If Matt Carpenter is known for anything in the major leagues, it’s for what hedoesn’t do: swing the bat. That may seem counterintuitive for a player generally considered to be one of the best hitters on one of baseball’s best teams, but it’s an accurate depiction of Carpenter’s approach at the plate. Last year, no qualified hitter offered at fewer pitches than Carpenter, who had only a 32.8 percent swing rate. Over the course of his three full seasons, his 36.1 percent swing rate is easily the lowest. In other words, approximately two times out of three, Carpenter watches the pitch go by.

To put it another way, some hitters swing at pitches outside the strike zone more often than Carpenter swings at pitches overall. It’s simply who he is, and it’s a large part of how he has managed to find success in the big leagues; over the past two seasons, he’s 15th in walk rate and ninth in on-base percentage. His patience has made him a star — he was one of only 15 hitters worth at least 10 WAR combined in 2013-14 — and it also has made him rich, as the Cardinals guaranteed him $52 million over six years through 2019.

With that kind of recent track record, it’s easy to think that Carpenter should just keep on doing exactly what he’s doing and continued success would follow. But despite the excellent on-base skills and overall value, a quiet truth of Carpenter’s 2014 was that his slugging percentage dropped more than 100 points from the year prior, and Carpenter turned from an elite bat into merely a good one. With an aging Cardinals offense relying more than ever on Carpenter this year, the numbers demand that Carpenter change his approach. Simply put, he has to swing more. He has to be, in some ways, the anti-Matt Carpenter. And he can start in Sunday night’s season opener (8 ET, ESPN2) against the Cubs. Read the rest of this entry »

As we unveil the players ranked 51-100 in the 2015 BBTN 100, let’s also look ahead to next year and predict five unranked players this year who are positioned to land on next year’s list. This discussion won’t include top prospects like Kris Bryant, Joc Pederson or Noah Syndergaard because their talent is well-known and everyone expects great things from them.

Today we’ll focus on five young players who have already had a small amount of big league success and could find themselves with much-higher public profiles — and possible places in the 2016 BBTN 100 — after what should be productive 2015 seasons. Read the rest of this entry »

How much do October heroics count for, really?

For the San Francisco Giants, what Madison Bumgarner did for them last autumn added up to a world title. It took a lot of moving pieces to get that third title in five years, but easily the most important part was Bumgarner doing things we’ve never seen, at least on that stage. In 52 2/3 postseason innings, Bumgarner allowed a mere six earned runs, and he carved his name into baseball history by throwing five nearly perfect innings to close out Game 7 on only two days’ rest, after having thrown a shutout in Game 5.

It was without question one of the most spectacular postseason performances we’ll ever witness. So how much is that worth? That’s the question today, because Bumgarner stands out as ranking surprisingly high (third) in the BBTN left-handed starting pitcher rankings, ahead of such names as David Price andJon Lester. He’s up two spots among lefty starters from a year ago, and judging by some of the names he’s ranked above, he’ll likely place much higher in the overall rankings as well (he was 40th in 2014).

To jump that far in a single year would indicate he’s coming off one of the most spectacular years in baseball. Based on only a few October weeks, maybe that’s true. But what about the far bigger sample size of multiple regular seasons, or that his regular season was a pretty good one that stood alongside pretty good ones from a lot of other pitchers? Were we so blown away by a few dozen great innings of pitching that we’ve looked past nearly a thousand innings across his career? Let’s investigate.

Read the rest of this entry »

So, could you feel the evident disappointment of Baltimore Orioles fans this winter?

Coming off a 96-win year, the O’s did what seemed like a whole lot of nothing this offseason. As Andrew Miller, Nick Markakis and Nelson Cruz all departed for big contracts elsewhere, the only major league players Baltimore added were journeyman lefty reliever Wesley Wright, Padres castoff Everth Cabrera and former first-round bust Travis Snider.

Now compare that haul to the types of players added by Baltimore’s AL East division rivals, names such as (the aforementioned) Miller, Hanley Ramirez,Pablo Sandoval, Cuban prospect Yoan Moncada, Josh Donaldson and Russell Martin. Worse, with O’s GM Dan Duquette spending much of the winter engaged in an awkward — and ultimately fruitless — discussion about taking a job with the Blue Jays, the perception grew that he was more focused on his own career than improving the team.

Whether that’s a fair judgment of Duquette or not, it all added up to a less than impressive winter in Baltimore. Just a month ago, ESPN’s Jayson Stark polled baseball people about the offseason we just completed, and coming in second place for “Most Unimproved American League Team” was none other than those Orioles.

So this was a disaster, right? A big step back for a team on the precipice of making noise in the playoffs, just as the rest of the AL East is dealing with enough holes that this seemed like it may have been the time to strike, right? That’s the narrative, but it’s far too simple. For the Orioles, an appreciation of what was a quietly good winter requires looking a little deeper. Read the rest of this entry »

If you were to take a peek at the current average ESPN live fantasy draft resultsfor catchers, you would see some familiar names in the top five. Buster Posey is obviously atop the list, and Jonathan Lucroy just finished fourth in the National League MVP voting. Devin Mesoraco had a breakout season, and Evan Gattis‘ huge raw power might outweigh his strikeouts, at least in the fantasy world.

Sitting fifth, ahead of Yan Gomes, Yadier Molina, Brian McCann, Russell Martin,Yasmani Grandal and everyone else, is the Kansas City Royals‘ Salvador Perez. Perez, who turns 25 in May, has increased his home run count every year he’s been in the bigs and saw his national profile grow exponentially during the Royals’ World Series run. He has a career .285 average and is one of only eight catchers with double-digit home runs in each of the past three seasons.

Based on that criteria alone, Perez’s high ranking looks to make sense, and that’s almost certainly why he is getting such respect in drafts. So why does it still seem so clear that he is being overvalued, perhaps to an enormous extent considering all the warning signs around him? Read the rest of this entry »

After an uncharacteristically rough outing from Masahiro Tanaka in Cleveland on July 8 — 11 baserunners, five runs allowed, two homers — New York Yankees fans received the worst news imaginable: Tanaka, who had made the All-Star team and appeared to be worth every penny of the $175 million the Yankees had laid out to import him from Japan prior to the season, had to be placed on the disabled list after an MRI revealed a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow, also known as the injury that generally leads to Tommy John surgery.

Rather than undergo surgery, which would have cost him most of the 2015 season, as well, Tanaka chose the path of rest and rehab, including platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections. After missing more than two months, he made two appearances in September — one positive (5 1/3 innings of one-run ball against Toronto on Sept. 21) and one much less so (seven runs in 1 2/3 innings in Boston on Sept. 27). He reportedly has had no problems with the elbow since, successfully completing several bullpen sessions at Yankees camp while hoping that the work he has done to strengthen the arm muscles around the ligament, along with changes in his delivery, will keep him whole.

For the Yankees, part of what appears to be a tightly packed AL East, there may be no player more vital to their success than a healthy Tanaka. That’s not only because he’s one of baseball’s best pitchers when healthy; it’s because with CC Sabathia’s knee still acting up, Ivan Nova still recovering from elbow surgery, Shane Greene and Brandon McCarthy off to Detroit and Los Angeles, respectively, and Michael Pineda having thrown only 76 innings in the past three seasons combined, this rotation is more than a little risky. It’s not a stretch to say that the Yankees are contenders with Tanaka and hopeless without him — and unfortunately for both player and team, the odds aren’t in his favor. Read the rest of this entry »

Nearly two years ago in this space, we wrote about how Adam Wainwright’s extension was a bargain, given the production he offered compared to the massive dollar figures other players across the sport were getting.

To miss a full season to Tommy John surgery and return without missing a beat while getting back up to speed — Wainwright’s 2012 featured baseball’s sixth-best FIP — is practically unheard of.

Wainwright did it, and then he kept doing it. His 2013 was the best season of his career and might have earned him his first Cy Young were it not for the historic performance of Clayton Kershaw.

In 2014, Wainwright did it again, putting up a career-best 2.38 ERA. He also leads all of baseball in innings pitched over the past two seasons, which doesn’t even take into account the 51 additional postseason frames he contributed. Some guys never make it back the same from elbow surgery, but the post-surgery version of Wainwright has continued to be among baseball’s best.

So when Insider recently put together a “Top 10 Starting Pitchers” list for a national television broadcast that didn’t include Wainwright, Cardinals fans were understandably displeased. When I explain right now why he shouldn’t be considered among the top 20 starting pitchers for 2015, I don’t imagine that reaction is going to improve. But there’s risk here. Lots of it. Read the rest of this entry »

Once considered a player worthy of a massive $225 million contract extension, Joey Votto has clearly seen his popularity drop considerably among the Cincinnati Reds faithful. A quick look recently at a popular online forum for Reds fans revealed regular complaints about the hitter Votto “used to be,” that he’s “declining,” that he’s “no longer a run producer,” and that he’s massively, incredibly overpaid.

Reds radio announcer Marty Brennaman recentlystoked the fires by suggesting that if Votto leads the league in on-base percentage in 2015, the team would somehow “be in deep trouble.”

OK, so that overpaid part might be valid — Votto is still due $213 million through his age-39 season — and you can understand the frustration to some extent, considering he hit only six homers last year and didn’t take the field after July 5 because of a pair of quad injuries. At 31, and with three serious leg injuries in the past three years on his résumé, Votto has probably put his MVP candidate days behind him.

But there’s a big difference between “probably not worth the money” and somehow being a detriment to the Reds’ hopes. Reports of Votto’s demise are painfully premature; the seemingly forgotten superstar can certainly be good again in 2015, but he really never stopped being good. Read the rest of this entry »

The last-to-first-to-last-again Boston Red Sox have completed yet another overhaul, importingHanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval, as well as expecting full seasons from Rusney Castillo andMookie Betts, to reinforce an offense that sputtered to a 27th-overall wRC+ finish in 2014. But that’s nothing compared to the changes in the rotation, in which six of the nine pitchers who started at least 10 games last year are gone.

In place of Jon Lester, John Lackey, Jake Peavy,Rubby De La Rosa, Allen Webster and Felix Doubront, the Sox head into 2015 with a rotation fronted by Rick Porcello, Wade Miley and Justin Masterson, as well as holdovers Joe Kelly and Clay Buchholz. For a team that entered the offseason simply needing to find enough arms to field a team for the season, it’s an interesting collection of potentially useful arms.

That said, the idea of “Rick Porcello, Opening Day starter” isn’t exactly going to sell tickets, and that’s the main criticism leveled at Boston this winter: “Where’s the ace?!” Having whiffed on the chance to bring Lester back and so far unable to satisfy Philadelphia’s demands for Cole Hamels, the Red Sox don’t appear to have the guy needed to make a postseason run. Maybe they don’t, but maybe they don’t need to. Here’s why the Red Sox are just fine the way they are — for now, at least. Read the rest of this entry »

After stubbornly trying to hold on to the past long after their glory had faded, the Philadelphia Phillies have finally accepted reality, acknowledging that it’s time to commit to a rebuild and look toward the future. That process officially began when Jimmy Rollins, the best shortstop in team history, was traded to the Dodgers in December. Marlon Byrd soon followed him out the door in a trade to Cincinnati. Ryan Howard, Cliff Lee and Jonathan Papelbon are likely to follow, if the team can find any takers. It’s going to be a long season — or two or three or four, for that matter — in Philadelphia.

Sooner or later, star lefty Cole Hamels is going to be on the move as well. Because Hamels has by far the most value of any of the remaining Phillies, a potential Hamels deal is the most important thing GM Ruben Amaro Jr. has to get right in managing this rebuilding process. He can’t get this wrong, because a misfire here could set the franchise back even further — and potentially cost him his job.

No deal currently seems close, with various reports indicating that the Phillies are being “unrealistic with their expectations,” asking not only for multiple top-level prospects but also for a team to pick up most or all of the $110 million Hamels likely will be due. (Though Hamels is guaranteed only $96 million, it’s widely assumed that he will insist on his 2020 team option to be picked up immediately in exchange for him waiving his no-trade clause, pushing the total value to $110 million.)

The Phillies are a team that is rich in dollars and poor in talent. Major League Baseball has done its best to limit the avenues by which teams can acquire young talent. So why don’t the Phillies make the tough but necessary call to offer not only to eat some of Hamels’ contract, but a big part of it?

Here’s a look at the likely return the Phils will receive in exchange for Hamels and the best next steps for Philadelphia. Read the rest of this entry »