Baseball is a young man's game these days. Veterans are still important, there's no doubt about that, but the best teams are built around young players. Look at the Cubs -- Kris Bryant, Addison Russell, Javier Baez and Willson Contreras are all no older than 25. Anthony Rizzo is an elder statesman at 27.
Young players are far more affordable than veterans given baseball's salary structure, and typically a player will have his very best seasons before 30. There is no faster path to contention than having a collection of quality young players, again, like the Cubs. It wasn't a coincidence they won the World Series last year.
Of course, development isn't always linear. Not everyone comes up and has instant success like Bryant. Sometimes they struggle before getting that first taste of success, like Baez. Fans have a way of being impatient and quickly declaring a player a bust, but teams are far more patient and are often rewarded for that patience.
So, with that in mind, let's look at some of the biggest "post-hype sleepers" for the 2017 season. That's a fantasy term, and I'm going to borrow it for real life baseball. A post-hype sleeper is a player who came up with a lot of hype, struggled and had supporters jump off the bandwagon, but still offers considerable value based on his talent.
Baez is a pretty good example. He's a former tippy top prospect who couldn't stop striking out during his 2014 debut, which caused a lot of folks to sour on him. Then, by 2016, his talent won out and he was the starting second baseman for a championship team. The 2014 version of Xander Bogaerts is another good example. Here are four post-hype sleepers for the 2017 season.
It's hard to overstate just how bad Twins righty Jose Berrios was in 2016. He came into the season ranked as the 28th-best prospect in baseball by Baseball America. In his 14-start cameo with Minnesota, Berrios had an 8.02 ERA (52 ERA+) with a 1.87 WHIP in 58 1/3 innings. Here is the full list of pitchers to have an 8.00 ERA in at least 50 innings during their MLB debut season:
- Jose Berrios, 2016 Twins: 8.02 ERA in 58 1/3 innings
- Greg Reynolds, 2008 Rockies: 8.13 ERA in 62 innings
- Dennis Tankersley, 2002 Padres: 8.06 ERA in 51 1/3 innings
- Micah Bowie, 1991 Braves and Cubs: 10.24 ERA in 51 innings
- Herman Besse, 1940 Athletics: 8.83 ERA in 53 innings
None of the four guys before Berrios went on to have long big careers. Besse leads the way with 242 2/3 career innings. Reynolds and Tankersley were both top prospects back in the day -- Tankersley peaked at No. 16 on the Baseball America annual top 100 prospects list in 2002 -- so we aren't comparing a former top prospect to four nobodies here.
And yet, I remain somewhat optimistic about the 22-year-old Berrios long-term because his 2016 walk rate with the Twins (5.40 BB/9) was far out of line with the rest of his career, and because he can get swings and misses with his fastball. His 9.5 percent swing-and-miss rate with the heater last year was quite a bit better than the 6.9 percent league average.
Also, Parker Hageman of Twins Daily found some evidence Berrios was tipping his pitches. That is a correctable flaw, in theory. As bad as Berrios was in 2016, his track record of throwing strikes and his ability to miss bats with his fastball lead me to believe he'll carve out some kind of big-league career long-term. And if he fixes the pitch-tipping, he could again approach his ceiling as a frontline starter.
It wasn't too long ago that Byron Buxton ranked among the game's very best prospects. It was last year, in fact. Baseball America ranked him the second-best prospect in baseball behind Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager. In 2015, Buxton was second behind Bryant. In 2014, he was first, ahead of Bogaerts. The kid is crazy talented.
Overall, Buxton had a disappointing 2016 season, and he needed a late hot streak to finish with a .225/.284/.431 (91 OPS+) batting line. He struck out in 35.7 percent of his plate appearances, which is astronomical. Chris Carter struck out in 32.0 percent of his plate appearances with the Brewers, for reference.
Buxton is an excellent defender, which is why he racked up 1.9 WAR despite his 91 OPS+. Still, the Twins want more offense from their former top prospect, and based on what they saw in September, it might be coming. Buxton hit .287/.357/.653 with nine home runs in 29 games in the season's final month. He was hitting .193/.247/.315 at the end of August.
There is still work to be done, of course. Buxton struck out in 33.6 percent of his plate appearances in September, which is still too high, though at least his strikeout rate trended down for most of the season:
Buxton's all-world defense means he'll never be a replacement level, at least not while in his 20s, and in September he showed he can a force at the plate. Keep in mind Buxton turned 23 in December. He's still young. The strikeouts are a concern, no doubt about it, but they are potentially fixable. Baez went from 41.5 percent strikeouts in 2014 to 24.0 percent strikeouts in 2016, after all.
Two years ago, Michael Conforto was a middle-of-the-order hitter for the Mets as they stormed to the National League pennant. Last season, he spent time in Triple-A and never could find his footing at the big-league level. He finished with a .220/.310/.414 (92 OPS+) batting line after hitting .270/.335/.506 (130 OPS+) in 2015.
Despite the poor overall performance, there are indicators Conforto was not lost at the plate. His 39.9 percent hard contact rate was 21st best among the 268 players to bat at least 300 times last season, on par with buys like Bryant (40.9 percent) and Seager (39.7 percent). His walk rate (10.3 percent) was excellent and his strikeout rate (25.6 percent) wasn't out of control.
Conforto's struggles against left-handed pitchers are very real, but he has the tools to crush righties and be a force at the plate. His biggest problem is playing time. The Mets have too many outfielders. Jay Bruce is reportedly sticking around, which means Curtis Granderson will play center and Yoenis Cespedes will play left. There's no room for Conforto.
There's nothing left for Conforto, 23, to prove at Triple-A. He hit .422/.483/.727 in 33 Triple-A games last year. Conforto needs to be challenged to get better, and that means facing big-league pitching. If the Mets give him playing time, I'm confident Conforto will hammer righties and be an above-average contributor. But where is he playing?
For all the attention their moves at the 2016 trade deadline received, the Yankees actually started their rebuild in 2015. Rather than made a big splashy trade at the deadline, they called up youngsters Luis Severino and Greg Bird, and gave them prominent roles in the second half. Bird missed last season with an injury, but Severino was expected to hold down a rotation spot.
Instead, the 22-year-old right-hander had a 5.83 ERA (75 ERA+) in 71 innings. That includes an 8.50 ERA in 11 starts and 47 2/3 innings as a starter. Yikes. Severino spent time in Triple-A and the bullpen in an effort to figure things out. This offseason, he has been working with Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez. From NJ.com's Brendan Kuty:
"My fastball was all the way over here," Severino told NJ Advance Media, showing wider-than-normal release point. "But my changeup was over here," he said, his arm dropping even lower. "My slider was over here and then sometimes over here."
...
"(Pedro and I) focused on mechanics," Severino said. "That's something (Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild) told me to do. My mechanics, my release point -- trying to fix it all."
Severino doesn't lack stuff -- his fastball averaged 96.1 mph last season and both his slider and changeup sit around 88 mph -- but he did lack deception. Hitters are smart. They can pick up on different release points. Here, via Brooks Baseball, are Severino's release points from last season:
The fastball is definitely higher than the changeup, that's for sure. It doesn't look like much on the chart, but PitchFX says the difference between the average release point of the two pitches was a little more than four inches. That's pretty substantial.
At the moment, the Yankees have two open rotation spots and they insist they will go to young pitchers. Severino is a prime candidate for one of those spots. With improved mechanics and a little more deception (by releasing his pitches closer together), Severino should be able to regain his 2015 form, when he had a 2.89 ERA (141 ERA+) with 56 strikeouts in 62 1/3 innings.
Other Notables: Aaron Blair, Braves; Ketel Marte, Diamondbacks; Raul Mondesi Jr., Royals; Blake Swihart, Red Sox
