Minor League Strikeout Kings

I recently saw a couple of twitter posts claiming that Nelson Figueroa is the “All-Time” Minor League Strikeout King with 1,505 minor league strikeouts. Figueroa was a fine Minor League star of the modern era, but he isn’t even in the top ten all-time in terms of Minor League strikeouts.

The misconception that Figueroa is the minor league strikeout GOAT is mainly due to the fact that Baseball Reference’s minor league stats prior to 1946 are woefully inadequate. The actual all-time Minor League Strikeout King is either Oyster Joe Martina or George Brunet, depending on whether you consider the summer Mexican League a “minor league.”

According to my mid-1980’s copies of Minor League Stars Volumes I and II published by SABR, Oyster Joe struck out 2,770 minor leaguers in a pro career that ran from 1910 to 1931, mostly for the Beaumont Oilers in the Texas League and the New Orleans Pelicans in the Southern Association. By today’s standards, both leagues would probably classify as AA with the Southern Association being the better circuit during the years Martina played in them.

Oyster Joe spent only one season in the major leagues, as a 34 year old rookie for the 1924 World Champion Washington Senators. He went 6-8 with a 4.67 ERA. His main utility was eating up 125.1 IP, fifth best on the team, and he pitched one shutout inning in the World Series against the New York Giants.

George Brunet went 69-93 across parts of 15 major league seasons, most notably for the California Angels in the late 1960’s. When his major league career ended at age 36, he pitched in AAA until age 38 and then pitched in the Mexican League until age 49. He last pitched professionally in 1984.

Brunet struck out 3,175 minor league batters, well more than 1,000 of those in his last 11 or 12 seasons in Mexico.

Another minor leaguer worth mentioning here is Kewpie Dick Barrett (he was only 5’9 and 175 lbs and even then that was small for a right-hander). Barrett struck out 1,866 Pacific Coast League batters in the 1930’s and 1940’s, when the PCL was the best of the what we would now call the AAA leagues. Most of Barrett’s major league career took place between 1943 and 1945 between the ages of 36 and 38, when most of the best major league players were serving in the military.

Barrett’s 1,866 Ks in the PCL are the most by a pitcher in a single top minor league, what we would now call AA and AAA.

Those Dodger Deals

The dust has settled, and two of the three big Dodger deals have been completed.  The Bums get Mookie Betts, David Price and half of the $96M still owed to Price in exchange for Alex Verdugo and two prospects, middle infielder Jeter Downs and Connor Wong.  It seems to me like a modest price to pay for one season of Betts and three seasons of Price, particularly when the Dodgers are desperate to win a World Series.

I can’t help but feel that the whole purpose of this move from the Red Sox side of things was to get under the salary cap amount for a year in order to re-load in 2021 or 2022.  Don’t be surprised if the Red Sox are in the running to pay Betts a huge free agent contract next off-season, once the Red Sox have resolved their salary cap issue.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers also traded Kenta Maeda, $10M on Maeda’s remaining contractual guarantee, and 20 year old catching prospect Jair Camargo to the Twins for pitching prospect Brusdar Graterol, corner outfield prospect Luke Raley and the 67th pick in the 2020 draft.  In Graterol and the draft pick, the Dodgers will get some prospects to replace Downs and Wong, and the Twins will get a good major league pitcher for $650,000 a year plus significant bonuses that Maeda earns only if he pitches a lot of innings for the Twins.  Except for the loss of Graterol and the draft pick, it’s almost a no-lose proposition for a Twins team looking to go deep in the play-offs in 2020.

The Red Sox wouldn’t take Graterol despite the obvious talent, because he’s already had one major arm surgery and he’s overweight.  He has closer stuff, however.  Maeda was obviously expendable after the acquisition of Price, and the Dodgers could essentially buy a very good, if not great, draft pick from the Twins with money the Red Sox sent along with Price.  Don’t be surprised if the Dodgers pay half of the money they will owe Price in 2021 and/or 2022 in order to trade him off a year or two from now, when the Dodgers will trying to get under the salary cap for a season before re-loading again.

Reports have it that the Joc Pederson–Ross Stripling–Andy Pages for Luis Rengifo deal with the Angels has fallen apart, but why exactly no one seems to know.  If the Angels thought the deal would make them better a week ago, I’m not sure why they’d decide against it simply because they had to wait a week for the other Dodger machinations to play out.  Rumors have it that Angels owner Arte Moreno was upset about having this deal put on hold, and it wouldn’t be the first time Moreno has inserted himself into player acquisition issues to the detriment of the team, in that Moreno is supposed to have a major driver of the Albert Pujols deal that turned out to be a disaster for the Halos.

There have also been reports that the Dodgers nixed the Angels deal because the final pieces of the Betts-Price deal were different than expected.  This doesn’t make much sense either, as the Dodgers now have one highly-paid outfielder too many and could assumably still use another young middle infielder.  Maybe the fact that the Dodgers beat Pederson in arbitration, thereby saving $1.75M in 2020, is the reason trading Pederson no longer seemed like a great idea.  The Dodgers may also have realized that throwing in Andy Pages, who had a 1.049 OPS as an 18 year old rookie leaguer in 2019, was too much without a second legitimate prospect from the Angels in return.

All that said, it’s still quite possible that a variation of this deal centered around Pederson and Rengifo goes through before Spring Training starts.

Twins’ Prospect Ryan Costello Dies of “Natural Causes” in New Zealand

Professional baseball received some sad news today when it was reported that 23 year old Minnesota Twins prospect Ryan Costello was found dead in his hotel room in Auckland, New Zealand, where he was preparing to play in the Australian Winter League for the Auckland Tuatara.  According to the relevant authorities, the “preliminary indications suggest” that Costello died of “natural causes,” which raises a lot more questions than it answers.

“Natural causes” means it does not appear to have been suicide, murder or a fatal accident, and instead that the cause of death was a “natural” health process like heart attack, stroke, infection, etc.  Of course, healthy 23 year old professional athletes just don’t drop dead of heart attacks or strokes unless there is something else going on.

When Angels’ pitcher Tyler Skaggs‘ death was first announced around July 1st, there was initially no mention of the cause of death, except that it did not appear to be a suicide or murder.  At the time, I thought it sounded mighty fishy, since 27 year old professional athletes just don’t go around dropping dead.  Ultimately, it turned out that Skaggs had asphyxiated on his own vomit after overdosing on opiod painkillers to which he had apparently developed an addition of a period of years.

It seems highly unlikely that Costello suffered a heart attack or stroke at his age out of the blue.  Professional athletes are thoroughly evaluated medically on a routine basis, probably at a minimum at least annually around the time they report to Spring Training.  If Costello had had a congenital heart problem or other medical condition, it’s highly likely it would have been known and that Costello would have been advised of the risks of continuing to play professional sports.

Of course, Costello apparently died in his hotel room, where he most likely was not engaged in the level of strenuous physical activity necessary to cause a heart attack or stroke in an otherwise healthy 23 year old.

Because Costello is an unheralded minor leaguer, we may never see a final report in the media regarding his actual cause of death.  That’s a shame, because if it was drug related, that’s something the public needs to know.  A second drug-related death by a professional baseball player in six months’ time would suggest that professional baseball has a much bigger drug problem than anyone realizes and that MLB needs to do something about it.

In all fairness, I am not saying that drugs were the cause of Costello’s death.  Like everyone else, I simply don’t know why he died at this point.  I just find it irritating that when something like this happens, we get only the most vague description of the apparent cause of death, which, as I said above, invites far more questions than it answers.

Minnesota Twins Start Randy Dobnak with Predictable Results

What were the Twinkies thinking?  They had nobody better than Randy Dobnak to start Game Two of the ALDS against the Yankees?

Dobnak may or may not go on to have a great major league career.  His 2018 and 2019 minor league campaigns certainly don’t suggest he’s going to be the next Johan Santana, but he’s young enough that anything is possible.

What I am dead certain of, however, is that it is unquestionably foolish and almost unforgivable to start a rookie with 28.1 major league innings pitched, a rookie pitcher who had not pitched above the full-season Class-A level before this season, in the second game of a play-off series in which your team is already down 0-1.  No rookie deserves to be thrown into that much pressure after only 28.1 major league innings pitched.

As Earl Weaver once said, the best place for a rookie pitcher is middle relief.  Sometimes, injuries make that impossible.  However, the Twins won their division by eight games.  There is no way they couldn’t have prepared their rotation to have somebody other than Dobnak start Game 2.  Maybe if Dobnak had shut down the Bombers in one of his five regular season starts, but no way if he’d never faced them before, which he hadn’t.

Presumably Rocco Baldelli was playing a hunch, but it wasn’t a good one.  He would have looked like a genius if Dobnak had pitched even reasonably well, but, of course, Dobnak didn’t, and now Baldelli looks like the rookie manager he is.  In fact, it feels like an admission that Baldelli thinks there’s no way his starting rotation can hold back the Yankees’ line-up.

After today’s pasting, it’s going to take some serious stones from Jake Odorizzi, even pitching at home, to prevent this from being a three-game sweep.  It’s worth noting here that in 18 career games against the Yankees, Odorizzi has held the Bombers to a manageable .235/.289./.446 in 418 plate appearances — only the home run ball has been a real threat.

San Francisco Giants Promote Jaylin Davis

When I saw the post on mlbtraderumors.com that the Giants have promoted Jaylin Davis, I was like “who?”  I’d already forgotten the Giants acquired him from the Twins for Sam Dyson.  When I looked at the photo on baseball ref, I realized I had seen the photo before and fairly recently, but I had to read the post to find out how the Giants had acquired him.

I hadn’t thought about Davis since looking at his baseball reference page on the day the Dyson deal was made, but in 27 games for AAA Sacramento Davis slashed .333/.419/.686, which is nearly identical to the .331/.405/.708 he slashed in 41 games for the AAA Rochester Red Wings immediately before the trade.

Davis is a former 24th round draft pick out of Appalachian State University, who hadn’t done much in the minors until this season, although he had shown a little power potential.  He’s still young (he turned 25 on July 1st), and he has improved dramatically this season.  The reason for the improvement appears to be improved plate discipline, combined with refining his power stroke.  He’s hit 35 HRs in a season roughly split between AA and AAA and batted a combined .306 with a .397 on-base percentage.  Hard to find fault with those numbers, although it’s too early to tell if his AAA performance this year, which was considerably better than his AA performance (.840 OPS) in the first half, reflects true improvement rather than a temporary hot streak or dumb luck.

With the Giants now nine games back of the second wild card spot, it’s safe to say the Giants have nothing to lose by giving Davis a good luck this month to see if he can help the team in 2020 and beyond.  It certainly is nice when your team gets somebody who looked like a throw-in player in a trade and the player turns out to amount to something.  It’s also nice to see great AAA performance rewarded with a major league shot.   We’ll see what Davis can do in September.

Will the Baltimore Orioles Finally Dump Chris Davis?

News out of Charm City is that Chris Davis had to be restrained from going after manager Brandon Hyde today after being pinch hit for in the bottom of the 5th inning.  You know what?  You don’t get to cop an attitude when you’re an aging slugger with a .589 OPS in August.  Not now, not ever.

If I were the Orioles’ General Manager, or whomever holds the real power in the Orioles’ organization, I’d release Chris Davis tomorrow and eat the remaining $69M+ on his contract.  When a player is playing as far as Davis is playing below replacement, you just have to eat the contract and hope somebody else is willing to pay him the major league minimum — the same cost to the O’s as the replacement level player they should be able to find to replace him.  A team can’t afford to accept attitude from a worse-than-marginal player no matter how much he is being paid.

It’s uncertain if Hyde will last beyond the end of the 2019 season, but that’s beside the point.  Even if Hyde is proving he’s no better as a manager than Davis is a 1B/DH, you can’t hold onto a player who isn’t performing now and isn’t likely to perform in the future.  Hyde’s record as a manager would certainly be better if word wasn’t coming from somewhere higher that he has to keep playing Davis solely because of all the money the O’s committed to Davis.

Just admit that a mistake was made, and move on.  The Orioles are so bad that it is certain that no matter how much of a comeback Davis could potentially make going forward, he won’t be good enough to make the Orioles a post-season contending team.  Find that replacement-level player now, and try to develop a real star for 2020 or 2021 or 2022 and on.

Chris Davis’ contract is yet another reason why teams have gotten a whole lot stingier on free agents thanks to sabrmetrics than they once were.  Hope springs eternal, but the objective data says that free agents are way overpaid when they ought to be merely overpaid.  For every Chris Davis and Albert Pujols, there is a Nelson Cruz, but those aren’t great odds.  And teams have been generally stingy with their contracts to Cruz since his PED positive test to their great benefit.

The objective lesson is treat ’em all like Nelson Cruz and then some.  The Mariners gave Cruz a four-year $57M deal going into this age 34 season, so even in Cruz’s case, the team took some risk.  Teams collectively only benefit by holding the line on free agent salaries, and superstar players will still get paid because many teams still believe and will likely continue to believe that they are only one or two free agents away from contention.

If Davis gets the axe in Baltimore, it will be interesting see if another team signs him to a major league contract, even at the MLB minimum salary.   If Davis can’t hit playing half his games in Baltimore, is a change of scenery really going to make a difference.  Maybe the Rangers would sign him to play at the major league level — Davis is from Texas, and there’s no better place to hit in the Junior Circuit than the Ballpark at Arlington (or whatever it is now called).  The O’s should let the Rangers give Davis a shot.

Busy Trade Deadline Day for San Francisco Giants

After being up in the air about how they were going to go into the trade deadline, the Giants made a flury of moves that kind of split the difference.  The Giants sent away relievers Sam Dyson, Mark Melancon, Drew Pomeranz and Ray Black, held onto Madison Bumgarner and Will Smith, and added 2Bmen Scooter Gennett and Mauricio Dubon and a bunch of B and C-grade prospects.

Dyson was the only really important piece for the Giants in 2019, and the Giants got three prospects for his last 1.33 seasons of control.  The three prospects are Prelander Berroa, a 19 year old right-hander who has never pitched above the rookie league level; Jaylin Davis, a just turned 25 year old outfielder who is a former 24th round draft pick but is having a big year this year in the high minors; and Kei-Wei Teng, a big (6’4″, 260 lbs) Taiwanese right-hander pitching well at full season A ball this year at age 20.

After a promotion from AA, Jaylin Davis was slashing .331/.405/.708 after 41 games for AAA Rochester, and he runs well. However, his career minor league .812 OPS is probably a better reflection of his true talents.  MLB.com doesn’t rank any of the three prospects the Giants received as being in the Twins’ top 30.

The Giants got a big return from the Brewers for Drew Pomeranz and Ray Black.  Just turned 25 2Bman Mauricio Dubon was slashing .297/.333/.475 after 427 plate appearances at AAA San Antonio.  Dubon was born in Honduras and went to high school in Sacramento.  He is just the second Honduran born player in major league history — the first was Gerald Young.

The trades involving Mark Melancon and Scooter Gennett were mostly about moving salary for the selling teams.  The Braves will reportedly pay all of Melancon’s remaining contract, which is close to $19M through the end of the 2020 season.  The prospects the Giants got in return reflect it.  Righties Tristan Beck and Dan Winkler don’t impress much.

Beck is a former 4th round draft pick out of Stanford, but missed all of the 2017 season to a stress fracture in his back.  Now age 23, he has an ugly 5.65 ERA in the normally pitcher-friendly Class A+ Florida State League after eight starts this season.  After a fine major league campaign last year at age 28, Dan Winkler pitched his way out of the Braves’ bullpen this year and has had trouble throwing strikes for AAA Gwinnett.

The Giants gave the Reds “cash considerations” for Scooter Gennett, which I assume means that the Giants will be paying all of the remaining $3.25 million owed to Gennett, plus maybe another $25,000 or $50,000.  Gennett has been awful this year since coming back from an injury.  It doesn’t seem likely he’ll hit better in pitcher-friendly San Francisco than he did in hitter-friendly Cincinnati, but you never know.  One thing is for certain — the additions of Dubon and Gennett mean that Joe Panik‘s playing time will be limited going forward unless he gets hot immediately.  It also seems almost certain the Giants will non-tender Panik this off-season.

In another very minor move, the Giants swapped lefty Jacob Lopez for LF/1B Joe McCarthy.  I’m doubtful either player ever reaches the majors, but again, you never know.

The Giants promoted Derek Rodriguez, Andrew Suarez and Jandel Gustave today to replace the traded away bullpen pieces.  None of the three deserved the promotion more than Sam Selman.  However, the odds that all three of Rodriguez, Suarez and Gustave can hold their major league roster spots seem slim, so Selman may get his shot soon enough.

Did the Texas Rangers Get Lucky Or Is It Just One of Those Things that Makes Baseball Fun

Lance Lynn won today’s only game, an MLB-best 12th win against MLB’s 3rd best team.  The three-year $30M deal the Rangers gave Lynn this past off-season looked like an over-pay, given that free agent contracts are down and Lynn had had to settle for a one-year $12M deal for 2018.

It’s probably safe to say that the 2018 deal was too stingy and the 2019-2021 deal was too generous, at least until Lynn pitched in 2019 like he was worth the whole $30M (fangraphs.com says he’s been worth $31.8M so far in 2019).  Lynn wasn’t great in 2018, at least until the Twins traded him to the Yankees, so the 2017-2018 off-season lack of interest seemed to be an accurate reflection of his likely future value.

It seems likely that teams have been overvaluing the draft pick loss that comes with the qualifying offer (which the Cards had extended Lynn), although free agent frugality always benefits the teams on average.  Free agents have been overvalued in terms of where MLB is currently; there isn’t much doubt of that.  MLB sorely needs another round of expansion to let the superstars stand out and to keep the oldsters starring for another season or three.

Teams don’t err by erring on the side of frugality with free agents.  Still, one of the things that keeps baseball interesting is that the future can’t accurately be predicted in all circumstance.  Sometimes the Lance Lynns of baseball will make the apparent overpays look like strokes of pure genius.

I don’t think the Rangers’ management really knew something nobody else did.  I suspect that Lynn’s great 2019 (so far) was a lot of good luck, possibly but not necessarily favored by some good forecasting.

All of that said, the Rangers still need to make the play-offs this season.  At age 32 this season and listed 6’5″ and 280 lbs, it’s hard to imagine that Lynn can continue to be great even only as far into the future as 2020 and 2021.  I will admit, however, that I never suspected that CC Sabathia, all 6’6″ and 300 lbs of him, could still be pitching effectively on the eve of his 39th birthday.  In my mind that’s nothing short of a modern-day baseball miracle.

Wow! The Twins Are Really Good Again

After today’s win, the Minnesota Twins have the best record in baseball and they’re playing that well with the best run differential in baseball.  With a 10.5 game lead in the AL Central, the Twins already look like a lock to win the division although we aren’t quite at the 60 game mark.

I used to write about the Twins a lot back when they were a small-market can-do team.  It was a lot harder to find good things to write about the Twins when they weren’t winning and couldn’t seem to catch a break.

It was a long re-build but it’s working this year.  Jorge Polanco, Max Kepler, Eddie Rosario and Byron Buxton are all-home grown and only Rosario is as old as 27 this season.  The same for Jose Berrios, who looks like he’s going to be a great pitcher for however long his arm lasts.

Also, the bargain free agent signings have worked out better this year, with waiver-claimed C. J. Cron posting an .866 OPS, Martin Perez winning seven games, and Jonathan Schoop posting an .816 so far.  Relatively highly paid Marwin Gonzalez has been the only significant dud.

Jake Odorizzi is having a great year going into free agency.  The bullpen looks like the team’s best in some years.

What will slow the Twinkies’ down are the fact that’s highly unlike their catchers will keep hitting the way they have so far and their pitchers, in particular, could get hurt.

I’m glad to see that Ehire Adrianza is still a fine back-up middle infielder, and a little sad to see that Adalberto Mejia is hurt after pitching ineffectively.   Their both former Giants, and I root for them to do well in Minnesota.  I still like Williams Astudillo, but he’s got to start walking or getting hit by pitches enough to force pitchers to throw him a few more strikes, and he hits into a fearsome number of double-plays.

 

What Will Cody Bellinger End Up Batting in 2019?

After today’s game in Cincinnati, Cody Bellinger is batting a lusty .404 46 games into the 2019 Dodgers’ season.  What might he end up hitting when the year is out?

I’ll go out on a limb and say that Bellinger won’t hit .380 this season, let alone .400.  The last player to hit .380 in a season was Tony Gwynn in 1994 when Gwynn batted .394, the closest any player has come to .400 since Ted Williams last did it in 1941.  Since 1941, only three other players have batted .380 in a season: Ted Williams batted .388 in 1957, Rod Carew batted .388 in 1977 and George Brett batted .390 in 1980.

By my calculation, Bellinger would have to bat .372 for the rest of the season (assuming that Bellinger stays healthy) in order to hit .380 for the season.  Seems unlikely.

The last player to bat .370 or better in a season was Ichiro when he hit .372 in 2004.  While a great season and a great hitter, Barry Bonds had hit .370 in 2002 and both Nomar Garciaparra and Todd Helton had batted .372 in 2000.

To hit .370 for the season, Bellinger would need to hit about .356 the rest of the way.  Certainly doable, but I’d think certainly less likely than not.

The last player to bat .360 or better in a season was Joe Mauer when he batted .365 in 2009.  As with Ichiro’s 2004, Mauer’s 2009 was not wildly better than other batting leaders of the previous few seasons:  Chipper Jones had batted .364 in 2008, and Magglio Ordonez had batted .363 in 2007.

To bat .360 on the season, Bellinger would need to hit .344 the rest of the way.  That certainly seems doable, given Bellinger’s talent level and the facts that he is a left-handed hitter who runs extremely well.

The last player to bat .350 in a season was Josh Hamilton, who batted .359 in 2010.  To hit .350 for the season, Bellinger would only need to hit .328 the rest of the way.  I’d be willing to bet even money on Bellinger hitting at least .350 this season if he can stay healthy.