- Feb 17, 2007
- 21,784
- 2,957
A's have won 11 of the last 14 vs the Yankees.
2016 MLB thread. THE CUBS HAVE BROKEN THE CURSE! Chicago Cubs are your 2016 World Series champions
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by proshares,
- Start date
- Status
- Oct 31, 2008
- 2,312
- 214
Weapons of Moss Destruction in full effect tonight
HIM
Supporter
- May 10, 2006
- 27,793
- 65,460
A's
Championship or bust.
Championship or bust.
- Aug 13, 2013
- 7,884
- 2,014
If we don't sweep Yankees again this season, it'll be such a disappointment.
GreenNGold89
formerly bbllplaya23
- Apr 5, 2005
- 6,621
- 2,173
jumpmanfromdabay
Banned
- Jan 25, 2008
- 25,730
- 2,900
you didn't catch my sarcasm. IMO I don't care about PED use I want to be entertained
- Feb 17, 2007
- 21,784
- 2,957
Last edited:
Oh yea? Beat us when it matters.
I'm kidding
rooting for them to finally win one...after the Yankees
- Feb 17, 2007
- 21,784
- 2,957
- Jan 7, 2004
- 28,043
- 10,466
Glad to see Gray and Pomeranz flourish, former Indian that should have never been traded for Ubaldo. But that's a different story.
Singleton is here. Houston with the sign-and-promote.
HIM
Supporter
- May 10, 2006
- 27,793
- 65,460
They better win it all.
- Jan 7, 2004
- 28,043
- 10,466
Royals winning the AL, B. Once Hosmer heats up with second-half power like 2013.
They better win it all.
- Apr 4, 2008
- 75,040
- 24,440
Thinking about packaging Garrett Richards and Archie Bradley in this keeper league for a bat. Thinking that might help me make a run but I'm last in my division. It's up for grabs though.
- Jan 7, 2004
- 28,043
- 10,466
You had to pry Bradley from my cold fingers. I've been hyping him for over a year now.
Justin Masterson’s Immaculate Inning (And Then Some).
Sinkers, Change-ups and Platoon Splits.
Prospect Watch: NL West Prospects.
Jose Bautista’s Counter-Shift.
The Marlins Live Down to Their Reputation.
A.J. Pollock, Better Than You Think, Now Gone.
Last summer, I saw Joey Votto pop out.
I traveled to Chicago, as I do every summer, to enjoy the city and catch a couple Cubs games at Wrigley Field. The Cincinnati Reds were in town and Jeff Samardzija was pitching for the Cubs. In Votto’s first at-bat against Samardzija, he doubled. In his second at-bat, Votto walked. But in the fourth inning, Samardzija got Votto to pop out to third base. I immediately recognized what had happened. Nobody I was with quite understood why I was so excited. I explained to them how Joey Votto doesn’t pop out to the infield. It ended up being his only infield fly of 2013. He did it one time in 2012. He did it one time in 2011. He didn’t do it at all in 2010.
I’ve been to a ton of baseball games. I’ve never seen a pitcher throw a perfect game, or even a no-hitter. I’ve never seen a batter hit for the cycle. But I have seen Joey Votto pop out. And as lame as it may sound, I contend that pop out is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen at a baseball game in person, alongside Greg Maddux‘s 3,000th strikeout, Manny Ramirez hitting three homers and Lou Pineilla kicking his hat all over the infield.
After attending Monday’s game in Cleveland between the Indians and the Boston Red Sox, I can add another statistical quirk to the list of coolest things I’ve seen in person at a baseball game: an Immaculate Inning.
Unlike Votto’s pop out, I didn’t even notice it had happened. Justin Masterson had struggled mightily with his command in the first three innings, needing 28 pitches to get out of the first and 21 more to get through the second. After three innings, he had already thrown 62 pitches and just 31 of them had been strikes. Though he hadn’t conceded a run, it was apparent to anyone watching the game that, up until that point, Masterson didn’t have his best stuff.
Before the start of the fourth inning, I turned to my buddy Casey and said, “He could really use about a nine-pitch inning right now.” It looked like he might not even make it through the fifth with how high his pitch count had climbed and I simply implied that he needed a quick inning if he were to work deep into the game. Though I failed to realize it when it happened, lo and behold, Justin Masterson granted my wish:
Facing Jonny Gomes, Masterson leads off the fourth inning with a sinker in the strike zone. This was big for Masterson, because he basically hadn’t done this all game. This was the 31st sinker Masterson had thrown in the game, and just the second one that was actually in the strike zone. See for yourself Masterson’s sinkers through the first three innings, thanks to Baseball Savant:
Masterson throws his sinker more than any other pitch – about half the time – so establishing the ability to command it for a first-pitch strike, or a strike at all, is important.
Masterson comes back with his bread-and-butter pitch: the slider. Masterson’s slider ranks as the sixth-most valuable pitch since the start of 2013 season, and this is pretty much exactly what he wants to do with it.
Again, the intent is a slider low and away and, again, Masterson executes it perfectly for the first strikeout of the inning. This pitch is unhittable to a right-handed batter and the leading reason Justin Masterson is a successful, rich athlete. To a right-handed batter, it looks like a slow meatball right down the middle of the plate until the moment you start to swing and it falls off the table. As long as Masterson puts it right there, he’s going to get good results.
Next up is Grady Sizemore and Masterson, again, starts him off with a sinker in the zone for a called strike. This brings his total of sinkers in the strike zone to 3-out-of-32.
Masterson mixes it up and throws a four-seam fastball up and in to Sizemore, who fouls it off his oft-injured right knee, momentarily stopping the heart of all those within the Red Sox organization. 0-2.
Masterson throws the same pitch to Sizemore that he threw to Gomes for strike three and its just as effective on the lefty as it is the righty. From 2010-2012, Masterson struck out just 13.3% of left-handed batters he faced and allowed a .346 wOBA. In 2013, Masterson upped his K-rate to 19.4% and allowed just a .316 wOBA, largely due to his improved use of his slider against lefties. This is essentially the very pitch that helped turn Masterson from a middle-of-the-rotation pitcher into a front-end starter last season.
Another four-seam fastball spotted perfectly for strike one against Stephen Drew, who was making just his second plate appearance of the season.
On an 0-1 count, he throws a back door slider, the first of its type in the inning, and it catches the outside corner of the plate to put Drew behind 0-2. At this point we’ve more or less seen Masterson execute every pitch in his arsenal: low sinkers and elevated fastballs for strikes to get ahead in the count, sliders both back door and out of the zone to put them away.
Then, for the third consecutive batter, Masterson throws a two-strike slider in the exact same location for a swinging strike three. Yan Gomes makes a nice block to ensure that Masterson’s three strikeouts actually end the inning, and Justin Masterson successfully makes history, despite both him and I not yet knowing it.
Per MLB.com’s Jordan Bastian:
“I didn’t know it was nine pitches,” he said. “I knew I punched out the side. [Pitching coach Mickey Callaway] said, ‘I think you should do that every time.’ That sounds great. No, in the moment, I didn’t realize it. I just realized it was strike, strike, see you.”
But Masterson wasn’t done there.
Following his nine-pitch immaculate inning, Masterson got Jackie Bradley, Jr. down in the count 0-1 before he lined out to center field. Next, Brock Holt got down 0-1 and fouled off two pitches before grounding back to the pitcher. Xander Bogaerts struck out on four pitches after fouling one off and Justin Masterson had another 1-2-3 inning, this time with just one strikeout, but still needing only 11 pitches – all strikes.
In the sixth, Masterson started things off by striking out Dustin Pedroia on three pitches. He then got a first-pitch swinging strike on a slider against David Ortiz before this happened:
After 25 pitches, the streak was over. Masterson threw an 0-1 sinker to Ortiz and it just missed the outer edge of the plate. The research is a little foggy, but according to Bastian, Masterson’s 25 consecutive strikes are the most since Scott Diamond‘s 26 on June 24, 2012. That same year, Bartolo Colon threw 38 consecutive strikes.
But Bartolo Colon throws strikes as often as any pitcher in baseball. Masterson doesn’t have great command to begin with and this was a game in which he threw 31 of his first 62 pitches for balls. Then he just rattled off an immaculate inning plus 15 more strikes like it was nothing. Take a look at this plot of his pitches from innings 1-3 and then 4-6 and you clearly see two different Justin Mastersons:
Through the first three innings, Masterson couldn’t throw his main pitch for a strike and it looked like he might not make it out of the fifth. He ended up striking out 10 batters over seven scoreless innings and became the 70th pitcher in MLB history – and first Indian – to throw an immaculate inning.
Go to a baseball game. You might not see a no-hitter or a player hit for the cycle, but you could see Joey Votto pop out! And even if Joey Votto isn’t playing, you’re always just nine pitches away from seeing an immaculate inning.
I traveled to Chicago, as I do every summer, to enjoy the city and catch a couple Cubs games at Wrigley Field. The Cincinnati Reds were in town and Jeff Samardzija was pitching for the Cubs. In Votto’s first at-bat against Samardzija, he doubled. In his second at-bat, Votto walked. But in the fourth inning, Samardzija got Votto to pop out to third base. I immediately recognized what had happened. Nobody I was with quite understood why I was so excited. I explained to them how Joey Votto doesn’t pop out to the infield. It ended up being his only infield fly of 2013. He did it one time in 2012. He did it one time in 2011. He didn’t do it at all in 2010.
I’ve been to a ton of baseball games. I’ve never seen a pitcher throw a perfect game, or even a no-hitter. I’ve never seen a batter hit for the cycle. But I have seen Joey Votto pop out. And as lame as it may sound, I contend that pop out is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen at a baseball game in person, alongside Greg Maddux‘s 3,000th strikeout, Manny Ramirez hitting three homers and Lou Pineilla kicking his hat all over the infield.
After attending Monday’s game in Cleveland between the Indians and the Boston Red Sox, I can add another statistical quirk to the list of coolest things I’ve seen in person at a baseball game: an Immaculate Inning.
Unlike Votto’s pop out, I didn’t even notice it had happened. Justin Masterson had struggled mightily with his command in the first three innings, needing 28 pitches to get out of the first and 21 more to get through the second. After three innings, he had already thrown 62 pitches and just 31 of them had been strikes. Though he hadn’t conceded a run, it was apparent to anyone watching the game that, up until that point, Masterson didn’t have his best stuff.
Before the start of the fourth inning, I turned to my buddy Casey and said, “He could really use about a nine-pitch inning right now.” It looked like he might not even make it through the fifth with how high his pitch count had climbed and I simply implied that he needed a quick inning if he were to work deep into the game. Though I failed to realize it when it happened, lo and behold, Justin Masterson granted my wish:
Facing Jonny Gomes, Masterson leads off the fourth inning with a sinker in the strike zone. This was big for Masterson, because he basically hadn’t done this all game. This was the 31st sinker Masterson had thrown in the game, and just the second one that was actually in the strike zone. See for yourself Masterson’s sinkers through the first three innings, thanks to Baseball Savant:
Masterson throws his sinker more than any other pitch – about half the time – so establishing the ability to command it for a first-pitch strike, or a strike at all, is important.
Masterson comes back with his bread-and-butter pitch: the slider. Masterson’s slider ranks as the sixth-most valuable pitch since the start of 2013 season, and this is pretty much exactly what he wants to do with it.
Again, the intent is a slider low and away and, again, Masterson executes it perfectly for the first strikeout of the inning. This pitch is unhittable to a right-handed batter and the leading reason Justin Masterson is a successful, rich athlete. To a right-handed batter, it looks like a slow meatball right down the middle of the plate until the moment you start to swing and it falls off the table. As long as Masterson puts it right there, he’s going to get good results.
Next up is Grady Sizemore and Masterson, again, starts him off with a sinker in the zone for a called strike. This brings his total of sinkers in the strike zone to 3-out-of-32.
Masterson mixes it up and throws a four-seam fastball up and in to Sizemore, who fouls it off his oft-injured right knee, momentarily stopping the heart of all those within the Red Sox organization. 0-2.
Masterson throws the same pitch to Sizemore that he threw to Gomes for strike three and its just as effective on the lefty as it is the righty. From 2010-2012, Masterson struck out just 13.3% of left-handed batters he faced and allowed a .346 wOBA. In 2013, Masterson upped his K-rate to 19.4% and allowed just a .316 wOBA, largely due to his improved use of his slider against lefties. This is essentially the very pitch that helped turn Masterson from a middle-of-the-rotation pitcher into a front-end starter last season.
Another four-seam fastball spotted perfectly for strike one against Stephen Drew, who was making just his second plate appearance of the season.
On an 0-1 count, he throws a back door slider, the first of its type in the inning, and it catches the outside corner of the plate to put Drew behind 0-2. At this point we’ve more or less seen Masterson execute every pitch in his arsenal: low sinkers and elevated fastballs for strikes to get ahead in the count, sliders both back door and out of the zone to put them away.
Then, for the third consecutive batter, Masterson throws a two-strike slider in the exact same location for a swinging strike three. Yan Gomes makes a nice block to ensure that Masterson’s three strikeouts actually end the inning, and Justin Masterson successfully makes history, despite both him and I not yet knowing it.
Per MLB.com’s Jordan Bastian:
“I didn’t know it was nine pitches,” he said. “I knew I punched out the side. [Pitching coach Mickey Callaway] said, ‘I think you should do that every time.’ That sounds great. No, in the moment, I didn’t realize it. I just realized it was strike, strike, see you.”
But Masterson wasn’t done there.
Following his nine-pitch immaculate inning, Masterson got Jackie Bradley, Jr. down in the count 0-1 before he lined out to center field. Next, Brock Holt got down 0-1 and fouled off two pitches before grounding back to the pitcher. Xander Bogaerts struck out on four pitches after fouling one off and Justin Masterson had another 1-2-3 inning, this time with just one strikeout, but still needing only 11 pitches – all strikes.
In the sixth, Masterson started things off by striking out Dustin Pedroia on three pitches. He then got a first-pitch swinging strike on a slider against David Ortiz before this happened:
After 25 pitches, the streak was over. Masterson threw an 0-1 sinker to Ortiz and it just missed the outer edge of the plate. The research is a little foggy, but according to Bastian, Masterson’s 25 consecutive strikes are the most since Scott Diamond‘s 26 on June 24, 2012. That same year, Bartolo Colon threw 38 consecutive strikes.
But Bartolo Colon throws strikes as often as any pitcher in baseball. Masterson doesn’t have great command to begin with and this was a game in which he threw 31 of his first 62 pitches for balls. Then he just rattled off an immaculate inning plus 15 more strikes like it was nothing. Take a look at this plot of his pitches from innings 1-3 and then 4-6 and you clearly see two different Justin Mastersons:
Through the first three innings, Masterson couldn’t throw his main pitch for a strike and it looked like he might not make it out of the fifth. He ended up striking out 10 batters over seven scoreless innings and became the 70th pitcher in MLB history – and first Indian – to throw an immaculate inning.
Go to a baseball game. You might not see a no-hitter or a player hit for the cycle, but you could see Joey Votto pop out! And even if Joey Votto isn’t playing, you’re always just nine pitches away from seeing an immaculate inning.
Sinkers, Change-ups and Platoon Splits.
You’re a pitcher? You need a change-up.
That automatic response seems reasonable enough given the state of modern pitching analysis. You’ve probably heard it plenty of times about pitchers like Justin Masterson or Chris Archer. After all, the change breaks away from opposite-handed hitters and helps pitchers neutralize platoon threats.
But you know what? There’s another pitch that breaks away from opposite-handed hitters: the two-seamer or the sinker, whatever you want to call it. And yet lefties love sinkers from righties. So why do two pitches with similar movement have such different results?
It’s not that change-ups and sinkers are exactly the same, but arm-side run is a rare thing, and they share it. In fact, look across the league at the average horizontal movement, and you might notice something.
RHP Two-Seamer Cutter Splitter Sinker Slider Curve Change
X-Movement -8.2 0.6 -5.4 -8.5 2.6 5.6 -6.5
The sinker and the change-up are the only pitches that have arm-side run, really. The splitter is a change-up for all intents and purposes (often called a split-change), and the two-seamer and sinker are similar if not the same pitch.
And yet the platoon splits on the two pitches are fairly different. Lefties had a .767 OPS against sinkers from right-handers last year, while they only managed a .713 OPS against change-ups from right-handers last year. Here’s the long version, with the league average platoon split added so that you can see that these two pitches work differently in practice.
AVG OBP SLG OPS
Sinker v RHB 0.245 0.329 0.364 0.693
Sinker v LHB 0.258 0.363 0.404 0.767
League Ave v LHB 0.259 0.329 0.412 0.741
Change v RHB 0.231 0.314 0.380 0.694
Change v LHB 0.240 0.330 0.383 0.713
I thought I’d ask a few pitchers about the phenomenon.
Rick Porcello actually developed a curve ball last season because he saw that his sinker and change-up were so similar. Having two primary pitches with the same movement “just makes it easier for hitters to hang out over the plate and go the other way,” Porcello said before a game with the Athletics in May. “It just looks too much like the same thing all the time.” Developing the curveball gave him a different break, and a pitch that was 10 mph to 14 mph slower than his fastball (his change-up only comes in 6-8 mph slower).
Sean Doolittle has been dominant with one pitch, and he’s throwing the slider a bit more this season, but the A’s new closer would still like to throw a change-up. Yes, both pitches run away from the opposite hand (in Doolittle’s case, the righties), but there’s something different about the way batters see the change-up. They try to get out there with their bat, and then… “they run out of bat,” said Doolittle. The combination of speed and movement means that they can’t wait long enough, and there’s no contact to be made once the pitch gets to the plate.
Brandon McCarthy has long sought a change-up ever since he dropped his original change-piece and went over to a steady diet of sinkers. He thought the main difference was the change in speed. “A change-up is still a change-up — it’s just supposed to be not there, whether it’s missing completely or it’s just off the end.”
Could a pitcher just throw the two-seamer slower? McCarthy thought that his teammate Trevor Cahill does that with some success, and the velocity chart on his sinker does show an eight mph spread on the pitch. But that’s a singular skill, as McCarthy himself admitted. Maintaining similar arm speeds on different pitches is hard enough to do without actively trying to throw one of the pitches at two different speeds.
It’s obvious that change of speed is part of the equation, but not every change-up and fastball pairing features a large gap in velocity. Felix Hernandez and Stephen Strasburg both own top-five change-ups, and their gaps (3.0 and 6.4 mph respectively) don’t fit the conventional wisdom that desires a ten-mph gap between the two pitches. Of course, Harry Pavlidis has shown us that hard, firm change-ups have their place (ground balls), but it goes to show that velocity doesn’t explain everything.
Brian Bannister says the y axis is a big part of the change-up’s success: “A two-seamer usually is a flatter spin-axis derivative of a pitcher’s standard four-seam fastball. A change-up can be a completely different pitch entirely.” But two-seamers are tough to throw effectively, Bannister adds. “Hitters like pitches with backspin because they want to hit the bottom half of the ball,” he says. “Very few pitchers who try to throw two-seamers are able to put the necessary sink on the ball to be successful at the major-league level. To most hitters, an average two-seamer is just a slower four-seamer. The pitcher doesn’t gain much of an advantage by throwing it because it only adds some lateral movement. However, almost all pitchers are eventually able to develop some form of change-up that reduces velocity, reduces spin, and/or adds random movement to the ball, and this can drive hitters crazy.”
To Bannister’s point, let’s look at the vertical movement for those same pitches from righties. That same table from above, revisited for the y axis.
RHP Two-Seamer Cutter Splitter Sinker Slider Curve Change
Y-Movement 6.3 6.1 2.9 4.3 1.4 -5.6 4.3
Another surprise. Change-ups, on average, have the same vertical movement as sinkers as well as similar horizontal movement.
Back to velocity, then? Even the average change-up goes 83.2 compared to today’s average fastball at 91.6.
Porcello felt the change-up’s excellence was about that difference, about timing. Thinking about hitters, the Tigers’ pitchers said that “all their timing comes off the fastball — you’re timed to hit the fastball.” And it’s no surprise there’s a bigger platoon split on the fastball, according to Porcello; “Overall, hitters hit fastballs better than any other pitches — but when they’re worried about your good fastball, they can’t sit on your offspeed stuff, because then they can eat you up with fastballs.”
Let’s add one pitch back into the equation that should help put all of this into focus. The four-seam fastball. The most-thrown pitch in baseball actually has six inches of arm-side run on average, meaning that the difference between a two-seamer and a four-seamer is maybe less than we assume.
That similarity, and perhaps the hitting approach that is timed to the fastball and doesn’t leave enough bat for a change-up on the outside, seem to suggest that the change of speed — with the same arm speed — is the major separator between the two-seamer from the change-up.
To some extent, that’s surprising. After all, when you think of the best change-ups, you think of the darting, diving, off-the-table movement. But the (relative) number on the radar gun might be even more important, especially if you’re a righty pitching to a lefty.
That automatic response seems reasonable enough given the state of modern pitching analysis. You’ve probably heard it plenty of times about pitchers like Justin Masterson or Chris Archer. After all, the change breaks away from opposite-handed hitters and helps pitchers neutralize platoon threats.
But you know what? There’s another pitch that breaks away from opposite-handed hitters: the two-seamer or the sinker, whatever you want to call it. And yet lefties love sinkers from righties. So why do two pitches with similar movement have such different results?
It’s not that change-ups and sinkers are exactly the same, but arm-side run is a rare thing, and they share it. In fact, look across the league at the average horizontal movement, and you might notice something.
RHP Two-Seamer Cutter Splitter Sinker Slider Curve Change
X-Movement -8.2 0.6 -5.4 -8.5 2.6 5.6 -6.5
The sinker and the change-up are the only pitches that have arm-side run, really. The splitter is a change-up for all intents and purposes (often called a split-change), and the two-seamer and sinker are similar if not the same pitch.
And yet the platoon splits on the two pitches are fairly different. Lefties had a .767 OPS against sinkers from right-handers last year, while they only managed a .713 OPS against change-ups from right-handers last year. Here’s the long version, with the league average platoon split added so that you can see that these two pitches work differently in practice.
AVG OBP SLG OPS
Sinker v RHB 0.245 0.329 0.364 0.693
Sinker v LHB 0.258 0.363 0.404 0.767
League Ave v LHB 0.259 0.329 0.412 0.741
Change v RHB 0.231 0.314 0.380 0.694
Change v LHB 0.240 0.330 0.383 0.713
I thought I’d ask a few pitchers about the phenomenon.
Rick Porcello actually developed a curve ball last season because he saw that his sinker and change-up were so similar. Having two primary pitches with the same movement “just makes it easier for hitters to hang out over the plate and go the other way,” Porcello said before a game with the Athletics in May. “It just looks too much like the same thing all the time.” Developing the curveball gave him a different break, and a pitch that was 10 mph to 14 mph slower than his fastball (his change-up only comes in 6-8 mph slower).
Sean Doolittle has been dominant with one pitch, and he’s throwing the slider a bit more this season, but the A’s new closer would still like to throw a change-up. Yes, both pitches run away from the opposite hand (in Doolittle’s case, the righties), but there’s something different about the way batters see the change-up. They try to get out there with their bat, and then… “they run out of bat,” said Doolittle. The combination of speed and movement means that they can’t wait long enough, and there’s no contact to be made once the pitch gets to the plate.
Brandon McCarthy has long sought a change-up ever since he dropped his original change-piece and went over to a steady diet of sinkers. He thought the main difference was the change in speed. “A change-up is still a change-up — it’s just supposed to be not there, whether it’s missing completely or it’s just off the end.”
Could a pitcher just throw the two-seamer slower? McCarthy thought that his teammate Trevor Cahill does that with some success, and the velocity chart on his sinker does show an eight mph spread on the pitch. But that’s a singular skill, as McCarthy himself admitted. Maintaining similar arm speeds on different pitches is hard enough to do without actively trying to throw one of the pitches at two different speeds.
It’s obvious that change of speed is part of the equation, but not every change-up and fastball pairing features a large gap in velocity. Felix Hernandez and Stephen Strasburg both own top-five change-ups, and their gaps (3.0 and 6.4 mph respectively) don’t fit the conventional wisdom that desires a ten-mph gap between the two pitches. Of course, Harry Pavlidis has shown us that hard, firm change-ups have their place (ground balls), but it goes to show that velocity doesn’t explain everything.
Brian Bannister says the y axis is a big part of the change-up’s success: “A two-seamer usually is a flatter spin-axis derivative of a pitcher’s standard four-seam fastball. A change-up can be a completely different pitch entirely.” But two-seamers are tough to throw effectively, Bannister adds. “Hitters like pitches with backspin because they want to hit the bottom half of the ball,” he says. “Very few pitchers who try to throw two-seamers are able to put the necessary sink on the ball to be successful at the major-league level. To most hitters, an average two-seamer is just a slower four-seamer. The pitcher doesn’t gain much of an advantage by throwing it because it only adds some lateral movement. However, almost all pitchers are eventually able to develop some form of change-up that reduces velocity, reduces spin, and/or adds random movement to the ball, and this can drive hitters crazy.”
To Bannister’s point, let’s look at the vertical movement for those same pitches from righties. That same table from above, revisited for the y axis.
RHP Two-Seamer Cutter Splitter Sinker Slider Curve Change
Y-Movement 6.3 6.1 2.9 4.3 1.4 -5.6 4.3
Another surprise. Change-ups, on average, have the same vertical movement as sinkers as well as similar horizontal movement.
Back to velocity, then? Even the average change-up goes 83.2 compared to today’s average fastball at 91.6.
Porcello felt the change-up’s excellence was about that difference, about timing. Thinking about hitters, the Tigers’ pitchers said that “all their timing comes off the fastball — you’re timed to hit the fastball.” And it’s no surprise there’s a bigger platoon split on the fastball, according to Porcello; “Overall, hitters hit fastballs better than any other pitches — but when they’re worried about your good fastball, they can’t sit on your offspeed stuff, because then they can eat you up with fastballs.”
Let’s add one pitch back into the equation that should help put all of this into focus. The four-seam fastball. The most-thrown pitch in baseball actually has six inches of arm-side run on average, meaning that the difference between a two-seamer and a four-seamer is maybe less than we assume.
That similarity, and perhaps the hitting approach that is timed to the fastball and doesn’t leave enough bat for a change-up on the outside, seem to suggest that the change of speed — with the same arm speed — is the major separator between the two-seamer from the change-up.
To some extent, that’s surprising. After all, when you think of the best change-ups, you think of the darting, diving, off-the-table movement. But the (relative) number on the radar gun might be even more important, especially if you’re a righty pitching to a lefty.
Prospect Watch: NL West Prospects.
Arizona Diamondbacks
Recently, I wrote about the Diamondbacks’ intriguing third base prospect Brandon Drury. He’s not the only young player worth monitoring at the hot corner. Jake Lamb‘s bat has woken up after a slow start to the 2014 season at the Double-A level. He’s now up to a triple-slash line of .307/.385/.545 and the left-handed hitter is producing a .900+ OPS against both left- and right-handed pitching.
Of his 62 hits to date, 21 of them have gone for doubles and another seven have gone over the fence. Lamb has been steadier on defence than the aforementioned Drury (who’s currently one step behind in High-A ball with an .884 OPS). The off-season trade of yet another third base prospect Matt Davidson has helped to clear some of the log jam at third base. Drury is due to be added to the 40-man roster this November (to protect him from the Rule 5 draft) while Lamb doesn’t have to be added until after the ’15 season despite being one step ahead on the depth chart.
Colorado Rockies
Both top pitching prospects Jon Gray and Eddie Butler continue to pitch well at the Double-A level. Gray has a 3.86 ERA in 10 starts but the fly-ball-heavy approach (39 GB%) is a little worrisome considering his home ball park will be in Colorado once he reaches the Majors. Butler, on the other hand, has been a little bit more durable while producing his 2.49 ERA in 11 appearances. He’s also utilizes the ground-ball a lot more effectively (47 GB%).
Shortstop prospect Trevor Story entered the 2013 season as one of the top prospects in the system but he fell on his face at the High-A ball level before rebounding a little bit at the end of the season to pull his OPS up to .700. He returned to the same level in 2014 and it’s been a totally different, er, story. The infielder is now slashing .323/.410/.543 through his first 43 games and a promotion should be in the near future. Story doesn’t have to be added to the 40-man roster until after the 2015 season so the Rockies have some time to figure out exactly what the club has with the 21-year-old prospect.
Los Angeles Dodgers
With the 2014 amateur draft just a day away, all eyes are on the new crop of draft picks. The Dodgers’ ’13 draft class, now in the rearview mirror, is off to a slow start. The club’s top pick — college pitcher Chris Anderson, selected 18th overall — has been roughed up in High-A ball. The right-hander has produced a 5.96 ERA with 56 hits and 27 walks allowed in 48.1 innings of work. To be fair, though, he’s been pitching in a league that favors hitters in most parks.
Another former first round pick, Chris Reed has enjoyed his season in Double-A. The 24-year-old right-hander has allowed just 54 hits in 70.2 innings of work, although he’s struggled at times with his command and control. The lefty may not be far from his first big league promotion and he has to be added to the 40-man roster by November of this year, anyway, to shield him from the Rule 5 draft.
Corey Seager, who I ranked as the club’s top prospect enter the 2014 season, is having another outstanding year. Just 20, the infielder is hitting .342/.395/.584 in 49 games at the High-A level. The youngster has generated a lot of pop. Of his 69 hits, 21 have gone for doubles, two for triples, and eight for home runs. Once he tightens up his control of the strike zone, Seager could be a monster — which is good news for his overall value since he’s likely to eventually shift from shortstop to third base.
San Diego Padres
The Padres’ top pitching prospect has had a rough go since his promotion from Double-A to Triple-A in May. The right-handed Matt Wisler struck out 35 batters with just six walks and a 2.10 ERA in six starts at the lower level before the promotion. Since then, in another six appearances, he’s struck out 22 hits with 11 walks and a 7.18 ERA. He’s also allowed 37 hits — including five home runs — in 26.1 innings. Double-A hitters went deep just twice in 30.0 innings.
A seventh round draft pick of the Padres in 2013 out of a California high school, Jake Bauers — not to be confused with Jack Bauer of ’24′ fame — had a solid but unspectacular debut in 2013. He then opened the 2014 season in extended spring training before earning a promotion to Low-A ball in later April. Just 18 years of age, the left-handed-hitting first baseman is hitting .357/.440/.557 through 33 games. Impressively, he’s struck out just 17 times in 115 at-bats and has a 1.293 OPS against southpaws.
San Francisco Giants
It’s been an ugly season for the development of some of the Giants’ most talented arms, which doesn’t bode well for an organization that leans heavily on the development of its pitchers:
Adalberto Mejia, ranked 3rd overall: 6.15 ERA with 52 hits in 45.1 innings, 10/38 BB/K
Martin Agosta, ranked 5th overall: 10.55 ERA with 35 hits in 21.1 innings, 17/16 BB/K
Joan Gregorio, ranked 7th overall: 6.75 ERA with 27 hits in 22.1 innings, 13/27 BB/K
Chris Stratton, ranked 10th overall: 5.09 ERA with 53 hits in 53.0 innings, 22/49 BB/K
Kyle Crick (1st overall) has pitched OK in Double-A but the 21-year-old hurler has seen his control take a step backward with 26 free passes in 34.0 innings while also dealing with injuries. Clayton Blackburn (8th overall) allowed 52 hits in 42.1 innings before hitting the disabled list.
Edwin Escobar (2nd overall) has had the most success of the pitchers in the Top 15 ranking. Even so, the left has allowed 73 hits in just 65.1 innings to go along with a 4.82 ERA.
Recently, I wrote about the Diamondbacks’ intriguing third base prospect Brandon Drury. He’s not the only young player worth monitoring at the hot corner. Jake Lamb‘s bat has woken up after a slow start to the 2014 season at the Double-A level. He’s now up to a triple-slash line of .307/.385/.545 and the left-handed hitter is producing a .900+ OPS against both left- and right-handed pitching.
Of his 62 hits to date, 21 of them have gone for doubles and another seven have gone over the fence. Lamb has been steadier on defence than the aforementioned Drury (who’s currently one step behind in High-A ball with an .884 OPS). The off-season trade of yet another third base prospect Matt Davidson has helped to clear some of the log jam at third base. Drury is due to be added to the 40-man roster this November (to protect him from the Rule 5 draft) while Lamb doesn’t have to be added until after the ’15 season despite being one step ahead on the depth chart.
Colorado Rockies
Both top pitching prospects Jon Gray and Eddie Butler continue to pitch well at the Double-A level. Gray has a 3.86 ERA in 10 starts but the fly-ball-heavy approach (39 GB%) is a little worrisome considering his home ball park will be in Colorado once he reaches the Majors. Butler, on the other hand, has been a little bit more durable while producing his 2.49 ERA in 11 appearances. He’s also utilizes the ground-ball a lot more effectively (47 GB%).
Shortstop prospect Trevor Story entered the 2013 season as one of the top prospects in the system but he fell on his face at the High-A ball level before rebounding a little bit at the end of the season to pull his OPS up to .700. He returned to the same level in 2014 and it’s been a totally different, er, story. The infielder is now slashing .323/.410/.543 through his first 43 games and a promotion should be in the near future. Story doesn’t have to be added to the 40-man roster until after the 2015 season so the Rockies have some time to figure out exactly what the club has with the 21-year-old prospect.
Los Angeles Dodgers
With the 2014 amateur draft just a day away, all eyes are on the new crop of draft picks. The Dodgers’ ’13 draft class, now in the rearview mirror, is off to a slow start. The club’s top pick — college pitcher Chris Anderson, selected 18th overall — has been roughed up in High-A ball. The right-hander has produced a 5.96 ERA with 56 hits and 27 walks allowed in 48.1 innings of work. To be fair, though, he’s been pitching in a league that favors hitters in most parks.
Another former first round pick, Chris Reed has enjoyed his season in Double-A. The 24-year-old right-hander has allowed just 54 hits in 70.2 innings of work, although he’s struggled at times with his command and control. The lefty may not be far from his first big league promotion and he has to be added to the 40-man roster by November of this year, anyway, to shield him from the Rule 5 draft.
Corey Seager, who I ranked as the club’s top prospect enter the 2014 season, is having another outstanding year. Just 20, the infielder is hitting .342/.395/.584 in 49 games at the High-A level. The youngster has generated a lot of pop. Of his 69 hits, 21 have gone for doubles, two for triples, and eight for home runs. Once he tightens up his control of the strike zone, Seager could be a monster — which is good news for his overall value since he’s likely to eventually shift from shortstop to third base.
San Diego Padres
The Padres’ top pitching prospect has had a rough go since his promotion from Double-A to Triple-A in May. The right-handed Matt Wisler struck out 35 batters with just six walks and a 2.10 ERA in six starts at the lower level before the promotion. Since then, in another six appearances, he’s struck out 22 hits with 11 walks and a 7.18 ERA. He’s also allowed 37 hits — including five home runs — in 26.1 innings. Double-A hitters went deep just twice in 30.0 innings.
A seventh round draft pick of the Padres in 2013 out of a California high school, Jake Bauers — not to be confused with Jack Bauer of ’24′ fame — had a solid but unspectacular debut in 2013. He then opened the 2014 season in extended spring training before earning a promotion to Low-A ball in later April. Just 18 years of age, the left-handed-hitting first baseman is hitting .357/.440/.557 through 33 games. Impressively, he’s struck out just 17 times in 115 at-bats and has a 1.293 OPS against southpaws.
San Francisco Giants
It’s been an ugly season for the development of some of the Giants’ most talented arms, which doesn’t bode well for an organization that leans heavily on the development of its pitchers:
Adalberto Mejia, ranked 3rd overall: 6.15 ERA with 52 hits in 45.1 innings, 10/38 BB/K
Martin Agosta, ranked 5th overall: 10.55 ERA with 35 hits in 21.1 innings, 17/16 BB/K
Joan Gregorio, ranked 7th overall: 6.75 ERA with 27 hits in 22.1 innings, 13/27 BB/K
Chris Stratton, ranked 10th overall: 5.09 ERA with 53 hits in 53.0 innings, 22/49 BB/K
Kyle Crick (1st overall) has pitched OK in Double-A but the 21-year-old hurler has seen his control take a step backward with 26 free passes in 34.0 innings while also dealing with injuries. Clayton Blackburn (8th overall) allowed 52 hits in 42.1 innings before hitting the disabled list.
Edwin Escobar (2nd overall) has had the most success of the pitchers in the Top 15 ranking. Even so, the left has allowed 73 hits in just 65.1 innings to go along with a 4.82 ERA.
Jose Bautista’s Counter-Shift.
One of the remaining great unknowns is finding a reasonable way to evaluate the performances of coaches. With managers, we have only so much of the picture. It’s the same with hitting coaches and pitching coaches, and while sometimes we can credit a pitching coach for helping a guy learn a new pitch or smooth out his mechanics, hitting coaches are even more of a mystery. It would appear that teams haven’t even figured out who is and isn’t a worthwhile hitting coach, yet while their overall value isn’t known, one thing we can do is focus on individual cases. A team’s hitting coach won’t have the same effect on every hitter. In Toronto, one hitting coach has had a significant effect on one hitter.
Before the year, the Blue Jays added Kevin Seitzer, and one of Seitzer’s messages was stressing the importance of using the whole field. Seitzer came into a situation featuring Jose Bautista, who blossomed into a star by becoming an extreme pull power hitter. This season, Bautista has performed at a level well above what he did the previous two seasons. He’s back to what he was at his peak, yet he’s gotten there by following a different sort of path.
To review: between 2010-2013, there were 287 qualified position players. Bautista ranked fourth in wRC+, yet 12th-worst in BABIP. This season, out of 174 qualified position players, Bautista ranks fourth in wRC+, and when it comes to BABIP, he’s in the upper third. On its own, that’s interesting, but it could be noise. You have to dig deeper to confirm the presence of a signal.
Brendan Kennedy actually just wrote about this. I’m just going to put more numbers to it. Proof that Bautista’s a little different:
With opposing teams using the infield shift against him more and more, Jose Bautista says he is being “less stubborn and hard-headed” this season, adjusting his approach to hit balls to the opposite field.
[...]
He said he made the change after talking with hitting coach Kevin Seitzer, who was hired this off-season and arrived in Toronto preaching the gospel of hitting to all fields.
Bautista would run a low BABIP in part because he was focusing on fly balls, but also in part because he hit the ball most of the time to the left. So defenses responded to that, as Bautista became one of those righties who got shifted. The most oft-recommended way to beat the shift is to bunt, but it doesn’t work the same for righties as it does for lefties. Bautista’s working to beat the shift not by bunting, but by swinging and hitting the ball toward the area left vacant.
Here’s a pretty important chart:
When Jose Bautista became Jose Bautista, he started yanking the ball a lot more often. He consistently hit more than half of his balls in play toward left field. This year, his pull rate is down from over 52% to under 44%, and his opposite-field rate is up from 18% to over 25%. Bautista says he’s made a conscious adjustment, and the numbers demonstrate as much, unmistakably.
Last season, 400 players hit at least 100 balls fair. Bautista ranked 14th in pull rate, and 379th in opposite-field rate. This season, 215 players have hit at least 100 balls fair. Bautista ranks 79th in pull rate, and 110th in opposite-field rate. Of the 199 players to have hit at least 100 balls fair in both 2013 and 2014, Bautista’s got the ninth-biggest pull-rate drop. All the pull power is still there — Bautista is still lethal as half of the Bautista/Edwin Encarnacion tandem — but sometimes, now, Bautista’s willing to try to do something else.
A drop in pull rate isn’t always a good thing. One of the biggest drops belongs to Domonic Brown, and he’s been a disaster. But unlike Brown, Bautista isn’t missing his power, as he’s hitting the ball toward right on purpose.
How about a couple examples? Here’s one from early May, and one from later May.
hat’s unclear is how much of this Bautista can do on the fly, and whether he has to prepare to go the other way beforehand. I don’t know if he can make his decision when the pitch is on its way. But there’s no arguing with the overall results of his process to date — he’s taken advantage of mistake pitches, and he’s also taken advantage of specific defensive alignments. As one of the best hitters in baseball, we can conclude that Bautista has tremendous bat control. Blessed with tremendous bat control, it shouldn’t be a shock that Bautista’s finding success toward right field.
Here’s what Bautista’s done going the other way:
Year(s) Average BABIP wRC+ LD% GB%
2010-2013 0.233 0.212 55 12% 21%
2014 0.419 0.405 182 21% 28%
Before, a third of his balls hit toward right were liners or grounders. This year, he’s at half, as more of those balls in play are intentional. So his success has skyrocketed. Among players with sufficient balls hit the other way this season, Bautista ranks 13th out of 84 in wRC+. In the past, even when he went the other way, he wasn’t good. Presumably, this is because he was trying to not go the other way. Now it’s a goal of his, and the results are following, because extreme defensive shifts leave open an extreme amount of space, and one doesn’t even need to hit the ball that well to take advantage.
What Bautista’s been before is a power hitter with limited success on fair balls that didn’t leave the yard. Now he’s a power hitter more able to spread the ball around, and while teams might continue to shift him as they’ve done, he’ll probably only continue to poke singles and doubles into the space when he’s able. I should note that, perhaps as an additional consequence, Bautista is running a career-low foul rate, and a career-high in-play rate. That might be unrelated, or that might be the result of Bautista looking to go wherever a given pitch might take him. In the past, he’s blamed emphasis on spraying the ball around for his foul balls, but he’s a different hitter now than he was before his Blue Jay days. He’s an elite hitter now, and an even better hitter in 2014 than he was in 2013.
Jose Bautista didn’t need Kevin Seitzer to be good. Jose Bautista was already really good. But with the help of Kevin Seitzer, Jose Bautista has started to do something he hadn’t done, and he’s returned to the uppermost tier of offensive nightmares. Not everyone is going to be able to defeat an extreme defensive shift. But then, not anyone is Jose Bautista.
Before the year, the Blue Jays added Kevin Seitzer, and one of Seitzer’s messages was stressing the importance of using the whole field. Seitzer came into a situation featuring Jose Bautista, who blossomed into a star by becoming an extreme pull power hitter. This season, Bautista has performed at a level well above what he did the previous two seasons. He’s back to what he was at his peak, yet he’s gotten there by following a different sort of path.
To review: between 2010-2013, there were 287 qualified position players. Bautista ranked fourth in wRC+, yet 12th-worst in BABIP. This season, out of 174 qualified position players, Bautista ranks fourth in wRC+, and when it comes to BABIP, he’s in the upper third. On its own, that’s interesting, but it could be noise. You have to dig deeper to confirm the presence of a signal.
Brendan Kennedy actually just wrote about this. I’m just going to put more numbers to it. Proof that Bautista’s a little different:
With opposing teams using the infield shift against him more and more, Jose Bautista says he is being “less stubborn and hard-headed” this season, adjusting his approach to hit balls to the opposite field.
[...]
He said he made the change after talking with hitting coach Kevin Seitzer, who was hired this off-season and arrived in Toronto preaching the gospel of hitting to all fields.
Bautista would run a low BABIP in part because he was focusing on fly balls, but also in part because he hit the ball most of the time to the left. So defenses responded to that, as Bautista became one of those righties who got shifted. The most oft-recommended way to beat the shift is to bunt, but it doesn’t work the same for righties as it does for lefties. Bautista’s working to beat the shift not by bunting, but by swinging and hitting the ball toward the area left vacant.
Here’s a pretty important chart:
When Jose Bautista became Jose Bautista, he started yanking the ball a lot more often. He consistently hit more than half of his balls in play toward left field. This year, his pull rate is down from over 52% to under 44%, and his opposite-field rate is up from 18% to over 25%. Bautista says he’s made a conscious adjustment, and the numbers demonstrate as much, unmistakably.
Last season, 400 players hit at least 100 balls fair. Bautista ranked 14th in pull rate, and 379th in opposite-field rate. This season, 215 players have hit at least 100 balls fair. Bautista ranks 79th in pull rate, and 110th in opposite-field rate. Of the 199 players to have hit at least 100 balls fair in both 2013 and 2014, Bautista’s got the ninth-biggest pull-rate drop. All the pull power is still there — Bautista is still lethal as half of the Bautista/Edwin Encarnacion tandem — but sometimes, now, Bautista’s willing to try to do something else.
A drop in pull rate isn’t always a good thing. One of the biggest drops belongs to Domonic Brown, and he’s been a disaster. But unlike Brown, Bautista isn’t missing his power, as he’s hitting the ball toward right on purpose.
How about a couple examples? Here’s one from early May, and one from later May.
hat’s unclear is how much of this Bautista can do on the fly, and whether he has to prepare to go the other way beforehand. I don’t know if he can make his decision when the pitch is on its way. But there’s no arguing with the overall results of his process to date — he’s taken advantage of mistake pitches, and he’s also taken advantage of specific defensive alignments. As one of the best hitters in baseball, we can conclude that Bautista has tremendous bat control. Blessed with tremendous bat control, it shouldn’t be a shock that Bautista’s finding success toward right field.
Here’s what Bautista’s done going the other way:
Year(s) Average BABIP wRC+ LD% GB%
2010-2013 0.233 0.212 55 12% 21%
2014 0.419 0.405 182 21% 28%
Before, a third of his balls hit toward right were liners or grounders. This year, he’s at half, as more of those balls in play are intentional. So his success has skyrocketed. Among players with sufficient balls hit the other way this season, Bautista ranks 13th out of 84 in wRC+. In the past, even when he went the other way, he wasn’t good. Presumably, this is because he was trying to not go the other way. Now it’s a goal of his, and the results are following, because extreme defensive shifts leave open an extreme amount of space, and one doesn’t even need to hit the ball that well to take advantage.
What Bautista’s been before is a power hitter with limited success on fair balls that didn’t leave the yard. Now he’s a power hitter more able to spread the ball around, and while teams might continue to shift him as they’ve done, he’ll probably only continue to poke singles and doubles into the space when he’s able. I should note that, perhaps as an additional consequence, Bautista is running a career-low foul rate, and a career-high in-play rate. That might be unrelated, or that might be the result of Bautista looking to go wherever a given pitch might take him. In the past, he’s blamed emphasis on spraying the ball around for his foul balls, but he’s a different hitter now than he was before his Blue Jay days. He’s an elite hitter now, and an even better hitter in 2014 than he was in 2013.
Jose Bautista didn’t need Kevin Seitzer to be good. Jose Bautista was already really good. But with the help of Kevin Seitzer, Jose Bautista has started to do something he hadn’t done, and he’s returned to the uppermost tier of offensive nightmares. Not everyone is going to be able to defeat an extreme defensive shift. But then, not anyone is Jose Bautista.
The Marlins Live Down to Their Reputation.
On Sunday, the Marlins made a head-scratching trade, acquiring reliever Bryan Morris from the Pirates in exchange for their Competitive Balance selection — #39 overall — in Thursday’s amateur draft. Morris does have some virtues as a very hard-throwing groundball guy who is decently effective against right-handed batters, but he also has a long list of flaws; his command is lousy, he can’t get left-handers out, and even used as a situational reliever, he’s been pretty terrible this year.
If you evaluate his Major League career solely by runs allowed, he’s been essentially a replacement level arm. If you evaluate that performance by metrics that predict ERA better than ERA itself, Morris has been one of the worst relief pitchers in all of baseball over the last year. Morris is somewhere between bad and unrosterable, and yet the Marlins gave up a draft pick that has some real value in exchange for a right-handed specialist who isn’t even all that great at that very niche job.
But on Monday, we found out why the Marlins made that trade. Rather than justifying the deal, however, the actual motivation for the move reinforces every negative perception about baseball’s worst organization.
On Monday, the Marlins signed free agent reliever Kevin Gregg, giving him the pro-rated portion of a $2.1 million salary for 2014. Because the deal only covers the final two-thirds of the season, he’ll receive $1.4 million in actual salary from the Marlins this year. Not coincidentally, $1.4 million is exactly the amount of money the Marlins saved by giving away the 39th pick in the draft.
The idea that the Marlins, a team that opened the year with a payroll of just $47.5 million, had to offset the acquisition cost of Kevin Gregg (!) by punting a valuable draft choice is patently ridiculous. Let us count the ways.
1. Like Morris, Kevin Gregg is also essentially a replacement level arm. Over the last three years, he’s been worth +0.0 WAR by runs allowed or -0.6 WAR by FIP. Of the 172 relievers to throw 100+ innings over the last three years, Gregg ranks 155th in ERA-, 159th in FIP-, and 165th in xFIP-. Unlike Morris, he doesn’t even have a large platoon split that can be leveraged for specific match-ups, as he’s just bad against everyone. He turns 36 in a few weeks. There’s no upside here, really; Kevin Gregg defines replacement level, which is why both teams who signed him last year gave him minor league deals, and why no one was beating down his door with a job offer over the winter.
2. It’s not like there weren’t other options. Vin Mazzaro isn’t appreciably worse than either Morris or Gregg, is earning a grand total of $950,000 in salary this year, and has already been designated for assignment by the Pirates twice this year. He cleared waivers in April, and is currently in “DFA limbo”, waiting to find out whether he cleared again. If the Marlins simply put in a waiver claim on Mazzaro, they could have owned his rights for the rest of the year for approximately $600,000. Want someone with better stuff than Mazzaro? Esmil Rogers was DFA’d and cleared waivers last week. The White Sox just released Frank Francisco if the team absolutely needed a guy with closer experience even though Steve Cishek is pitching well in the 9th inning. Gregg and Morris aren’t significantly better than any number of relievers who have been passed through waivers in the last few weeks.
3. The draft pick had real value. The 39th pick isn’t as likely to turn into a star as a top-10 selection, but the fact that most of those picks fail is offset by the upside of the guys who succeed. The best player ever selected 39th overall? Some guy named Barry Bonds; you might have heard of him. Historical draft studies have shown that the average return on a pick in the 30-40 range is about +3 WAR, and as Neal Hutington said when he traded away a similar pick last year, their calculations suggest that “there’s about a 15% chance of getting an everyday big-leaguer in the 30-to-40 pick range.” That isn’t something to just be discarded so that a team can add a couple of low value relief arms to their bullpen.
4. This might be point #4, but it’s the one that is particularly outrageous; there is absolutely no reason why the Marlins could not have afforded to both sign Gregg and keep the pick. While the first three points cover why trading the pick for Morris and Gregg is a bad use of resources, it was an entirely unnecessary cost-benefit analysis in the first place. As leaked financial documents have shown, the Marlins are quite a profitable enterprise, and that was before they scammed the city of Miami into building them a new ballpark to increase revenues even further.
The Marlins payroll ranks 29th in MLB, but more tellingly, they are $30 million below the Tampa Bay Rays, who come in 28th in spending this year. The Rays play in a terrible ballpark and average 3,000 fewer fans per game than the Marlins, and yet they still found $30 million more to spend than Jeffry Loria’s organization this year. And then when the Marlins show some promise, the front office is forced to finance the acquisition of a (psuedo) roster upgrade by dumping a valuable pick to keep the ledger tilted solely toward the owner’s profits?
Even when the Marlins are not an embarrassment on the field, they somehow find a way to remain one off of it. You can’t simultaneously argue that slashing payroll and going young is in the best interests of the organization’s future and then squander future assets because the owner isn’t willing to invest one dime more than necessary to upgrade the team in the short-term. The Marlins decisions over the years have created a picture of an organization that is run as an ATM for the Lorias first and foremost, with the baseball operations department being allowed to make moves so long as they don’t interfere with that priority. Moves like this only reinforce that perception. Moves like this are why MLB should be ashamed of the fact that they continue to let Jeffrey Loria own one of their franchises.
If you evaluate his Major League career solely by runs allowed, he’s been essentially a replacement level arm. If you evaluate that performance by metrics that predict ERA better than ERA itself, Morris has been one of the worst relief pitchers in all of baseball over the last year. Morris is somewhere between bad and unrosterable, and yet the Marlins gave up a draft pick that has some real value in exchange for a right-handed specialist who isn’t even all that great at that very niche job.
But on Monday, we found out why the Marlins made that trade. Rather than justifying the deal, however, the actual motivation for the move reinforces every negative perception about baseball’s worst organization.
On Monday, the Marlins signed free agent reliever Kevin Gregg, giving him the pro-rated portion of a $2.1 million salary for 2014. Because the deal only covers the final two-thirds of the season, he’ll receive $1.4 million in actual salary from the Marlins this year. Not coincidentally, $1.4 million is exactly the amount of money the Marlins saved by giving away the 39th pick in the draft.
The idea that the Marlins, a team that opened the year with a payroll of just $47.5 million, had to offset the acquisition cost of Kevin Gregg (!) by punting a valuable draft choice is patently ridiculous. Let us count the ways.
1. Like Morris, Kevin Gregg is also essentially a replacement level arm. Over the last three years, he’s been worth +0.0 WAR by runs allowed or -0.6 WAR by FIP. Of the 172 relievers to throw 100+ innings over the last three years, Gregg ranks 155th in ERA-, 159th in FIP-, and 165th in xFIP-. Unlike Morris, he doesn’t even have a large platoon split that can be leveraged for specific match-ups, as he’s just bad against everyone. He turns 36 in a few weeks. There’s no upside here, really; Kevin Gregg defines replacement level, which is why both teams who signed him last year gave him minor league deals, and why no one was beating down his door with a job offer over the winter.
2. It’s not like there weren’t other options. Vin Mazzaro isn’t appreciably worse than either Morris or Gregg, is earning a grand total of $950,000 in salary this year, and has already been designated for assignment by the Pirates twice this year. He cleared waivers in April, and is currently in “DFA limbo”, waiting to find out whether he cleared again. If the Marlins simply put in a waiver claim on Mazzaro, they could have owned his rights for the rest of the year for approximately $600,000. Want someone with better stuff than Mazzaro? Esmil Rogers was DFA’d and cleared waivers last week. The White Sox just released Frank Francisco if the team absolutely needed a guy with closer experience even though Steve Cishek is pitching well in the 9th inning. Gregg and Morris aren’t significantly better than any number of relievers who have been passed through waivers in the last few weeks.
3. The draft pick had real value. The 39th pick isn’t as likely to turn into a star as a top-10 selection, but the fact that most of those picks fail is offset by the upside of the guys who succeed. The best player ever selected 39th overall? Some guy named Barry Bonds; you might have heard of him. Historical draft studies have shown that the average return on a pick in the 30-40 range is about +3 WAR, and as Neal Hutington said when he traded away a similar pick last year, their calculations suggest that “there’s about a 15% chance of getting an everyday big-leaguer in the 30-to-40 pick range.” That isn’t something to just be discarded so that a team can add a couple of low value relief arms to their bullpen.
4. This might be point #4, but it’s the one that is particularly outrageous; there is absolutely no reason why the Marlins could not have afforded to both sign Gregg and keep the pick. While the first three points cover why trading the pick for Morris and Gregg is a bad use of resources, it was an entirely unnecessary cost-benefit analysis in the first place. As leaked financial documents have shown, the Marlins are quite a profitable enterprise, and that was before they scammed the city of Miami into building them a new ballpark to increase revenues even further.
The Marlins payroll ranks 29th in MLB, but more tellingly, they are $30 million below the Tampa Bay Rays, who come in 28th in spending this year. The Rays play in a terrible ballpark and average 3,000 fewer fans per game than the Marlins, and yet they still found $30 million more to spend than Jeffry Loria’s organization this year. And then when the Marlins show some promise, the front office is forced to finance the acquisition of a (psuedo) roster upgrade by dumping a valuable pick to keep the ledger tilted solely toward the owner’s profits?
Even when the Marlins are not an embarrassment on the field, they somehow find a way to remain one off of it. You can’t simultaneously argue that slashing payroll and going young is in the best interests of the organization’s future and then squander future assets because the owner isn’t willing to invest one dime more than necessary to upgrade the team in the short-term. The Marlins decisions over the years have created a picture of an organization that is run as an ATM for the Lorias first and foremost, with the baseball operations department being allowed to make moves so long as they don’t interfere with that priority. Moves like this only reinforce that perception. Moves like this are why MLB should be ashamed of the fact that they continue to let Jeffrey Loria own one of their franchises.
A.J. Pollock, Better Than You Think, Now Gone.
Who’s the best all-around center fielder in baseball? Well, that’s easy. It’s Mike Trout. I could give you a bunch of stats to illustrate that, but I won’t. It’s Mike Trout. Discussion over, at least on that point. Second-best? You can make a case for Carlos Gomez. You can also make a case for Andrew McCutchen. There’s not really a wrong answer there between the two. One gives you a bit more defense, one a bit more offense. No matter which one is No. 2 or No. 3, it’s safe to say that they’re the only two names there.
But after that, it gets a little more questionable. If this was two years ago, maybe Austin Jackson is in that conversation, but he’s well into his second consecutive year of decline from a great 2012, to the point that’s he’s playing like a replacement player right now. Colby Rasmus has his supporters, and he’s also got a .266 OBP. Lots of people like Adam Jones, and it’s hard to argue with the 55 homers he hit over 2012-13. He’s also been a below-average hitter in 2014. Jacoby Ellsbury probably belongs in the discussion, but his 98 wRC+ isn’t doing him any favors. Maybe you like Coco Crisp, although his once-stellar defense has collapsed in recent years.
I guess the point here is this: how many total names would you have to go through — Desmond Jennings, Lorenzo Cain, Denard Span, Juan Lagares, etc. — before you got to Arizona’s A.J. Pollock, who broke his hand over the weekend when Johnny Cueto hit him with a pitch? A dozen? More? And yet, Pollock is one of just five true center fielders worth six WAR since the start of 2013. (I’m discounting Shin-Soo Choo here, who isn’t a center fielder now and was merely trying to impersonate one last year.) If you prefer “over the last calendar year,” he’s still No. 5, behind the big three and Ellsbury. With 2.5 WAR through 50 games this year, he was on pace for 6 WAR in 2014 alone, and had been behind only Trout and Gomez before getting hurt.
As usual — or, at least, as should be usual — no one’s trying to make an indisputable value judgement based on WAR alone, and this isn’t meant to convince you that Pollock is better than, say, Ellsbury. But because Pollock plays on a team that both isn’t very popular nationwide and is mainly known in 2014 for being so awful that they’re trying to wedge Tony LaRussa into their front office structure, it’s pretty easy to see that Pollock has gone under the radar. (Unless you’re the guy in the swimming pool that a Pollock homer took out earlier this year. There’s no extra points in WAR for that, but there should be.)
For example, using the “last 30 days” split on our leaderboards, sorted by WAR:
1) Giancarlo Stanton, 2.3
2) Yasiel Puig, 2.1
3) Edwin Encarnacion, 2.0
4) Josh Donaldson, 1.9
4t) Pollock, 1.9
And while the standard reply is probably something along the lines of “yeah, well, Charlie Blackmon & Dee Gordon were both great for a month this year, too, and look what they did in May,” Pollock was a 2009 first-rounder who only needed 233 minor league games in 2011-12 (after missing all of 2010 with a broken elbow) to reach the big leagues, and managed 3.6 WAR in his first full season on the basis of league-average offense and stellar defense. Like so many other guys in the early part of the season, including Encarnacion, he’s not this good, but he still might be good.
The Diamondbacks, remember, bet in part on Pollock when they made their generally-panned moves to import Mark Trumbo and discard Adam Eaton this winter, expecting Trumbo to play left, Cody Ross in right, Pollock in center, and Gerardo Parra spotting in both center and right. That never really happened, of course, because Ross’ recovery from hip surgery delayed his 2014 debut, and he and Trumbo started all of two games together before Trumbo’s broken foot took him out of the lineup. That pushed Parra to right, Ross to left, and left Pollock alone in center.
Obviously, Pollock wasn’t going to sustain a .370 BABIP all year long, particularly as it appeared he’d begun to sell out a bit in search of more power, seeing his line drive rate decrease as his fly ball rate (and HR/FB% increased). It was working, mostly, because his six homers in 192 plate appearances was a considerably higher pace than the eight he had in 482 last season, though there’s probably a very thin line to be drawn between the fact that all six came at home and the fact that all would have been out of at least 23 parks. But while those numbers were all but certain to come back down, he was making up for it somewhat with signs of limiting his previously large platoon split, at least in the small sample size we have available to us.
This all matters, because while we all wrote the Diamondbacks off weeks ago — for good reason — they were at least beginning to show some respectable play, rebounding to play .500 ball since they bottomed out at 5-18. Now, with Trumbo still out, they’re down to starting outfielders Ender Inciarte and David Peralta, who spent 2006-07 as an A-ball pitcher with St. Louis, 2008-10 out of baseball, and 2011-13 in independent ball. It’s a problem for a team that had seemingly too many outfielders, and now not enough.
Now, they’re without a surprisingly good center fielder for the next two months or so, and this particular injury can be a tricky one. It’s been reported that Pollock fractured the hamate bone, and we’ve seen that before. Aaron Hill missed two months last year with a similar injury, although the upside here is that Troy Tulowitzki, Dustin Pedroia and Pablo Sandoval (twice!) have all had hamate troubles, and all came back to be as productive as ever, after a time.
For the Diamondbacks, it’s already been a terrible season, with Patrick Corbin & J.J. Putz injured, Trevor Cahill booted from the rotation in favor of the likes of Michael Bolsinger, Zeke Spruill and Chase Anderson, Paul Goldschmidt doing well but not up to his 2014 pace, and no one else on offense other than Miguel Montero being even league-average. You wouldn’t have had to try very hard to make the case that Pollock was their best player, even if some amount of offense regression was coming. Now he’s gone until August at the least, by which time a lost season will be long past the point of interest.
But after that, it gets a little more questionable. If this was two years ago, maybe Austin Jackson is in that conversation, but he’s well into his second consecutive year of decline from a great 2012, to the point that’s he’s playing like a replacement player right now. Colby Rasmus has his supporters, and he’s also got a .266 OBP. Lots of people like Adam Jones, and it’s hard to argue with the 55 homers he hit over 2012-13. He’s also been a below-average hitter in 2014. Jacoby Ellsbury probably belongs in the discussion, but his 98 wRC+ isn’t doing him any favors. Maybe you like Coco Crisp, although his once-stellar defense has collapsed in recent years.
I guess the point here is this: how many total names would you have to go through — Desmond Jennings, Lorenzo Cain, Denard Span, Juan Lagares, etc. — before you got to Arizona’s A.J. Pollock, who broke his hand over the weekend when Johnny Cueto hit him with a pitch? A dozen? More? And yet, Pollock is one of just five true center fielders worth six WAR since the start of 2013. (I’m discounting Shin-Soo Choo here, who isn’t a center fielder now and was merely trying to impersonate one last year.) If you prefer “over the last calendar year,” he’s still No. 5, behind the big three and Ellsbury. With 2.5 WAR through 50 games this year, he was on pace for 6 WAR in 2014 alone, and had been behind only Trout and Gomez before getting hurt.
As usual — or, at least, as should be usual — no one’s trying to make an indisputable value judgement based on WAR alone, and this isn’t meant to convince you that Pollock is better than, say, Ellsbury. But because Pollock plays on a team that both isn’t very popular nationwide and is mainly known in 2014 for being so awful that they’re trying to wedge Tony LaRussa into their front office structure, it’s pretty easy to see that Pollock has gone under the radar. (Unless you’re the guy in the swimming pool that a Pollock homer took out earlier this year. There’s no extra points in WAR for that, but there should be.)
For example, using the “last 30 days” split on our leaderboards, sorted by WAR:
1) Giancarlo Stanton, 2.3
2) Yasiel Puig, 2.1
3) Edwin Encarnacion, 2.0
4) Josh Donaldson, 1.9
4t) Pollock, 1.9
And while the standard reply is probably something along the lines of “yeah, well, Charlie Blackmon & Dee Gordon were both great for a month this year, too, and look what they did in May,” Pollock was a 2009 first-rounder who only needed 233 minor league games in 2011-12 (after missing all of 2010 with a broken elbow) to reach the big leagues, and managed 3.6 WAR in his first full season on the basis of league-average offense and stellar defense. Like so many other guys in the early part of the season, including Encarnacion, he’s not this good, but he still might be good.
The Diamondbacks, remember, bet in part on Pollock when they made their generally-panned moves to import Mark Trumbo and discard Adam Eaton this winter, expecting Trumbo to play left, Cody Ross in right, Pollock in center, and Gerardo Parra spotting in both center and right. That never really happened, of course, because Ross’ recovery from hip surgery delayed his 2014 debut, and he and Trumbo started all of two games together before Trumbo’s broken foot took him out of the lineup. That pushed Parra to right, Ross to left, and left Pollock alone in center.
Obviously, Pollock wasn’t going to sustain a .370 BABIP all year long, particularly as it appeared he’d begun to sell out a bit in search of more power, seeing his line drive rate decrease as his fly ball rate (and HR/FB% increased). It was working, mostly, because his six homers in 192 plate appearances was a considerably higher pace than the eight he had in 482 last season, though there’s probably a very thin line to be drawn between the fact that all six came at home and the fact that all would have been out of at least 23 parks. But while those numbers were all but certain to come back down, he was making up for it somewhat with signs of limiting his previously large platoon split, at least in the small sample size we have available to us.
This all matters, because while we all wrote the Diamondbacks off weeks ago — for good reason — they were at least beginning to show some respectable play, rebounding to play .500 ball since they bottomed out at 5-18. Now, with Trumbo still out, they’re down to starting outfielders Ender Inciarte and David Peralta, who spent 2006-07 as an A-ball pitcher with St. Louis, 2008-10 out of baseball, and 2011-13 in independent ball. It’s a problem for a team that had seemingly too many outfielders, and now not enough.
Now, they’re without a surprisingly good center fielder for the next two months or so, and this particular injury can be a tricky one. It’s been reported that Pollock fractured the hamate bone, and we’ve seen that before. Aaron Hill missed two months last year with a similar injury, although the upside here is that Troy Tulowitzki, Dustin Pedroia and Pablo Sandoval (twice!) have all had hamate troubles, and all came back to be as productive as ever, after a time.
For the Diamondbacks, it’s already been a terrible season, with Patrick Corbin & J.J. Putz injured, Trevor Cahill booted from the rotation in favor of the likes of Michael Bolsinger, Zeke Spruill and Chase Anderson, Paul Goldschmidt doing well but not up to his 2014 pace, and no one else on offense other than Miguel Montero being even league-average. You wouldn’t have had to try very hard to make the case that Pollock was their best player, even if some amount of offense regression was coming. Now he’s gone until August at the least, by which time a lost season will be long past the point of interest.
- Apr 4, 2008
- 75,040
- 24,440
Posted this in the wrong thread somehow I'll prob wind up keeping him but Idk, I don't want to go into full on firesalemode. Prob gonna happen though.
I'll prob wind up keeping him but Idk, I don't want to go into full on firesalemode. Prob gonna happen though.
- Apr 4, 2008
- 75,040
- 24,440
That's what's got me open to moving him. The Trevor Baur comparisons.
I'm hoping deGrom keeps developing. Dude is becoming one of my favorites out there.
I'm hoping deGrom keeps developing. Dude is becoming one of my favorites out there.
Last edited:
- Jan 7, 2004
- 28,043
- 10,466
We're on opposite sides of the Archie spectrum. You must not have liked Wheeler either. Word to Sal Licata's Zack rants.
When your command and control take steps back after big steps in '13, how can I like him? I still think he'll be a solid 2 if he puts the work in.
I liked Wheeler. His curve was always better than Archie's and his change has made strides into a second out pitch. Difference there was that the Mets left him in AAA for more seasoning when they saw his walk rate spike again when he first got to AAA in '12.
I liked Wheeler. His curve was always better than Archie's and his change has made strides into a second out pitch. Difference there was that the Mets left him in AAA for more seasoning when they saw his walk rate spike again when he first got to AAA in '12.
For you guys who may not be aware, the draft is tomorrow (I'll update the thread title). There's a high school pitcher named Brady Aiken who could be the first HS pitcher taken #1 overall since Brien Taylor. Good read on Taylor for the guys who are unfamiliar.
Baseball's amateur draft is a risky bet to begin with -- only about 17 percent of signed draft picks ever make it to the majors. But high school pitchers are the riskiest bet of all. That, plus the suddenness of his rise and fall, may be what sealed the legend of Brien Taylor.
Taylor, a shy, 6-foot-3 kid from a double-wide trailer in coastal Beaufort, N.C., was the last high school pitcher selected No. 1 overall in baseball's draft. The New York Yankees -- yes, they held the first pick in June 1991 -- had visions of a left-handed Pedro Martinez or maybe a harder-throwing Randy Johnson.
Taylor never ended up joining his one-time spring training roommate Derek Jeter on the Yankees' dynasty teams. Still, some believe he was the greatest pitching prospect in the history of the draft.
As baseball prepares for Thursday's first round -- in which high school pitcher Brady Aiken could be taken with the No. 1 overall pick -- this is the story of Brien Taylor, Scott Boras, the Yankees and the 1991 draft.
THE BEST AMATEUR PITCHER EVER
Brian Cashman, Yankees assistant farm director in 1991
"Bill Livesey is one of the greatest scouts of our era. He told me the best amateur position player he ever saw was A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez). The best amateur pitcher he ever saw was Brien Taylor."
Gene "Stick" Michael, Yankees general manager in 1991
“
Boras I've seen the talent now in 35 drafts. Every year, I watch and I have never seen someone like him.
”
-- Scott Boras, on Brien Taylor
"His arm slot was exactly like Randy Johnson's, not sidearm but very low three-quarters. They had the same exact arm slot, only Brien Taylor threw a little bit harder."
Scott Boras, Taylor's adviser
"I remember Brien threw a pitch in a high school game. It started in and moved out and it still stayed in the strike zone. The catcher completely missed it and the umpire called it strike three and appropriately so. He was a true phenom.
"I've seen the talent now in 35 drafts. Every year, I watch and I have never seen someone like him."
Bill Livesey, Yankees scouting director in 1991
"He had everything you are looking for -- size, strength, athleticism, body type, loose, live arm, the ability to spin the ball. I think the high school game I was at, he topped out at 98 [mph]. It could've been 88, the ease at which he threw. You couldn't tell how hard he was throwing, he threw so easily with so little effort. He was the total package."
FINDING BRIEN TAYLOR
Livesey
"We had a meeting at a hotel in Arizona in January of 1991. We brought in all of our cross-checkers. Outfielder Mike Kelly was a great outfielder at Arizona State at the time. We just told our guys, 'This is the top college player in the country. Your job this year is to find somebody better. If we don't, Kelly will be our pick.'"
Boras
MLB's Biggest Draft Busts
Brien Taylor isn't the only No. 1 MLB draft pick never to pan out in the bigs.
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"I first heard about Brien when he was a junior in high school in 1990. I went down and I watched him pitch. He just had an electric arm. A lot of kids in high school throw hard, maybe 92-93. At that time, he was throwing right around that, but the key thing about Brien was the late movement of his ball. He threw downhill. It got to the plate and it just exploded.
"I watched him pitch one game and then I watched him pitch another. I began the process of talking to his mother, Betty, who was a delightful lady. She worked at a seafood operation where she cracked crab. She removed the crab meat from the crab shells. Mr. Taylor was a bricklayer. He had the hands of a bricklayer, a big, strong man.
"So she invited me to come to their house and talk to Brien. I remember the road to their home. They had a double-wide trailer. I went there in the middle of the summer. It was really hot and humid. There was no air-conditioning. There was a single light source, a wire that hung down from the roof with a light bulb."
Livesey
"In February of 1991, our North Carolina scout, Jeff Taylor, called and said, 'I'm following up on our conversation in Arizona.' I said, 'Whattya got?' He said, 'I've got a left-handed pitcher in North Carolina.' Wow, he started to rave about him."
Joe McIlvaine, San Diego Padres GM in 1991 (San Diego had the No. 8 pick)
"There are two things you can't teach in a pitcher. One is size. You can't make a kid 6-foot-3. Another thing is arm strength. You can't create arm strength. The other things -- the curveball, the delivery, the changeup -- you can improve upon. But you can't teach size and arm strength. That's the given. That is what Brien Taylor had. He had size and arm strength."
ENTER, AND EXIT, THE BOSS
George Steinbrenner
AP Photo/Ron Frehm
George Steinbrenner, ousted from the game at the time of Taylor's signing, made it clear he wanted Taylor -- and left it to Gene Michael (left) to get it done.
Fay Vincent, MLB commissioner in 1990
"[Yankees owner] George Steinbrenner had been involved in a very sordid and unpleasant effort to discredit David Winfield. I had investigated what Steinbrenner had done. We had hearings. Steinbrenner testified at those hearings. He admitted he did some very bad things.
"Mostly, he tried to ruin David Winfield by ginning up an investigation, by claiming that Winfield had violated the tax laws and a variety of other things.
"In order to get dirt on David Winfield, Steinbrenner had paid a two-bit gambler named Howie Spira $30,000 one time and then another $30,000 because Spira claimed he had very bad information on Winfield.
"It turned out that Spira had nothing and when I investigated, Steinbrenner admitted it was a terribly stupid thing to pay off a gambler instead of coming to me, so I met with Steinbrenner in 1990 and I told him I was going to suspend him for two years."
Michael Kay, Yankees beat writer for the New York Daily News in 1991
"It was a transitional time for the Yankees. Stump Merrill was the manager and they were just rebuilding. That was when they were deciding to go with the young kids and they weren't signing free agents. They were taking their blows."
“
Michael George Steinbrenner was out of baseball at that time, but he made a statement that went public that, if we didn't sign Taylor, 'Someone should be shot.' The someone was me.
”
-- Gene Michael
Livesey
"We lost 18 or 19 draft picks in the '80s due to signing free agents. One year, we didn't pick until the fourth round; most years we didn't even have a first or a second.
"It was rare that we had the No. 1 pick. It was something we did not want to do again."
Boras
"That was the uniqueness of it: The Yankees had the No. 1 pick. That is what I kept saying to Mrs. Taylor. I said, 'This may never happen again.' "
Michael
"Normally, as a GM, you don't usually go see a player like that yourself, even if you have the No. 1 pick. You have minor league people who usually take care of that stuff. But the minor league people asked me to go ahead and see him because Scott Boras had become what really, in essence, was his agent. I saw him pitch his last two games in high school."
Boras
"The one thing I knew, there was no one else in the draft that was close to this young man's ability. That was clear-cut. I had watched all the players.
"Mike Kelly was at Arizona State. I watched him play. It was not even close if you were going to go out and pick the best player in the draft, Brien Taylor was so far above anyone else."
Michael
"He was hands-down the No. 1 prospect in the country. It was a no-brainer. I saw a couple of them on video. From what people told me, what I knew and what I could see, it was a no-brainer, we didn't have any doubts about it. We were going to pick him No. 1."
John Schuerholz, Braves GM in 1991 (Atlanta had the No. 2 pick)
"Even back in those Stone Age days, we had some film of kids and I saw him. I think he was rated just as he should have been in that draft class. We were focused on assuming that they wouldn't pass on Taylor and preparing ourselves to take the guy we liked next, which was Mike Kelly. We were happy with that pick. We thought he was a real strong athletic guy, who could run, could throw, could do everything."
'GEORGE BEING GEORGE'
Michael
"George Steinbrenner was out of baseball at that time, but he made a statement that went public that if we didn't sign Taylor, 'Someone should be shot.' The someone was me."
Vincent
"That was George being George. George was not permitted to have anything to do with running the team. I would certainly say that was close to being out of bounds."
Cashman
[+] EnlargeScott Boras
AP Photo/Chris Urso
Scott Boras first discovered Taylor in 1990. "The key thing about Brien," Boras said, "was the late movement of his ball. He threw downhill. It got to the plate and it just exploded."
"It didn't help the negotiations when from the outside George stated publicly that we better sign the kid. That obviously gave leverage for Boras."
Boras
"I also knew that Brien had a reading disability so we had to create an option for him, which was junior college, so he would have a place to pitch if in fact he couldn't receive the appropriate bonus."
Michael
"I didn't believe Brien Taylor was going to go to college. I thought he wanted to sign professionally. I think our organization became a little frightened. I wasn't worried about what George had said."
Boras
"I just had gotten Ben McDonald, a college pitcher, the first multiyear, major league contract for a drafted player in 1989. In 1990 the big deal was for Todd Van Poppel, a high school pitcher. That was most relevant for Brien. Van Poppel got a three-year major league contract with Oakland.
"The one thing I was confident about is that Gene Michael is a tremendous evaluator. He really, really knows the game. Gene Michael was not letting this player go anywhere, as long as we were not unreasonable.
"The issue was that Todd Van Poppel got $1.25 million and a major league contract, and we put an evaluation on what the value would be without a major league contract at $1.5 million. The talent level of the player was something that was above Todd Van Poppel."
Michael
"That was a mistake. No high school kid should get a major league contract because the chances are they are not going to be ready. There aren't many Bryce Harpers coming out, being ready on a major league contract. Bryce Harper was ready right away. That's a freak thing."
Boras
"Because we were involved early, we went to his teachers in high school and we then talked to his school counselor. We then talked to teachers at Louisburg Junior College in North Carolina. We really wanted to set forth a plan where Brien was going to be able to execute a college education, knowing under the rules that junior college players can be drafted every year. So we assumed that if the deal didn't get done with the Yankees, it certainly would have gotten done the next year. The minute he attended class, the Yankees would have lost their rights to sign him."
Michael
"We felt we were going to pay him around $750,000."
Boras
"There was definitely an approach on the part of the team, as you would expect toward a family that is literally barely making ends meet, at the minimum for any sum of money that they thought would persuade them.
"But Mrs. Taylor was very astute. I think I spent an hour and a half a day with her for 100 consecutive days. The preparation, the documents, the markets. I said, 'These people are going to come and they are not going to believe you. You are a lady who doesn't have a high school education.'
[+] EnlargeTodd Van Poppel
Otto Greule Jr./Getty Images
Todd Van Poppel's three-year, $1.2 million deal with Oakland in 1990 helped set the stage for Taylor's $1.55 million score with the Bombers.
"I explained how it is going to be perceived. 'They are going to view you as an indigent family that lives in a trailer that any amount of money is going to feel like you won the lottery. Our job is not to look at the money. Our job is to look at the value in the marketplace at the time for Brien's skills.'
"She said, 'Are you saying they are going to try to pay us on the basis of our circumstances rather than Brien's talents?' I said, 'Absolutely.' "
Cashman
"I remember Scott holding him out until he got what he wanted, and he got what he wanted. I remember it being very difficult conversations. We were trying to deal with the family to make sure they were educated. Scott looked at it as a unique talent, which he was, and put a unique price on it."
Boras
"The Yankees may have brought Betty a suitcase of money. I can't remember. That was an old tactic that scouts used to use where they would actually bring cash to the house. Betty stuck to the script: 'We want his value.'
"When the deal went down, I was with Betty at their home. His dad, I believe, had taken Brien to school at Louisburg College. We had instructed Brien. We were waiting for the contract. Betty had given the Yankees the number, the $1.5 million.
"Back then, the deadline was ours. When we attended class was when the Yankees' rights ended. Now, the deadline is a prescribed date, Aug. 15th. I looked at the draft rules at the time. It was really up to the athlete if he went to class or not. He could have told the team if he were going to class or not, and not go. Then, he would receive their top offer and evaluate it. Or he could go to class. The team had no way of knowing.
"Betty told the team he was going to class. I believe it was a 10 a.m. class. He was at the school. I know that one of his classes was history because there was concern with his reading disability and one of his counselors thought that would be a good subject. The college was great. They did a very thorough job of testing him and evaluating him. They had no problem.
"The Yankees offered $700,000 and said that was their final offer, and then they came up to $1.55 million."
Michael
"When we did sign him, we were in the Yankee Club at the old Yankee Stadium and Tony Kubek went up to Scott Boras afterward and said: 'Scott, how much did you think that statement that George made, how much money did you think that made for you?' Tony told me that Scott said, 'About $750,000.' That was the other half of the double. We paid him $1.55 million.
"I was only permitted to talk to George at the partner meetings. He made a statement once we signed Taylor. George said, 'I don't want you guys going around spending my money like that.'
"I said, 'What are you talking about? If it were you, you would have given him more money.' "
Cashman
"The Boss took both sides. He basically said we better sign this guy. Then he ripped Stick at an owners' meeting for signing the guy. It was vintage Boss. He was never wrong."
A CULT FOLLOWING
Michael
"He went out that first year in the Florida State League and was pretty dominant for an 18-year-old kid who didn't really play real good high school baseball. He was very dominant. The average time of his fastball for the whole year was 95 miles per hour. The minor league people told me. No one else could do that."
[+] EnlargeBrien Taylor
Dave Schofield
Taylor never made the majors, but before his injury, he struck out 337 hitters in 324 1/3 innings in Class A and Double-A ball in 1992 and 1993.
Livesey
"The other thing that was unique about him was this guy had a following. This kid would go sit in the stands and try to do his work and there were all kinds of people coming to get his autograph. There were people after the game, outside of the buses. He had a cult following."
Jim Hendry, Florida Marlins coordinator of player development in 1992
"I saw him in the Florida State League. He was as good-looking a prospect as you'll ever see. He was 97-98, left-handed. He looked like he was going to have a great slider. He was a can't-miss. He had the perfect body. That is what the great ones look like.
"Those are the guys -- Doc Gooden, Kerry Wood, Josh Beckett, Taylor -- when you go see them, you know you have something special."
Livesey
"He was rough in the fundamental areas when we got him. The guys in the minor leagues said, 'Geez, he can't hold runners on.' I said, 'Geez, there has never been anybody on.' "
Boras
"For Brien Taylor, it wasn't a question if he were going to be dominant in the major leagues. It was just a question of about how long before it happened."
AND THEN, ONE NIGHT ...
Boras
"Brien was stellar, dominant, on his way. He was going to the big leagues and was going to be all we thought he was going to be, then there was that unfortunate evening in North Carolina in 1993 that he got a call that his brother was getting beat up at a bar.
"He was home in bed. He gets out of his bed. He goes over to find his brother and protect him. A guy takes a swing at him and he puts his left arm up and his hand and arm take the force of the swing. It pushes his arm back behind his head.
"I take him to Dr. Frank Jobe. He looks at me. 'This is the worst rotator cuff tear I've ever seen. It is completely off the bone.' So he had to have that surgery."
“
Jeter We were roommates in spring training in 1994. He was a good dude. He was a nice guy, sort of shy from North Carolina. Sometimes one thing goes right, one thing goes wrong and it can change the course of a career. Unfortunately, for him -- and for us, as well -- he got hurt.
”
-- Derek Jeter, on Brien Taylor
Michael
"If Brien didn't get hurt, we would have been very proud of that pick. He got injured by a mistake that he made, a silly mistake, in my opinion. But he did it. It is done. You can't turn the clock back."
Derek Jeter, Yankees' No. 1 pick in 1992
"We were roommates in spring training in 1994. He was a good dude. He was a nice guy, sort of shy from North Carolina. Sometimes one thing goes right, one thing goes wrong and it can change the course of a career. Unfortunately, for him -- and for us, as well -- he got hurt."
Vincent
"Brien Taylor was widely regarded as a terrific prospect, but how can you factor in the likelihood of injury? These kids hurt themselves and they disappear very quickly. Taylor was a very sad case. I always felt very sorry for him."
Livesey
"They did awfully well in the late '90s with the guys they had. He would have fit in with that Core Four (Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera). I think the game got cheated by not seeing him. He was going to be something special."
Cashman
"I've heard that a number of times when you talk to scouts who have been doing this for 40 years. You like to play those games, 'Who was the best you ever saw? Who was the best position player you ever saw?' Brien Taylor's name comes up quite often. It is a shame that he got hurt because he was a left-handed version of Pedro Martinez in terms of flexibility and arm slot he was throwing from."
Boras
"You know what? Brien Taylor's arm was so good, he came back from rotator cuff surgery and he still threw over 90 miles per hour, but he was no longer Brien Taylor."
In Taylor's first two years of pro ball, he struck out 337 batters in 324 1/3 innings in Class A and Double-A. His ERA was 3.03.
He would miss all of 1994 following the fight involving his brother. From 1995 to 1998 -- as the Yankees began their Jeter-led dynasty -- Taylor would throw a total of 108 2/3 innings in Class A. His ERA was 10.85.
He was released by the Yankees after the 1998 season. He would spend two years more in baseball with the Seattle and Cleveland organizations, pitching a total of 2 2/3 innings.
In November 2012, Taylor was sentenced to 38 months in prison for distributing crack cocaine. He could not be reached for inclusion in this story.
Taylor, a shy, 6-foot-3 kid from a double-wide trailer in coastal Beaufort, N.C., was the last high school pitcher selected No. 1 overall in baseball's draft. The New York Yankees -- yes, they held the first pick in June 1991 -- had visions of a left-handed Pedro Martinez or maybe a harder-throwing Randy Johnson.
Taylor never ended up joining his one-time spring training roommate Derek Jeter on the Yankees' dynasty teams. Still, some believe he was the greatest pitching prospect in the history of the draft.
As baseball prepares for Thursday's first round -- in which high school pitcher Brady Aiken could be taken with the No. 1 overall pick -- this is the story of Brien Taylor, Scott Boras, the Yankees and the 1991 draft.
THE BEST AMATEUR PITCHER EVER
Brian Cashman, Yankees assistant farm director in 1991
"Bill Livesey is one of the greatest scouts of our era. He told me the best amateur position player he ever saw was A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez). The best amateur pitcher he ever saw was Brien Taylor."
Gene "Stick" Michael, Yankees general manager in 1991
“
Boras I've seen the talent now in 35 drafts. Every year, I watch and I have never seen someone like him.
”
-- Scott Boras, on Brien Taylor
"His arm slot was exactly like Randy Johnson's, not sidearm but very low three-quarters. They had the same exact arm slot, only Brien Taylor threw a little bit harder."
Scott Boras, Taylor's adviser
"I remember Brien threw a pitch in a high school game. It started in and moved out and it still stayed in the strike zone. The catcher completely missed it and the umpire called it strike three and appropriately so. He was a true phenom.
"I've seen the talent now in 35 drafts. Every year, I watch and I have never seen someone like him."
Bill Livesey, Yankees scouting director in 1991
"He had everything you are looking for -- size, strength, athleticism, body type, loose, live arm, the ability to spin the ball. I think the high school game I was at, he topped out at 98 [mph]. It could've been 88, the ease at which he threw. You couldn't tell how hard he was throwing, he threw so easily with so little effort. He was the total package."
FINDING BRIEN TAYLOR
Livesey
"We had a meeting at a hotel in Arizona in January of 1991. We brought in all of our cross-checkers. Outfielder Mike Kelly was a great outfielder at Arizona State at the time. We just told our guys, 'This is the top college player in the country. Your job this year is to find somebody better. If we don't, Kelly will be our pick.'"
Boras
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"I first heard about Brien when he was a junior in high school in 1990. I went down and I watched him pitch. He just had an electric arm. A lot of kids in high school throw hard, maybe 92-93. At that time, he was throwing right around that, but the key thing about Brien was the late movement of his ball. He threw downhill. It got to the plate and it just exploded.
"I watched him pitch one game and then I watched him pitch another. I began the process of talking to his mother, Betty, who was a delightful lady. She worked at a seafood operation where she cracked crab. She removed the crab meat from the crab shells. Mr. Taylor was a bricklayer. He had the hands of a bricklayer, a big, strong man.
"So she invited me to come to their house and talk to Brien. I remember the road to their home. They had a double-wide trailer. I went there in the middle of the summer. It was really hot and humid. There was no air-conditioning. There was a single light source, a wire that hung down from the roof with a light bulb."
Livesey
"In February of 1991, our North Carolina scout, Jeff Taylor, called and said, 'I'm following up on our conversation in Arizona.' I said, 'Whattya got?' He said, 'I've got a left-handed pitcher in North Carolina.' Wow, he started to rave about him."
Joe McIlvaine, San Diego Padres GM in 1991 (San Diego had the No. 8 pick)
"There are two things you can't teach in a pitcher. One is size. You can't make a kid 6-foot-3. Another thing is arm strength. You can't create arm strength. The other things -- the curveball, the delivery, the changeup -- you can improve upon. But you can't teach size and arm strength. That's the given. That is what Brien Taylor had. He had size and arm strength."
ENTER, AND EXIT, THE BOSS
George Steinbrenner
AP Photo/Ron Frehm
George Steinbrenner, ousted from the game at the time of Taylor's signing, made it clear he wanted Taylor -- and left it to Gene Michael (left) to get it done.
Fay Vincent, MLB commissioner in 1990
"[Yankees owner] George Steinbrenner had been involved in a very sordid and unpleasant effort to discredit David Winfield. I had investigated what Steinbrenner had done. We had hearings. Steinbrenner testified at those hearings. He admitted he did some very bad things.
"Mostly, he tried to ruin David Winfield by ginning up an investigation, by claiming that Winfield had violated the tax laws and a variety of other things.
"In order to get dirt on David Winfield, Steinbrenner had paid a two-bit gambler named Howie Spira $30,000 one time and then another $30,000 because Spira claimed he had very bad information on Winfield.
"It turned out that Spira had nothing and when I investigated, Steinbrenner admitted it was a terribly stupid thing to pay off a gambler instead of coming to me, so I met with Steinbrenner in 1990 and I told him I was going to suspend him for two years."
Michael Kay, Yankees beat writer for the New York Daily News in 1991
"It was a transitional time for the Yankees. Stump Merrill was the manager and they were just rebuilding. That was when they were deciding to go with the young kids and they weren't signing free agents. They were taking their blows."
“
Michael George Steinbrenner was out of baseball at that time, but he made a statement that went public that, if we didn't sign Taylor, 'Someone should be shot.' The someone was me.
”
-- Gene Michael
Livesey
"We lost 18 or 19 draft picks in the '80s due to signing free agents. One year, we didn't pick until the fourth round; most years we didn't even have a first or a second.
"It was rare that we had the No. 1 pick. It was something we did not want to do again."
Boras
"That was the uniqueness of it: The Yankees had the No. 1 pick. That is what I kept saying to Mrs. Taylor. I said, 'This may never happen again.' "
Michael
"Normally, as a GM, you don't usually go see a player like that yourself, even if you have the No. 1 pick. You have minor league people who usually take care of that stuff. But the minor league people asked me to go ahead and see him because Scott Boras had become what really, in essence, was his agent. I saw him pitch his last two games in high school."
Boras
"The one thing I knew, there was no one else in the draft that was close to this young man's ability. That was clear-cut. I had watched all the players.
"Mike Kelly was at Arizona State. I watched him play. It was not even close if you were going to go out and pick the best player in the draft, Brien Taylor was so far above anyone else."
Michael
"He was hands-down the No. 1 prospect in the country. It was a no-brainer. I saw a couple of them on video. From what people told me, what I knew and what I could see, it was a no-brainer, we didn't have any doubts about it. We were going to pick him No. 1."
John Schuerholz, Braves GM in 1991 (Atlanta had the No. 2 pick)
"Even back in those Stone Age days, we had some film of kids and I saw him. I think he was rated just as he should have been in that draft class. We were focused on assuming that they wouldn't pass on Taylor and preparing ourselves to take the guy we liked next, which was Mike Kelly. We were happy with that pick. We thought he was a real strong athletic guy, who could run, could throw, could do everything."
'GEORGE BEING GEORGE'
Michael
"George Steinbrenner was out of baseball at that time, but he made a statement that went public that if we didn't sign Taylor, 'Someone should be shot.' The someone was me."
Vincent
"That was George being George. George was not permitted to have anything to do with running the team. I would certainly say that was close to being out of bounds."
Cashman
[+] EnlargeScott Boras
AP Photo/Chris Urso
Scott Boras first discovered Taylor in 1990. "The key thing about Brien," Boras said, "was the late movement of his ball. He threw downhill. It got to the plate and it just exploded."
"It didn't help the negotiations when from the outside George stated publicly that we better sign the kid. That obviously gave leverage for Boras."
Boras
"I also knew that Brien had a reading disability so we had to create an option for him, which was junior college, so he would have a place to pitch if in fact he couldn't receive the appropriate bonus."
Michael
"I didn't believe Brien Taylor was going to go to college. I thought he wanted to sign professionally. I think our organization became a little frightened. I wasn't worried about what George had said."
Boras
"I just had gotten Ben McDonald, a college pitcher, the first multiyear, major league contract for a drafted player in 1989. In 1990 the big deal was for Todd Van Poppel, a high school pitcher. That was most relevant for Brien. Van Poppel got a three-year major league contract with Oakland.
"The one thing I was confident about is that Gene Michael is a tremendous evaluator. He really, really knows the game. Gene Michael was not letting this player go anywhere, as long as we were not unreasonable.
"The issue was that Todd Van Poppel got $1.25 million and a major league contract, and we put an evaluation on what the value would be without a major league contract at $1.5 million. The talent level of the player was something that was above Todd Van Poppel."
Michael
"That was a mistake. No high school kid should get a major league contract because the chances are they are not going to be ready. There aren't many Bryce Harpers coming out, being ready on a major league contract. Bryce Harper was ready right away. That's a freak thing."
Boras
"Because we were involved early, we went to his teachers in high school and we then talked to his school counselor. We then talked to teachers at Louisburg Junior College in North Carolina. We really wanted to set forth a plan where Brien was going to be able to execute a college education, knowing under the rules that junior college players can be drafted every year. So we assumed that if the deal didn't get done with the Yankees, it certainly would have gotten done the next year. The minute he attended class, the Yankees would have lost their rights to sign him."
Michael
"We felt we were going to pay him around $750,000."
Boras
"There was definitely an approach on the part of the team, as you would expect toward a family that is literally barely making ends meet, at the minimum for any sum of money that they thought would persuade them.
"But Mrs. Taylor was very astute. I think I spent an hour and a half a day with her for 100 consecutive days. The preparation, the documents, the markets. I said, 'These people are going to come and they are not going to believe you. You are a lady who doesn't have a high school education.'
[+] EnlargeTodd Van Poppel
Otto Greule Jr./Getty Images
Todd Van Poppel's three-year, $1.2 million deal with Oakland in 1990 helped set the stage for Taylor's $1.55 million score with the Bombers.
"I explained how it is going to be perceived. 'They are going to view you as an indigent family that lives in a trailer that any amount of money is going to feel like you won the lottery. Our job is not to look at the money. Our job is to look at the value in the marketplace at the time for Brien's skills.'
"She said, 'Are you saying they are going to try to pay us on the basis of our circumstances rather than Brien's talents?' I said, 'Absolutely.' "
Cashman
"I remember Scott holding him out until he got what he wanted, and he got what he wanted. I remember it being very difficult conversations. We were trying to deal with the family to make sure they were educated. Scott looked at it as a unique talent, which he was, and put a unique price on it."
Boras
"The Yankees may have brought Betty a suitcase of money. I can't remember. That was an old tactic that scouts used to use where they would actually bring cash to the house. Betty stuck to the script: 'We want his value.'
"When the deal went down, I was with Betty at their home. His dad, I believe, had taken Brien to school at Louisburg College. We had instructed Brien. We were waiting for the contract. Betty had given the Yankees the number, the $1.5 million.
"Back then, the deadline was ours. When we attended class was when the Yankees' rights ended. Now, the deadline is a prescribed date, Aug. 15th. I looked at the draft rules at the time. It was really up to the athlete if he went to class or not. He could have told the team if he were going to class or not, and not go. Then, he would receive their top offer and evaluate it. Or he could go to class. The team had no way of knowing.
"Betty told the team he was going to class. I believe it was a 10 a.m. class. He was at the school. I know that one of his classes was history because there was concern with his reading disability and one of his counselors thought that would be a good subject. The college was great. They did a very thorough job of testing him and evaluating him. They had no problem.
"The Yankees offered $700,000 and said that was their final offer, and then they came up to $1.55 million."
Michael
"When we did sign him, we were in the Yankee Club at the old Yankee Stadium and Tony Kubek went up to Scott Boras afterward and said: 'Scott, how much did you think that statement that George made, how much money did you think that made for you?' Tony told me that Scott said, 'About $750,000.' That was the other half of the double. We paid him $1.55 million.
"I was only permitted to talk to George at the partner meetings. He made a statement once we signed Taylor. George said, 'I don't want you guys going around spending my money like that.'
"I said, 'What are you talking about? If it were you, you would have given him more money.' "
Cashman
"The Boss took both sides. He basically said we better sign this guy. Then he ripped Stick at an owners' meeting for signing the guy. It was vintage Boss. He was never wrong."
A CULT FOLLOWING
Michael
"He went out that first year in the Florida State League and was pretty dominant for an 18-year-old kid who didn't really play real good high school baseball. He was very dominant. The average time of his fastball for the whole year was 95 miles per hour. The minor league people told me. No one else could do that."
[+] EnlargeBrien Taylor
Dave Schofield
Taylor never made the majors, but before his injury, he struck out 337 hitters in 324 1/3 innings in Class A and Double-A ball in 1992 and 1993.
Livesey
"The other thing that was unique about him was this guy had a following. This kid would go sit in the stands and try to do his work and there were all kinds of people coming to get his autograph. There were people after the game, outside of the buses. He had a cult following."
Jim Hendry, Florida Marlins coordinator of player development in 1992
"I saw him in the Florida State League. He was as good-looking a prospect as you'll ever see. He was 97-98, left-handed. He looked like he was going to have a great slider. He was a can't-miss. He had the perfect body. That is what the great ones look like.
"Those are the guys -- Doc Gooden, Kerry Wood, Josh Beckett, Taylor -- when you go see them, you know you have something special."
Livesey
"He was rough in the fundamental areas when we got him. The guys in the minor leagues said, 'Geez, he can't hold runners on.' I said, 'Geez, there has never been anybody on.' "
Boras
"For Brien Taylor, it wasn't a question if he were going to be dominant in the major leagues. It was just a question of about how long before it happened."
AND THEN, ONE NIGHT ...
Boras
"Brien was stellar, dominant, on his way. He was going to the big leagues and was going to be all we thought he was going to be, then there was that unfortunate evening in North Carolina in 1993 that he got a call that his brother was getting beat up at a bar.
"He was home in bed. He gets out of his bed. He goes over to find his brother and protect him. A guy takes a swing at him and he puts his left arm up and his hand and arm take the force of the swing. It pushes his arm back behind his head.
"I take him to Dr. Frank Jobe. He looks at me. 'This is the worst rotator cuff tear I've ever seen. It is completely off the bone.' So he had to have that surgery."
“
Jeter We were roommates in spring training in 1994. He was a good dude. He was a nice guy, sort of shy from North Carolina. Sometimes one thing goes right, one thing goes wrong and it can change the course of a career. Unfortunately, for him -- and for us, as well -- he got hurt.
”
-- Derek Jeter, on Brien Taylor
Michael
"If Brien didn't get hurt, we would have been very proud of that pick. He got injured by a mistake that he made, a silly mistake, in my opinion. But he did it. It is done. You can't turn the clock back."
Derek Jeter, Yankees' No. 1 pick in 1992
"We were roommates in spring training in 1994. He was a good dude. He was a nice guy, sort of shy from North Carolina. Sometimes one thing goes right, one thing goes wrong and it can change the course of a career. Unfortunately, for him -- and for us, as well -- he got hurt."
Vincent
"Brien Taylor was widely regarded as a terrific prospect, but how can you factor in the likelihood of injury? These kids hurt themselves and they disappear very quickly. Taylor was a very sad case. I always felt very sorry for him."
Livesey
"They did awfully well in the late '90s with the guys they had. He would have fit in with that Core Four (Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera). I think the game got cheated by not seeing him. He was going to be something special."
Cashman
"I've heard that a number of times when you talk to scouts who have been doing this for 40 years. You like to play those games, 'Who was the best you ever saw? Who was the best position player you ever saw?' Brien Taylor's name comes up quite often. It is a shame that he got hurt because he was a left-handed version of Pedro Martinez in terms of flexibility and arm slot he was throwing from."
Boras
"You know what? Brien Taylor's arm was so good, he came back from rotator cuff surgery and he still threw over 90 miles per hour, but he was no longer Brien Taylor."
In Taylor's first two years of pro ball, he struck out 337 batters in 324 1/3 innings in Class A and Double-A. His ERA was 3.03.
He would miss all of 1994 following the fight involving his brother. From 1995 to 1998 -- as the Yankees began their Jeter-led dynasty -- Taylor would throw a total of 108 2/3 innings in Class A. His ERA was 10.85.
He was released by the Yankees after the 1998 season. He would spend two years more in baseball with the Seattle and Cleveland organizations, pitching a total of 2 2/3 innings.
In November 2012, Taylor was sentenced to 38 months in prison for distributing crack cocaine. He could not be reached for inclusion in this story.
jumpmanfromdabay
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HIM
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Royals winning the AL, B. Once Hosmer heats up with second-half power like 2013.
They better win it all.
Would be even happier for th Royals if the made it.
Someone make the mock draft thread.
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