From Our Partner Site MLB Sweet Spot: The Best Player in the Game

Mike Trout

by Alex Vacca of MLB Sweet Spot

For the fourth time in five years, Mike Trout may not win the AL MVP award, despite yet another outstanding season by the Los Angeles Angel. Entering play Monday, Trout had put up a triple-slash of .312/.431/.546, accumulating 24 home runs, 21 stolen bases, 82 RBI’s and 98 runs. Defensively Trout has ranked about league average, but advanced metrics have been bullish on him in the past, and to the naked eye he can still impress with his glove. His base-running has been great, per usual, and looks to once again be in the running for AL MVP. Other candidates, like Mookie Betts and Jose Altuve, come and go from year-to-year, but Trout can always be counted on to be right in the thick of the race.

A friend of mine recently asked me, “How good is Mike Trout really?” Most people probably wouldn’t give much thought to this question, for Trout is the best, but it sure is a good one. In the context of baseball history, where is Mike Trout? I myself would like to know. Therefore, I decided to study up on this question so that I could provide a way-too-long-and-probably-unnecessary answer. For the purposes of this exercise, I will be looking at players primarily through their age-24 seasons, as Trout just turned 25 on August 7th, 2016 is considered to be in his age-24 season as well.

The first thing I would like to look at is how Trout compares to some of the best players of the last 30 years or so. The following graph compares the beginning of Trout’s career to 15 of the best players of the recent past, sorted by total WAR, through each player’s age-24 season:

As you can see, Trout is ahead of everyone; and frankly, it isn’t even close. The names on this list are nothing to joke about either. Despite what you may think about Alex Rodriguez, he is one of the 10-15 best position of all time. Ken Griffey Jr. was a first-ballot Hall of Famer, and Barry Bonds has more home runs than anybody in history. Even the names towards the bottom of this list, such as Carlos Beltran and Manny Ramirez, are potential Hall of Fame candidates. Essentially, based on WAR, Trout has shown better early-career production than any of the top position players of the past three decades.

For people who prefer not to rely strictly on metrics like WAR, I have gone through and highlighted the top three players in each stat category as well. I chose to exclude runs and RBI’s, as those numbers are partially related to a team’s batting order as a whole (although Trout did rank 2nd and 5th respectively in those categories). What should jump out at you is that no player on the list made it into the top three in any more than two stat categories, that is, other than Mike Trout. Trout, in fact, leads in double that number with four. Despite being tied for 6th on the list in batting average, he jumps up into 3rd place in overall OPS on the strength of a .402 OBP and a .558 SLG%. Furthermore, by placing top-3 in triples and stolen bases as well as in home runs, Trout demonstrates the speed/power combo that has made him such a standout player early in his career.

Now, let’s up the standards a bit and compare Trout to some of the best players of all time, again taking the accumulation of numbers through each players’ age-24 season (note that I have excluded Babe Ruth, who did not do much hitting prior to the age of 25)…

To continue reading this piece, and other highly-informative articles by Alex, please click here.

Stealing a Phenom: How the Padres Won the Drew Pomeranz Trade

Drew Pomeranz, Hot Stove Soapbox

Long time no post! I have been busy with volunteer service in the baseball-crazed island of Taiwan, but without internet I have missed some important news. On July 14, the Red Sox dealt top pitching prospect Anderson Espinoza to the Padres for lefty Drew Pomeranz, and in part of a joint article with partner site MLB Sweet Spot, the two blogs will debate which team won the trade. Alex Vacca of MLB Sweet Spot has written up a detailed analysis defending the Pomeranz acquisition from the Red Sox side, click here to read it. His analysis is much more metrics-based as there is more data available for major leaguers, but despite being a numbers guy myself, this piece will focus more on the scouting side.

Dave Dombrowski has long been revered as a GM aggressive on the major league market. Back in his Tigers days, he led the Detroit squad to multiple playoff appearances through big-name trades and signings, acquiring the likes of Anibal Sanchez, Max Scherzer, Doug Fister, and Prince Fielder. It has, however, come at hefty prospect costs, and he left the organization with a depleted farm system with little impact talent. Now with Boston and with one of the league's deepest and most talented farm system at his disposal, he is free to return to his old dealing habits that brought him so much success. Trading away Espinoza, a top-15 prospect in the game, has been his biggest splash so far.

Anderson Espinoza shot up prospect rankings last winter after annihilating DSL and Rookie ball competition as a 17 year old. Hardly have Rookie ball pitchers ever been ranked so highly so quickly, but it is not hard to see why Espinoza is so special. At this age, many Latin teenagers flash potential plus fastballs with mid 90's velo, but they all have their warts due to youth and inexperience. Usually it is lack of command, underdeveloped secondaries, or just overall being a thrower instead of a pitcher. Espinoza, on the other hand, at just 18 years old, has a plus curveball and a tumbling change that is well beyond his years. Combined with a fastball that already reaches the upper 90's, hits triple digits, and has good spin and life, we are talking about a possible generational talent. His command could use a little more fine tuning, but for a teenager, the confidence and poise he has in his three pitch mix helps it play up. Espinoza is mechanically sound as well, with naturally fast arm speed that he matches on all three pitches to create deception. His delivery is basic and repeatable, with a clean arm action. He does a good job staying on balance and unlike his Latin teenage counterparts, hardly ever yanks off to the side in his finish. With a strong lower half, he is able to fire his hips to generate plus velo while still staying in control of his body and keeping the delivery repeatable. He also does a good job staying on top of the curve to ensure the big 12-6 break, and the change tumbles hard to the arm side. The curve is already a plus pitch, and the changeup has potential to be plus as well. Despite not having outstanding numbers at the A-ball level, keep in mind that he is the same age as a high school senior, and most players that age are still down in the GCL or AZL, much less full-season ball, and he has still been able to maintain a high strikeout rate regardless.

Drew Pomeranz is a great pitcher in his own right, an All-Star caliber lefty that has played on winning teams in Oakland. He can pitch, no doubt, and his development of a cutter has taken him from swingman to #2/3 starter status. In his breakout season this year, he has posted a 2.47 ERA, but a closer look at the circumstances show a switch from the AL to the NL and a move to the cavernous Petco Park. This goes along with a low BABIP and high strand rate, hinting that his current rate of success may not be sustainable. With a new third pitch, he has gotten better, and advanced metrics do show improvement as well, but a switch to the perennially tough AL East will determine just how much improvement. The biggest risk with Pomeranz, however, is the fact that he has never topped 100 innings ever in a single major league season. With the Padres, he has already thrown 103 in the first half alone. This begs the question: as a starter who moved to Petco Park and discovered sudden success, how much of his success can be attributed to actual development, and is the risk of acquiring a starter who has never even surpassed half a season's workload worth giving up possibly the best pitching prospect in all of baseball? 

Fangraphs recently released an article breaking down the trade (worth a read, click here), and discussed that pitchers ranked on prospect lists in the Espinoza range generally average around 8.3 career WAR, with 28% of them having zero or negative career WARs. Pomeranz, even with regression, should be able to easily reach that same 8.3 mark in his 2.5 years of team control with Boston. But this doesn't account for the fact that prospect lists are highly subjective and also account for a prospect's proximity to the majors. As noted in the article, other pitchers ranked near him include Jose de Leon, Josh Hader, and Jose Berrios, all of whom have extensive minor league track records and have reached AAA. Espinoza ranked this highly straight out of the Gulf Coast League at age 17, truly a testament to the kind of raw talent and limitless upside he possesses. By the time he reaches AAA and develops some track record of his own, he might be in the conversation for top 10 prospect in the game, and average WAR for those pitchers jumps to 14.6, with zero percent posting negative career WARs. Anderson Espinoza is not just another young, hard-throwing Latin lottery ticket. Anderson Espinoza is an absolute phenom. Is it possible that he could fall short of the 8.3 WAR mark? Sure, all pitching prospects are volatile, but with his kind of devastating stuff he carries a higher floor than most others. And is it possible he hits his upside and absolutely blows past that mark en route to becoming one of the best pitchers in all of baseball with career value much more than what Pomeranz will provide to the Red Sox? Most definitely. 

Usually when prospects are dealt for MLB players, the prospects are the risky ones and the big leaguer is a proven commodity. But when the major leaguer is a lefty who averages 91 on his fastball with a sudden breakout in Petco Park while topping just 100 innings for the first time, and the prospect is an 18 year old prodigy who has clean mechanics, a triple digit fastball, and not one but two plus offspeeds with command of all three pitches, who carries more risk? Dave Dombrowski is aggressive, and making this move could help them make a playoff push in David Ortiz's last season. A.J. Preller, the San Diego GM, has not been perfect in his tenure, but if this move pays off the way he hopes it will, with Espinoza fulfilling his lofty potential and Pomeranz falling back apart, San Diego may have pulled off one of the biggest heists in baseball in the 21st century.

To read Alex Vacca's post on MLB Sweet Spot about why the Red Sox won this trade, please click here.

From Our Partner Site MLB Sweet Spot: Trade Deadline Tracker

Baseball MTJAG is pleased to announce a collaboration with MLB Sweet Spot, a baseball blog by Alex Vacca. The numbers-savvy baseball fan from the East Coast will provide a fresh perspective of the sport compared to my West Coast insight, so be prepared for some interesting articles to come. Below is Vacca's trade deadline tracker, with an analysis of the recent James Shields trade.
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Baseball Prospectus

2016 TRADE DEADLINE TRACKER

by Alex Vacca

Now that the baseball season has entered June, teams are at the point where they need to begin evaluating how they would like to proceed with the rest of the year, and more specifically, in the next two months leading up to the *trade deadline. As trades begin to materialize, I will be summarizing them here. I will give my take on the trade as a whole, as well as winners and losers in both the short term and the long term.

*2016 Non-waiver Trade Deadline: August 1st at 4:00 pm ET

June 4th, 2016:

San Diego Padres trade RHP James Shields to the Chicago White Sox for RHP Erik Johnson, INF Fernando Tatis Jr. and Cash

Initial Reaction: When the trade was first announced and I was unaware of the cash involved, I felt that the return for Shields was right along the lines of what I would have expected. After seeing that the Padres would be paying $29 million of the remaining $56 million on Shields’s contract (as reported by Bob Nightingale of USA Today), it hit me that maybe the Padres forced a trade too soon, as I felt they could have gotten more had they waited.

Analysis: Shields, of course, is the primary piece being moved in this deal. While he is no longer the ace that helped bring the Royals to the World Series in 2014, he is still as durable as pitchers come (over 200 innings each of the past 9 seasons), and will be slotting into a rotation that already includes Chris Sale and Jose Quintana. At the age of 34, and having a big fly ball/home run tendency, Shields is probably more of a mid-4s ERA pitcher than a top of the rotation option he once was, but this is all that the White Sox will need from him to contend, and at the price of approximately $10 million over the next two years, it is well worth it.

Through his first 98.0 career innings, the now 26-year old Erik Johnson has not looked like anything more than a number 5 starter in the majors. Even that may be a bit too much to expect, as his 4.50 ERA and 5.98 FIP do not bode well for his future. The Padres will likely use him as a spot starter with the hopes that he can maintain just enough success to take the ball every fifth day in the future.

To read about the other component of the deal, Fernando Tatis Jr., as well as many other insightful articles on his blog, continue here.