part of every season when discussing potential National League and American League MVP candidates.
We’re not here to discuss the definition of Most Valuable Player, though. We want to know which players have put together the best overall seasons while earning the award since 2000.
The best way to figure this out is by using Wins Above Replacement (WAR). While the statistics shown below focus on offense, WAR takes a player’s offensive and defensive contributions into consideration before providing an overall value for their performance.
FanGraphs’ version of WAR (referred to here as fWAR) will be the metric used to create our rankings. The definition of “Most Valuable Player” may forever be up for debate, but there’s no debate in figuring out which MVP winners have enjoyed the most success since the turn of the century.
Sully Baseball Daily Podcast – February 22, 2017
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I listed my thoughts on the greatest players in each franchise’s history. I realized that Francisco Lindor has the outside chance to become the greatest player in Cleveland Indians history.
It is there for the taking.
It is a legacy episode of Sully Baseball Daily Podcast.
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