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MLBTR Poll: Eloy’s Second Season

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The White Sox made a significant investment in Eloy Jimenez before he ever played a major league game, signing the outfielder to a six-year, $43MM extension last March, and it already looks like a wise decision. The deal Jimenez inked was then a record pact for a prospect with no major league service time, but teammate and fellow outfielder Luis Robert eclipsed that mark when he landed a six-year, $50MM guarantee this past winter.

In signing Jimenez, the White Sox obviated the need to manipulate his service time, clearing the way for the then-consensus top prospect to spend all of the 2019 campaign in the majors. Jimenez didn’t get off to a great start in the first few months of his age-22 season, but his production trended way upward in the second half, leading to an above-average batting line of .267/.315/.513 (116 wRC+) with 31 home runs over 504 plate appearances. And Statcast backed up that production, crediting Jimenez with a .349 expected weighted on-base average (compared to a real wOBA of .343), a hard-hit percentage in the majors’ 92nd percentile and an average exit velocity that ranked in the 87th percentile.

If you want red flags from Jimenez’s rookie season, a couple stand out. For one, even during his second-half surge, he didn’t draw many free passes. His 6 percent walk rate sat well below the league-average mark of 8.5. On the defensive side, Jimenez wasn’t exactly a Gold Glover in left field. Despite finishing in the game’s 70th percentile in Statcast’s Sprint Speed metric, he ended with minus-11 Defensive Runs Saved, minus-11 Outs Above Average and a minus-5.1 Ultimate Zone Rating in the grass. Jimenez’s defensive struggles helped limit him to 1.9 fWAR and 1.4 bWAR during his initial campaign, essentially rendering him an average performer.

The long-suffering White Sox now have designs on being much better than average, considering how active they were in upgrading their roster during the offseason. A sizable leap in overall output from Jimenez in Year 2 of his career could go a long way in helping the team accomplish that in 2020. The question is: How productive do you think he’ll be this season? (Poll links for app users)

MLBTR Poll: The Christian Yelich Extension

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By now you’ve surely seen the news: the Brewers are closing in on a new deal with superstar Christian Yelich. We’ll presume it’s completed for purposes of this post.

This contract arises even as the Brewers reach the final guaranteed year of their deal with long-time star Ryan Braun. Yelich had already supplanted him as the face of the franchis. Now, the younger outfielder will step into the top salary slot for the team.

Things can always change — lest we forget, the Brewers have at various points dangled Braun in trade talks in recent years — but Yelich seems destined to play in those sweet new Milwaukee unis for much of the rest of his career.

How to understand this deal? The 28-year-old Yelich was already under team control for three remaining seasons under the prior extension he inked as a member of the Marlins, so there wasn’t a huge rush. But the Brewers obviously felt now was the time to act if they were going to keep him around at a palatable price tag.

With seven years and (approximately) $187.25MM in new money, this deal provides Yelich with an eye-popping salary by any reasonable standard. But it’s a clear discount as compared to the values we saw in the free-agent market this winter. Consider that Anthony Rendon just sold the same portion of his career (age 30-36 seasons) for $245MM.

Great as Rendon is, he hasn’t matched Yelich in productivity. But the Brewers earned their discount by promising the money in advance — thus taking on quite a bit more risk. The most direct comparable, perhaps, is the early 2018 deal reached between the Astros and Jose Altuve when he was still two years away from the open market. Altuve only received five additional guaranteed years but got a heftier annual salary in his agreement (five years, $151MM).

It isn’t hard to understand the math for the team. On the player side, it’s hard to resist the temptation of a potential future bonanza. But Yelich was a long ways from the open market and quite a lot can change in the interim, as his freak late-2019 knee injury shows. There’s also some off-field value for both sides in striking this sort of bargain in advance. Yelich gets the comfort and assurance of knowing where he’ll play. No doubt he’ll also find it easy to strike whatever marketing deals he might like. And the club gets to promote the player as one of the franchise’s all-time greats while plotting its long-term roster moves around his presence.

So … win-win? Or is there a different way we ought to view this pact? (Poll link for app users.)

MLBTR Poll: Vlad Jr.’s Second Season

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Blue Jays third baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. debuted in the major leagues to great fanfare in 2019. The son of a Hall of Famer, Guerrero earned his first promotion toward the end of April – only one month after his 20th birthday. He joined the Blue Jays despite limited experience in Triple-A Buffalo, where he garnered just 162 plate appearances from 2018-19. The sample size may have been small, but Guerrero nonetheless ran roughshod over the highest level of the minors, thereby convincing the Blue Jays he was ready for prime time.

Thanks in part to his stellar production at lower levels, Guerrero was considered an all-world prospect at the time of his promotion. Indeed, four different outlets (Baseball America, MLBPipeline.com, FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus) ranked him as the game’s premier farmhand at the time. Guerrero ultimately didn’t make an enormous impact as a rookie, hitting .272/.339/.433 with 15 home runs in 514 trips to the plate, but that production’s still nothing to scoff at for a first-year man who was among the youngest players in the league last season.

Set to turn 21 on March 16, Guerrero figures to be one of the sport’s most fascinating sophomores in 2020, and the revamped Jays are no doubt hoping he’ll help key a resurgence for the club. For what it’s worth, the big-bodied Guerrero has come to camp in better shape this spring, as Shi Davidi of Sportsnet wrote last month. The slimmer Guerrero’s now aiming to increase his launch angle, Andrew Stoeten of The Athletic recently relayed.

Guerrero’s mean launch angle checked in at just 6.7 degrees last year, while his expected weighted on-base average (.330, compared to a .329 real wOBA), average exit velocity and hard-hit percentage all hung around the league’s 50th percentile, per Statcast. However, heading into Year 2, projection systems are bullish. ZiPS, for instance, calls for a .285/.349/.497 line (121 wRC+) with 25 home runs in 571 trips to the plate. Those aren’t superstar-level numbers, but they would represent a nice step forward for such a young hitter.

All that said, let’s hear from you on how you expect Vlad Jr. to perform at the plate this season. Where will his OPS land? How many homers will he hit? (Poll links for app users)

MLBTR Poll: The Severino-Less Yankees

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Remember when the Yankees were supposed to have one of the most dominant rotations in baseball? That didn’t last long. A couple months ago, they were set to boast a starting five of newly signed $324MM man Gerrit Cole, Luis Severino, James Paxton, Masahiro Tanaka and J.A. Happ. The shine has come off to a significant extent since the team won the Cole derby in December, however.

Severino – who, like Cole, is among the game’s premier starters – won’t pitch at all in 2020 in the wake of Tuesday’s news that he’ll need Tommy John surgery. Even before then, the Yankees were already reeling from the fact that the oft-injured Paxton will miss a significant portion of the season as a result of back surgery. The diagnoses Severino and Paxton received this month make it all the more fortunate for the Yankees that they added a legitimate ace in Cole, but their rotation (which doesn’t have clear answers in the No. 4 and 5 spots) looks decidedly worse than it did just a couple weeks ago.

At this point, it may be too late for the Yankees to find impact replacements for Severino and/or Paxton in free agency or via the trade market. But to the Yankees’ credit, they’ve shown an ability to overcome injuries and even thrive in the recent past. They seemed to lose one key player after another because of health woes last season (Severino, Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Dellin Betances, to name just a few), yet they still found a way to win 103 games, earn their first American League East title since 2012 and get to the last round of the AL playoffs. And the team always has the financial advantage over just about everyone else in the game, meaning it should be able to bolster its roster by way of an in-season trade(s) if needed.

For now, with the Yankees’ rotation looking so much less imposing than it did a little while ago, their best chance may be to win games by beating the opposition into submission with their offense. The club’s hope is that Judge and Stanton will actually stay healthy; DJ LeMahieu, Gary Sanchez, Gleyber Torres, Luke Voit and Brett Gardner will continue as quality complements; Miguel Andujar will bounce back from an injury-ruined season; and the likes of Gio Urshela, Mike Tauchman and Mike Ford won’t end up as one-hit wonders. A lot has to go right there, but if the Yankees’ offense does produce enough to give the team leads late in games, it’s in better shape than most with Aroldis Chapman, Zack Britton, Adam Ottavino, Chad Green and Tommy Kahnle comprising the majority of its bullpen.

As horribly as 2020 has already gone for the Yankees, they still look like the favorites in their division. The Rays are outstanding, but the PECOTA projections “only” peg them for 87 wins (12 fewer than the Yankees, though that was before they lost Severino). The Red Sox are quite talented, too, but they don’t look nearly as tough as they did before they traded their previous franchise player – right fielder Mookie Betts – as well as lefty David Price to the Dodgers a couple weeks. The Blue Jays have definitely taken steps forward since last season ended, but they don’t appear to be in the Yankees’ class right now, and the Orioles are, well, bad. So, even despite the hardships the Yankees are facing as they head into a new season, they still have the makings of a playoff team. However, with no Severino at all and a limited amount of Paxton innings, just how formidable do you think they’ll be?

(Poll link for app users)

MLBTR Poll: How Good Are The Athletics?

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The Athletics will enter the new season fresh off back-to-back 97-win performances, and considering the chaos atop their division, they’ll be a popular choice to win the American League West. The Astros have taken it three years in a row – all seasons with 100-plus victories – but there’s serious skepticism that they’ll reign again in 2020. They’ve been dealing with the aftermath of a sign-stealing scandal that cost them their previous leadership and has dominated baseball headlines over the past several weeks. Oh, and they lost all-world right-hander Gerrit Cole to the Yankees in free agency.

Even with the mess it has created for itself, Houston remains an immensely talented team. But it may have a real challenger in Oakland, which overcame a slew of notable injuries in each of the previous two seasons on the way to playoff berths. The Athletics, like the Astros, haven’t been all that aggressive in upgrading their roster since last season concluded, so the A’s will go into the campaign with a roster that’s similar to the prior version.

The A’s position player group continues to brig an amazing left side of the infield (third baseman Matt Chapman and shortstop Marcus Semien), a high-quality first baseman (Matt Olson), a pair of underrated outfielders (Ramon Laureano and Mark Canha) and a couple bounce-back candidates (designated hitter Khris Davis and outfielder Stephen Piscotty) to the table. Likewise, Oakland’s pitching staff is rife with potential. Injuries and suspensions ravaged the unit last year, yet A’s hurlers still found a way to record the majors’ sixth-best ERA and eighth-highest fWAR. They’re now slated to get full seasons from left-hander Sean Manaea (injuries held him to five starts in 2019), breakout righty Frankie Montas (a PED ban limited him to 16 starts) and perhaps Jesus Luzardo and A.J. Puk. Two of the most talented young pitchers in the game, Luzardo and Puk missed almost all of last year as a result of injuries.

The A’s rotation, which also includes the durable and effective Mike Fiers, will hand off to a bullpen that was tough on the oppostion in 2019. That was thanks largely to Liam Hendriks, who – much like former Athletic Blake Treinen before him – emerged as a dominant closer for the club. Whether he can keep it up remains to be seen, though, as Hendriks is just two seasons removed from being outrighted off the A’s 40-man.

Although there’s plenty of talent up and down Oakland’s roster, the team could face a stiffer test in its division this year. The Astros are arguably in position to decline somewhat, but the Angels and Rangers worked hard over the winter to better their chances of competing for the crown this year. And for what it’s worth, the recently released PECOTA projections call for the A’s to take a considerable step back, predicting 85 wins and a third-place finish in the AL West. That’s a solid amount of victories, but it’s obviously not what A’s have in mind for 2020 after two consecutive stellar seasons. The question is: Do you expect them to remain among the AL’s elite for a third year in a row?

(Poll link for app users)

MLBTR Poll: Last Year’s Division Champs

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Of the six teams that finished in first place in their divisions in 2018, three (the Red Sox, Indians and Brewers) failed to defend their crowns last season. Two (the Red Sox and Indians) didn’t even make the playoffs, so ruling your division one year doesn’t mean you’ll end up in the postseason the next. Last season, the Yankees, Astros and Twins finished atop their divisions in the American League, while the Braves, Dodgers and Cardinals were the top seeds in the NL. Among those six, who’s the most vulnerable going into the new season? Let’s review the offseasons they’ve had…

AL:

  • Astros: If you’ve paid any attention to baseball in the past several weeks, you know this offseason has been a catastrophe for the Astros. They got rid of general manager Jeff Luhnow and skipper A.J. Hinch as a result of a sign-stealing scandal that has rocked baseball, replacing them with James Click and Dusty Baker. The Astros are still loaded with talent, but they lost the great Gerrit Cole even before their sign-stealing shenanigans came to light. Now, there’s plenty of skepticism they’ll put together a fourth straight 100-win season after such a horrendous winter – one in which they were very quiet in free agency. What’s more, they’re stuck in a division with a legit challenger in Oakland and two improving clubs in the Angels and Rangers.
  • Yankees: New York took Cole from Houston, which has been the Wile E. Coyote to the Yankees’ Road Runner in recent postseasons. The Yankees looked as if they’d have a tremendous rotation with Cole, Luis Severino, James Paxton and Masahiro Tanaka as their top four, but health woes are already haunting the club yet again after an injury-riddled 2019. Severino, who barely pitched last season, is now facing a very worrisome situation with his forearm; meanwhile, Paxton will sit out until at least May or June as a result of back surgery. The Yankees are still laden with talent, and they remain capable of pulverizing the opposition with their offense, but some of the shine has come off since the Cole signing because of the Severino and Paxton situations. Fortunately for the Yankees, there may only be one team capable of standing up to them in the AL East – the Rays.
  • Twins: It was quite a winter for the Twins, who bolstered their rotation with the additions of Kenta Maeda, Homer Bailey and Rich Hill. They also retained Jake Odorizzi and Michael Pineda. Perhaps more importantly, they signed third baseman Josh Donaldson for four years and $92MM – the largest contract they’ve ever given out in free agency. So, a team that hit an all-time record 307 home runs in 2019 seems as if it’ll put a similarly scary offense on the field this year. The Twins could face more resistance in their division from the White Sox, who had an aggressive winter, though the Indians haven’t really bettered themselves. The Tigers have, but they’ll still struggle to win many games, while the Royals also figure to wind up among the game’s worst teams.

(Poll link for app users)

NL:

  • Dodgers: What do you get the team that won 106 games last season? How about Mookie Betts, who’s on the short list of the greatest players in the game? With Betts in tow, the Dodgers will enter 2020 as the overwhelming favorites to win their division for the eighth year in a row, but an improved Arizona club should at least offer a decent challenge. The Padres have also worked to get better since last season ended, but they don’t appear to be any match for the stacked Dodgers, while the Rockies and Giants look to be way behind.
  • Braves: Atlanta’s down Donaldson, but it was rather active in adding free agents. The team plucked the likes of Marcell Ozuna, Will Smith, Cole Hamels, Travis d’Arnaud and Chris Martin off the open market. Hamels is dealing with shoulder problems, however, and it’s unclear when he’ll be able to pitch in 2020.  Regardless, the Braves still have quite a bit of premier talent (Ronald Acuna Jr., Freddie Freeman, Ozzie Albies and Mike Soroka spring to mind), so it’s easy to envision them winning a third consecutive division title. At the same time, the reigning world champion Nationals, the Mets and Phillies are realistic contenders for the NL East championship.
  • Cardinals: Aside from the Reds, a 75-win outfit a year ago, it wasn’t really a busy offseason for any NL Central team. That includes the Cardinals, whose biggest addition was Korean left-hander Kwang-Hyun Kim (and they lost their No. 1 free agent, the aforementioned Ozuna). They’re now set to open 2020 without one of their best starters in Miles Mikolas, who just received a platelet-rich plasma injection. The good news for St. Louis is that there’s no apparent juggernaut in its division, as the Cubs and Brewers have either stayed roughly the same or gotten worse since last year ended.

(Poll link for app users)

MLBTR Poll: Bounce-Back Year For Rockies?

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A year ago at this time, the Rockies were just months removed from their second consecutive playoff season. It was the first time in the franchise’s existence that it had earned back-to-back playoff berths, and Colorado likely expected the good times to keep rolling in 2019. Instead, the Rockies ended up as one of the majors’ worst teams, finishing 71-91 en route to a fourth-place standing in the National League West.

We’re nearing a new season, but the Rockies don’t look like a team that’ll make a significant rebound in 2020. For one, multiple teams in the Rockies’ division figure to serve as roadblocks to potential improvement. The Dodgers should find themselves among the game’s best teams again, while the Diamondbacks and Padres look to have gotten better since last season.

The Rockies, like their division-rival Giants, have done little to nothing to bolster their roster since the previous campaign concluded. They’ve signed only one major league free agent – inexpensive right-hander Jose Mujica – and have managed to alienate their franchise player. Third baseman Nolan Arenado, who signed a seven-year, $234MM extension last February, has come up in trade talks in recent months. Additionally, he has expressed his unhappiness toward the Rockies for not upgrading the roster around him.

Despite an offseason of rumors, the 28-year-old remains a Rockie – someone they’re currently hoping will help them back to playoff position this season. But it doesn’t appear he has a ton of offensive support beyond shortstop Trevor Story and the outfield tandem of Charlie Blackmon and David Dahl. Meanwhile, Colorado’s rotation was ghastly a year ago, but there haven’t been notable changes in that area. The club’s instead betting on bounce-back years from holdovers such as Kyle Freeland, Wade Davis, Jake McGee and Bryan Shaw.

While they’ve done almost nothing on paper to improve themselves since last year’s woeful showing, there’s internal optimism the Rockies will be much better this season. Owner Dick Monfort said earlier this month he believes the Rockies will win 94 games. That’s an especially sanguine prediction for an organization that has never amassed more than 92 victories in a season. Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA projections strongly disagree with Monfort, pegging the Rockies for 77 wins. Granted, those projections aren’t the end-all, be-all – they called for an 85-win Rockies season before 2019 – so perhaps Monfort’s not as delusional as he seems. Regardless, assuming they begin the season with Arenado on their roster, how do you expect the Rockies’ year to turn out?

(Poll link for app users)

MLBTR Poll: Yankees’ Third Base Situation

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A year ago at this time, Miguel Andujar was the clear-cut favorite to open the season at third base for the Yankees. Had it not been for an out-of-this-world two-way showing from the Angels’ Shohei Ohtani in 2018, Andujar would have entered the season fresh off AL Rookie of the Year honors. Andujar fell short to Ohtani, though, and then endured a year to forget in the second season of his career.

Shoulder problems limited Andujar to just 12 games in 2019, but the Yankees had no trouble carrying on without him, evidenced by their 103-59 record and their first AL East title since 2012. One reason the Yankees finally regained control of the division? Gio Urshela, who grabbed the reins at third base as a result of Andujar’s health woes and became one of the injury-riddled Yankees’ most valuable players. It was a shocking rise for Urshela, who had never been known for his offense in prior major league stints with the Indians (2015, 2017) and Blue Jays (2018).

Before last year, Urshela had not hit more than 15 home runs in a professional season, yet he managed to mash 21 in the majors in 2019. That career-high HR total helped Urshela to an outstanding .314/.355/.534 line with 3.1 fWAR and a personal-best hard-hit rate in 476 plate appearances.

Urshela’s track record of success isn’t long, but the World Series hopeful Yankees are believers. General manager Brian Cashman has made it known that Urshela’s the front-runner to open the upcoming campaign at the hot corner for New York. So, despite his impressive performance as a rookie, Andujar’s behind on the Yankees’ depth chart. They’re even giving the soon-to-be 25-year-old work at first base and in the outfield early this spring in an effort to keep his bat in the lineup, per Bryan Hoch of MLB.com.

Andujar may be hard-pressed to struggle more at first or in the outfield than he has at third, where he accounted for minus-25 Defensive Runs Saved and a minus-16 Ultimate Zone Rating in his first season. But make no mistake, Andujar can hit. In his first season in the majors, he piled up 606 trips to the plate and batted .297/.328/.527 with 76 extra-base hits (47 doubles, 27 homers, two triples).

Considering his offensive upside, Andujar may well return to his past role as the Yankees’ primary third baseman sometime this year. Urshela, 28, will have to relinquish the job first, though. Which of the two do you think will log more time at the hot corner for the Yankees in 2020?

(Poll link for app users)

MLBTR Poll: Can The Rays Take Down The Yankees?

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Rays owner Stuart Sternberg just offered both a realistic and a hopeful assessment of the state of play in the AL East, as MLB.com’s Juan Toribio was among those to report on Twitter.

“Our division is going to be hard because we have the best team or the second best team in baseball that we’re competing against, which is the usual,” says Sternberg. “But I think we’re going to give them a run for their money.”

One imagines the owner of the low-budget Rays winking as he delivered that last line. Of course, what’s scariest about the Yankees — presumably, that best/second-best team he was referring to — isn’t their money, standing alone. It’s the fact that they’ve committed to a disciplined, altogether Rays-like process for spending it.

That’s not to say this isn’t a good time to strike. In fact, it may be as good a window as any for the Rays with the Red Sox dealing away Mookie Betts and the Blue Jays still ramping up. With former Rays exec Chaim Bloom now in charge of baseball ops in Boston, there’s another streamlined death star under construction. And the Toronto organization has a new slate of hopeful young stars, so it could soon also be a threat. The Orioles … well, they may be further off, but they’re undertaking their own modernization efforts.

Despite their financial limitations, the Rays have compiled yet another intriguing roster that’s loaded with flexibility. Is it enough to take down the Yanks? We know the Bronx Bombers will be the favorite in most quarters, so let’s approach the subject this way: what are the odds the Rays can win the division?

(Poll link for app users)

MLBTR Poll: Who’s The NL Central Favorite?

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With the exception of the Reds, who have made several notable moves, this hasn’t been an action-packed offseason in the National League Central. Cincinnati was a fourth-place team a season ago and is currently mired in a six-year playoff drought, but the club has made an earnest attempt to transform itself into a playoff contender since the 2019 campaign concluded. Mike Moustakas, Nick Castellanos and Shogo Akiyama have all come aboard in free agency to bolster the Reds’ position player group. Meanwhile, a rotation that was already strong in 2019 has tacked on Wade Miley to complement Luis Castillo, Sonny Gray, Trevor Bauer and Anthony DeSclafani, and the bullpen has pulled in Pedro Strop.

The Reds only won 75 games last year, but at last check, the majority of MLBTR voters expect them to amass 80-some victories this season. In the NL Central, where there doesn’t appear to be a dominant team, it may only take 80-plus wins to claim the division. The Cardinals’ 91 led the way last year, but they’ve made no truly headline-grabbing acquisitions in recent months, they’ve lost outfielder Marcell Ozuna to the Braves and now one of their most reliable starters, Miles Mikolas, is dealing with arm troubles early in the spring.

Along with the Cards, the 2019 Central boasted two other plus-.500 teams – the Brewers (89 wins) and the Cubs (84). It wouldn’t be a surprise to see either team contend for the playoffs again this year, but it’s difficult to argue that they’ve gotten better since last season. The Brewers have made quite a few changes, especially in the infield (Brock Holt’s their latest pickup), but they also lost two of their best position players in Moustakas and catcher Yasmani Grandal earlier in free agency.

The Cubs, meantime, have been stunningly quiet for a deep-pocketed team that collapsed down the stretch in 2019. Seismic changes were expected after they laid an egg last year, and maybe they’ll still come (a Kris Bryant trade seems like the most realistic way to shake things up). For now, though, their roster looks a lot like the 2019 edition. There’s still plenty of talent on hand, but there’s no more Castellanos, who emerged as one of the Cubs’ main threats at the plate after they acquired him from the Tigers prior to last July’s trade deadline.

Aside from the Pirates, who are more likely to compete for the No. 1 pick than a playoff berth this year (and whom we’ll leave out of this poll), it wouldn’t seem unrealistic to pick any of the NL Central’s teams to win the division. This year’s PECOTA projections (via Daniel Kramer of MLB.com) have the Reds grabbing the division with 86 wins and the Cubs totaling 85 en route to a wild-card spot. The system gives the Reds 66.2 percent preseason playoff odds, the Cubs 51.5 percent, the Cardinals 24.4 percent and the Brewers 20.3. We still have several weeks to go before the season opens, but as of now, which of those clubs do you think will finish on top?

(Poll link for app users)

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