2/25 Spring Training News & Analysis
Links to new resources and my thoughts on Clay Holmes and other spring stories.
I have spun up the spring resources. We have spring data filtering into the exiting MLB & MiLB Stats Dashboard:
I have made a copy of the “MiLB Statcast Dashboard” and populated it with spring training data:
Those are two decent ways to track spring training. But look - those who don’t track spring training are not behind those who do unless they’re totally missing the news on injuries and whatnot. There have been many cases of people wildly overreacting to stuff that happens in spring and moving dudes way up or way down their rankings list and actually drafting worse teams because of it. So you don’t want to be like that.
The links to those resources are below the paywall. It’s year three of MLB Data Warehouse, and I’ve been taking more and more stuff away from the free subscribers every year.
I also coded up a new live game tracker. I ran this bad boy in Google Sheets at times last year, but I was using Google Colab to run it, and that processing time costs me money. So I ended up not running it very much. But I found a new way to publish Python apps called Streamlit. So I found a few hours over the weekend to learn that stuff and translate the scripts to that. And now we have a pretty cool app that is always available. I don’t even have to go in there and start running it or pay anything. Amazing stuff. Check that out here while games are being played.
Let’s talk about some recent developments.
Clay Holmes
This is a big one. Any time a talented arm goes from the bullpen to the starting rotation, we have a large opportunity for profit. We saw this last year with Garrett Crochet and Reynaldo Lopez. Maybe those two will prove to be outliers, and maybe they’ll make us a bit overly optimistic this year, but at the very least, we should have a close eye on Holmes.
He debuted right away for the Mets and looked sharp across 34 pitches.
It was clear that he was not going to come into the starter role with the same pitch mix as last year. In that bullpen role, he was throwing sinkers (57%), sliders (23%), and sweepers (21%), and the sinker was in the upper 90s. What we saw in that first outing seems to be what he’ll more or less settle with, and it’s all good news. The changeup, four-seamer, and cutter are new. Who knows if he’ll keep both of those new fastball variations, maybe he’s just tinkering now to see which one he wants to take with him, but the changeup and at least one of them should be here to stay.
I did not initially care for Holmes because of the dependence on the sinker. But I can live with 35% sinker usage, as long as it gets ground balls, and as long as he has some options for putaway pitches when the sinker gets him ahead.
The pitch mix is very enticing, so I’ve moved Holmes up into my top 60 SPs. Bonus points if you’re in a league where the fact that he’s an SP as RP (the old SPARP) is a benefit.
Twins Rotation
Minnesota came right out of the gate with Zebby Matthews and David Festa. And they both looked awesome:
I’ve written a ton about those two. I like them both an absolute ton, but as things stand right now, they’re both on the outside of the rotation looking in. The guys they’d have to beat for a rotation spot are Chris Paddack and/or Simeon Woods Richardson. The Twins have an unmovable top three in Pablo Lopez, Joe Ryan, and Bailey Ober. A lot has to happen for both of these guys to get a starting job. There’s little doubt in my mind that it will happen for both guys at some point this year. They’re both clearly better than Paddack and Woods Richardson, but it’s anybody’s guess as to when they might get into that solidified role.
That makes both of them a tough click in a league where you can’t afford a roster spot on a guy in AAA. That is a situation to monitor. If either guy gets announced as the 4th or 5th starter, they’d catapult up my ranks.
Check out the Twins preview for full analysis of all of those names.
Zac Veen
Veen is a Rockies prospect who has been near the top of their ranks for a few years now. He has been injured a ton, and that’s held him down in the minors so far. He has been under 250 total PAs in each of the last two seasons. For his minor league career:
1485 PA, .258/.353/.422, 40 HR, 132 SB
He hit for a high .451 SLG last year with 19 steals in less than half of a season. He has power and speed. That would be an interesting flier to take a bet on if he did make the Rockies out of camp. He rocked a 107.7-mile-per-hour dinger already in camp, so that’s why he made his way into the notes here. It’s worth keeping an eye on this Rockies roster as they break camp. Hitters are always a bit more interesting in Coors Field.
I could come up with a lot more to say, but I’ll leave it at that for today. There are a ton of interesting arms taking the hill today, so I’ll keep pushing these out giving thoughts on a lot of these upside arms and position battles and whatnot.