Here’s an open thread for another Yankees baseball-less night. MLB Network is showing a regional game tonight, ESPN+ will have the Phillies and Cardinals, and there’s an NHL playoff game on as well (no NBA though). Talk anything except religion or politics right here.
(If you want to feel old, today is the 20th anniversary of the David Wells perfect game.)
Grant Lavigne | 1B
Background
The 18-year-old Lavigne attends Bedford High School outside Manchester, New Hampshire. He’s hitting .621/.807/1.413 with six homers and way more walks (24) than strikeouts (three) through 14 games this spring. Lavigne is committed to Wake Forrest.
Scouting Report
At 6-foot-4 and 230 lbs., Lavigne looks the part of a power-hitting first baseman. He’s a lefty swinger with significant raw power and sneaky good contact ability. Lavigne also knows the strike zone well, so he projects as a big power/high on-base hitter who doesn’t strike out as much as you’d expect. In the field, Lavigne runs well and is a good athlete, good enough that he can also play left field. His arm is below average and his weakest tool. The biggest knocks against Lavigne are 1) the likelihood that he’s a first baseman long-term, and 2) the fact he hasn’t faced good competition as an amateur.
Miscellany
In their latest rankings MLB.com pegs Lavigne as the 98th best prospect in the draft class while Baseball America ranks him 124th. Keith Law (subs. req’d) did not have Lavigne among his top 100 draft prospects. The Yankees hold the 23rd (first round), 61st (second round), and 97th (third round) overall picks. For what it’s worth, Kiley McDaniel hears the Yankees are “heavy” on Lavigne, “more for their 2nd pick but possible underslot at their first pick.” The underslot thing could be a fallback plan should their top targets be off the board when their first rounder rolls around, similar to Clarke Schmidt last year.
Two years ago, when the Yankees decided to sell at the 2016 trade deadline, they shipped Carlos Beltran to the Rangers for three pitching prospects. The traded didn’t really work out for Texas — Beltran hit .280/.325/.451 (103 wRC+) with the Rangers and they were eliminated in the ALDS — and, after the season, Beltran signed with the Astros and was finally able to win his first World Series ring.
For the Yankees, the headliner in the trade was ry Dillon Tate, the fourth overall pick in the 2015 draft. He was having a down year and the Yankees were able to buy low on him. Tate, who just turned 24, has been mostly inconsistent and injured since the trade, and he currently owns a 3.82 ERA (3.39 FIP) in 35.1 innings with Double-A Trenton. His stock has rebounded since the trade, so that’s cool.
The other two pitchers the Yankees acquired, right-handers Nick Green and Erik Swanson, were non-top 30 prospects and easily considered throw-ins. Swanson missed time with injuries and Green was struggling to take that next step developmentally while with the Rangers. Long story short, the Yankees traded Beltran for three bounceback candidates. Tate was the headliner, but Swanson and Green were not necessarily nobodies.
This season Swanson and Green appear to be making the jump from interesting sleepers to legitimate prospects. Swanson, 24, owns a 0.44 ERA (1.57 FIP) with 34.9% strikeouts and 8.1% walks in 40.2 innings with Double-A Trenton, and he’s currently riding a 23-inning scoreless streak. His 14.1% swing-and-miss rate is ninth highest among the 136 minor leaguers with at least 40 innings pitched.
He throws hard and he’s got good late life on his fastball. It stays up and gets by hitters. I’m not an analytics guy, but that’s what they like about him. He’s also developing more shape on his curveball. It’s getting more consistent. His changeup plays up a little bit. He’s been starting to throw that a little more. Sometimes his curveball comes out like a slider, so he doesn’t mean to throw four pitches, but he actually does … He’s got to the point where he’s understanding what makes a pitcher great and what makes a pitcher tougher for a hitter. He’s learning the mental stuff in the game, as well. He’s a guy that certainly needs to be watched.
Going into last night’s start (six shutout innings) the 23-year-old Green had a 2.94 ERA (3.62 FIP) with 23.2% strikeouts and 12.6% walks, and his 62.4% ground ball rate is tenth highest among the 501 minor leaguers with at least 30 innings pitched this year. Only eight pitchers in the minors have a 60% ground ball rate and an 11% swing-and-miss rate, and Green’s one of ’em. Baseball America had a little something on him two weeks ago:
He accomplishes this (ground ball rate) with a three-pitch mix that includes a low-90s fastball that, in the words of one evaluator, “moves like a low-90s slider.” He couples it with a curveball that spins at more than 3,000 revolutions per minute and a changeup that is his third pitch at this point. He needs to iron out his control (16 walks in 29 innings this season) but he’s done enough to raise eyebrows.
The Yankees produced a prospect watch video on Green last season that touted his unique fastball, which somehow cuts and sinks. It’s tough to explain, but the Yankees are an analytics heavy organization, and the data shows only a handful of pitchers can do what Green does with his fastball. Swanson’s more of a standard fastball/curveball guy. Green is a bowling ball fastball guy.
Over the last few years the Yankees have built a strong farm system by getting lesser know prospects to raise their game. Chad Green turned into a dominant reliever. Dietrich Enns became a trade chip. Cody Carroll looks like a future bullpen piece. Jonathan Loaisiga might be a top 100 prospect. Now Swanson and Green are finding themselves and becoming prospects worth you attention, either because they could be big league options at some point, or trade chips.
Given his age (25 in September) and Double-A success, my guess is the Yankees will look to get Swanson to Triple-A Scranton fairly soon. There’s no sense in wasting these bullets in Double-A. This is Green’s third straight year in Single-A and I imagine the Yankees will want to see him in Double-A before the end of 2018. Both Swanson and Green were passed over in the Rule 5 Draft last winter and the Yankees will want to see them at the upper levels before 40-man roster decision time comes.
To date, the Yankees have received minimum impact from their 2016 trade deadline deals. Gleyber Torres has been in the big leagues less than a month and there’s whatever Clint Frazier did last year. And Adam Warren. That’s pretty much it so far. And, truth be told, Swanson and Green may never help the Yankees. Two years ago they were basically throw-ins in the Beltran trade. Non-top 30 prospects worth a shot. Now they’re becoming factors, or at least prospects worth keeping an eye on this season.
The 2018 season is 40 (and a half) games old and it has already been a tale of two seasons for Didi Gregorius. He was a monster in April, legitimately one of the three or four best players in the sport. Gregorius was so good he was named the AL Player of the Month for April. May, on the other hand, has been a disaster. He’s been terrible and is currently mired in a 1-for-41 (.024) slump. Yikes.
Here, to really drive home the point, are Didi’s splits for April and May:
Yikes! I don’t think anyone realistically expected Gregorius to continue at his April pace all season, but this? Didi is hitting like a pitcher — worse than a pitcher, actually, since pitchers own a .134/.162/.182 (-11 wRC+) line in 2018 — in May. Unlike April, when he almost single-handedly kept the Yankees afloat during their early season issues, the Yankees are winning in spite of Gregorius in May.
So what in the world is going on here? Is this baseball randomness at its worst, or are there red flags in the underlying data? Let’s look into things, shall we.
1. Didi has slumped like this before. Might as well start here. Play baseball long enough and you’re going to go through deep slumps. That’s just baseball. Derek Jeter famously had his 0-for-32 years ago. Paul Goldschmidt had an 0-for-26 slump earlier this month. Mike Trout went 0-for-17 at one point last year. It happens.
Here, to hopefully ease your concerns, are some arbitrary endpoint slumps from last season showing that what Gregorius is doing now is nothing he hasn’t done before:
I know 2-for-32 and 4-for-43 are not 1-for-41, but they’re close enough in my opinion. They’re all ugly, miserable slumps. And last year, whenever Gregorius hit the skids for a few weeks, he came out fine on the other end. As bad as things have gone the last few weeks, Didi has been through this before. It’s nothing new.
“It’s just something that happens,” said Gregorius to Bryan Hoch. “I got a hit. It’s been a long while. You’ve still got to approach the game the same way. You’ve got to go by it day by day, don’t have to change anything. Just trying to get better.”
2. Gregorius is still putting the ball in play. During this 1-for-41 rut Gregorius has struck out five times. He’s put the ball in play 36 times in those 41 at-bats and has one hit. That’s a .028 BABIP. That won’t last. The baseball gods won’t let it.
There are a few things worth noting about the quality of Didi’s contact during this slump, however. Let’s start with a graph:
First of all, his hard contact rate is still really good. A bit better than it was earlier in the season, in fact. Secondly, his ground ball rate is rising. Gregorius isn’t hitting the ball in the air as often as he did earlier this year, and balls on the ground don’t go for base hits as often as balls in the air. And third, his current ground ball rate is still lower than his average ground ball rate the last two seasons.
Long story short, the quality of Didi’s contact hasn’t gone to crap. He hit two balls over the weekend against the Athletics that I thought were gone off the bat, but they died in the air and were caught on the warning track. We’ve seen some good swings from Gregorius despite the lack of results. I’d be more worried if a) he stopped putting the ball in play, b) he stopped hitting the ball hard, and/or c) his ground ball rate had spiked to a point above his career norms. None of that has happened.
“I’m still hitting the ball hard,” Didi said to Hoch. “Whatever I do, whether I’m hitting the ball hard or not hitting the ball hard, it’s at somebody. There’s nothing I can do about that. I’m trying to make good contact out there, and the results are not always going to be there.”
3. His plate discipline is returning to normal. Remember all those walks Gregorius was drawing in April? He drew 14 walks in his first 16 games. His 14th walk came in his 93rd game last year. I never expected that walk rate to continue — Didi was walking at a Joey Votto/Aaron Judge rate — but I was hopeful he’d settle in with a league average walk rate, and right now, he’s at 12.0%. Pretty great.
Predictably, Didi is seeing fewer fastballs after his big April. He’s also been swing happy the last few days and weeks. He’s swinging at everything more, including pitches out of the strike zone:
We’ve seen Gregorius enough over the years to know that he likes to swing, and he can get himself in trouble when he starts swinging at pitches he shouldn’t swing at. I mean, every hitter gets himself into trouble when he does that. Didi is human, he knows he’s slumping and he’s probably pressing at the plate, which leads to all that swinging.
Plate discipline is not about drawing walks, it’s about getting good pitches to hit. Walks are a byproduct. Gregorius is offering at too many pitchers’ pitches and he’s getting himself into trouble. That .028 BABIP is absurdly low and won’t continue. Given the ground balls and increased chasing though, I would’ve expected Didi to run a lower than usual BABIP these last few weeks (just not that low). As is often the case, a little more plate discipline would go a long way.
4. He got kicked in the dang head. Feels like this has gotten lost in the shuffle. Two weeks ago Francisco Lindor kicked Gregorius in the back of the head during a play at second base. It was of course an unintentional kick to the the head, but a kick to the head is still a kick to the head. Here’s the video:
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The numbers show basically what I was expecting. Gregorius isn’t being as disciplined as he had been and he’s hitting a few too many ground balls, and his batting average on balls in play is unsustainably low. I would’ve been really worried if he had started striking out more or producing less hard contact. The kick to the head to worth keeping in mind, but to me, this seems like a classic “dude is in a funk and pressing” slump. That’s baseball.
“For the years that I’ve been playing this game, I know that this game is a game of failure,” said Gregorius to Hoch. “That’s what you learn from. When you accept that, that you’re not going to get a base hit every time, it gets more manageable than trying to explode for some reason and next at-bat go up there and try to do the same thing. I think it’s just learning some new stuff.”
So, what do the Yankees do about Didi’s slump? Aside from the usual “hit the batting cage” and all that, the answer is nothing. I know no one wants to hear that, but that’s what the Yankees should do. Continue to write Didi’s name in the lineup — they’ve had enough off-days lately and he won’t snap out of the slump on the bench — and I wouldn’t even drop him in the lineup. If you believe in lineup protection at all, there’s no better spot in baseball to hit than between Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. That’s where Didi will get the best pitches to hit. Stay patient and stick with him.
Sir Didi isn’t really as good as he was in April nor is he really as bad as he’s been in May. He wasn’t going to continue that hot streak all year and he won’t continue this slump all year. Gregorius will snap out of it, probably sooner rather than later, and when he does we’ll all forget about this in a few weeks. That the Yankees have been able to continue winning while getting nothing from Didi this month is impressive. This team does not rely on one or two players.
Once again, the Yankees have an off-day today. They had an off-day Monday and a rainout Wednesday, and on Tuesday they played only five and a half innings before rain suspended the game. The Yankees will play about two hours of baseball from Monday through Thursday this week. At least everyone will be fresh for Friday’s series opener against the Royals. Anyway, I have some thoughts, so let’s get to ’em.
1. Tuesday night Masahiro Tanaka struggled through the first two innings, allowing three runs and getting away with several hangers, then he settled down and retired the final eleven batters he faced. After that second inning Tanaka pitched exclusively from the stretch, and I can’t remember him ever doing that before. Going to stretch is a classic “my mechanics are bad right now and I need to simplify things” adjustment. I’m curious to see whether he sticks with it going forward. Stephen Strasburg has been pitching from the stretch last year. Yu Darvish and Shohei Ohtani pitch from the stretch full-time as well. There are a bunch of others out there. Tanaka is not a power pitcher. He needs his mechanics to be locked in and his command to be precise to succeed, and if pitching from the stretch helps him do that, I say go for it. Do what works. That said, when it comes to making adjustments and figuring out what works and what doesn’t work on the fly, I trust Tanaka more than anyone on the pitching staff. I just thought it was interesting he went to the stretch in the middle of the start and started racking up outs. I can’t remember seeing Tanaka pitch from the stretch full-time at any point in the past.
2. The Yankees activated Brandon Drury off the disabled list and optioned him to Triple-A earlier this week. They’ll probably do the same with Billy McKinney when he’s healthy. Greg Bird is nearing a return, and once he’s back, it’s possible if not likely Tyler Austin will be sent down. Tommy Kahnle and Adam Warren are due to return before the end of the month and they’ll push more players off the roster. Clint Frazier could be returning to Triple-A soon. Adam Lind is sitting in Triple-A. Point is, the Yankees have several legitimate MLB caliber players stashed in Triple-A, or will soon. There are not 30 better third basemen in the league than Drury. There are not 90 better outfielders than Frazier and McKinney. The Yankees have dealt with a lot of injuries early this year — they’ve had a large volume of injuries, though fortunately most of their core players have stayed healthy — and they’ve thrived anyway because they have high-caliber depth. It starts with a strong farm system. Can’t say enough about it. Producing stars like Aaron Judge and Luis Severino gets all the attention and deservedly so, but there’s also something to be said for having quality depth (Austin when Bird gets hurt, Miguel Andujar when Drury gets hurt, Domingo German when Jordan Montgomery gets hurt, etc.) and being able to fill in the gaps with guys who are better than replacement level and have upside. I’ve said this before and it’s worth repeating: The Yankees have a higher internal replacement level than most teams. By the end of the month, they could have Drury, Frazier, Wade, Austin, Lind, and Jonathan Holder (and Tyler Wade!) sitting in Triple-A. That’s real nice depth.
3. It has only been two outings — two outings two weeks apart, at that — but, as expected, the Yankees are doing the anti-fastball thing with A.J. Cole. Here are his game-by-game pitch usage rates over the years. He threw his slider at a higher rate during his two appearances with the Yankees than he did in any of his 26 games with the Nationals from 2015-17:
Not a coincidence. Cole has a pretty good slider and the Yankees are all about emphasizing secondary pitches. I’m glad the Yankees stuck with the 26-year-old Cole over the 30-year-old David Hale when it came time to drop the eighth reliever, and while I have no illusions of Cole sticking long-term, maybe the Yankees can squeeze a few good long relief appearances out of him by emphasizing that slider. He’s already given them one good game, those two scoreless innings in Saturday’s extra-innings win over the Athletics. That alone made the cash trade worth it. Cole probably is what he is at this point — he’s a former top 100 prospect who got a lot less interesting when his fastball went from 95-96 mph to 91-92 mph a few years ago — though if the anti-fastball thing helps him stick around in the big leagues, great. And if he does it with the Yankees, even better.
4. The Yankees got literally nothing in return — Jabari Blash was gone before the Grapefruit League season started — but wow has the Chase Headley/Bryan Mitchell trade worked out well. The Padres essentially bought Mitchell by absorbing Headley and his $13M salary, and going into last night’s game Mitchell had a 6.21 ERA (6.66 FIP) with way more walks (29) than strikeouts (18) in 37.2 innings — among the 130 pitchers with at least 30 innings pitched, Mitchell has the lowest strikeout rate and the third highest walk rate — while Headley hit .115/.233/.135 (15 wRC+) as a part-time player before being designated for assignment a few days ago. Yeesh. Mitchell is out of minor league options and he was probably going to be a 40-man roster casualty over the winter. Instead, the Yankees were able to use him to unload Headley’s salary and make getting under the $197M luxury tax salary easier. It’s hard to get nothing in return and still come out ahead, but the Yankees certainly have with this trade. Maybe, once Headley becomes a free agent, the Yankees will bring him back at the pro-rated portion of the league minimum if Andujar stops hitting or Bird suffers a setback? Doubt it, though it would make this trade all the more ridiculous.
5. Aaron Boone’s first 40 (and a half) games as a big league manager have gone pretty well, I’d say. Granted, he has a great team and the players have made life easy on him, but there have been no egregious mistakes. Look at some of the mistakes the other rookie skippers have made already:
That’s Managing 101 stuff right here. Boone’s only managerial blunder to date was the “no one told Adam Warren to warm up” thing in Spring Training, which thankfully happened during Spring Training and not during the regular season. We could nitpick individual bullpen moves and lineup decisions and whatnot until we’re blue in the face, but overall, things have run smoothly so far this year, and the players seem happy. Once we get into the dog days of summer, when the grind really begins, we’ll see how well Boone’s clubhouse skills translate on the field. Right now, all is well with the new skipper.
6. Really weird schedule this year, huh? The Yankees are going to play two series against the Angels and two series against the Astros before making their first trip to Camden Yards. Their first game in Tropicana Field will be their 75th game of the season. Really weird. It’s not just the Yankees either. At one point earlier this season the Dodgers had played 12 games against the Diamondbacks, ten games against the Giants, and 14 games against everyone else. I mean, what? I guess having so many games against the Orioles and Rays later in the season — 28 of the Yankees’ final 95 games are against the O’s and Rays, so basically three out of every ten — is a good thing because those teams are not very good, and bad teams tend to get worse as the season progresses, not better. It’s just very odd that the Yankees have so few games against two division rivals early in the season. They’re going to get the bulk of their AL Central and AL West games out of the way before really diving into AL East games. I know building the schedule isn’t easy. Can’t they build a more balanced schedule than this though?
7. We’ve been running our weekly Fan Confidence Poll since Spring Training 2009, and I don’t know how often any of you check the graph, but last week’s score (8.71) was the highest since April 2010 (8.93 on April 19th, 2010). There’s a lot of recency bias in the Fan Confidence Poll — when the Yankees have a good week it skyrockets and when they have a bad week it plummets, etc. — though look at the graph and the overall trend is obvious. No one felt good about the state of the Yankees from 2013-16, but, since the start of last season, fan confidence has been steadily climbing, and now it’s higher than it’s been at any point in the last eight years. Eight years! That’s pretty wild. And fans should feel great about the Yankees right now. They’re winning, the Major League team is loaded with high-end young talent, and there’s more help on the way in the farm system. The Yankees haven’t been this healthy as an organization probably since the late-1990s. Even the 2009 team needed an infusion of big money free agents to contend because there wasn’t much in the farm system. The Yankees right now have a much better chance at sustained success, and that’s exciting.
Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders (3-1 win over Lehigh Valley)
Anyway, here is an open thread for this suddenly Yankees baseball-less night. The Cubs and Braves will be on ESPN+, MLB Network is showing a regional West Coast game later on, and there are NBA and NHL playoff games on tonight as well. Talk about those games or anything else here, just not religion or politics. Thanks in advance.