Breaking news: The Chicago Cubs have lost four straight for the first time this season.
Well, OK, maybe this isn’t hard breaking news. But given the fanfare associated with this team, one would think it was infallible.
A losing streak of any kind on Chicago’s North Side has shock value and makes anything in baseball seem possible.
Heck (spoiler alert), maybe MLB would even bring a team to Las Vegas.
What else looked possible, impossible or fell somewhere in between during MLB’s Week 12?
Hello and welcome to Bleacher Report’s Future 50.
This project aims to identify the 50 most promising prospects in Major League Baseball. Players must have rookie eligibility to qualify for consideration, so anyone with more than 130 at-bats or 50 innings pitched in the majors isn’t on the radar.
Aside from that, it’s up to how each prospect fares in a scoring system that assesses his upside.
For position players, this means looking at hitting, power, speed, arm and defense tools. The individual point allotments vary depending on position. But in keeping with the traditional 20-80 scouting scale, they all add up to 80 possible points.
The same goes for pitchers, who are graded based on their fastballs, breaking balls, changeups and command tools. In case anyone is expecting to see them, no relief prospects made the cut. This is a starters-only list.
When all the points are tallied, some players end up with the same score. That turns the rankings into a judgment call, in which case upside is the deciding factor.
Read on for more detailed breakdowns on how the scoring works, and then the list itself.
The first day of summer is here, and the MLB landscape continues to shift on a weekly basis as teams look to establish themselves as bona fide contenders.
At this point, the Chicago Cubs remain in a tier of their own at the top, but a handful of teams look like viable title contenders in their own right. The Texas Rangers and San Francisco Giants are both red-hot right now, and the Washington Nationals certainly opened some eyes when they took two of three from the Cubs in Washington last week.
The Baltimore Orioles and Boston Red Sox continue to battle for AL East supremacy, while it’s a three-team battle in the AL Central between the Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Royals and Detroit Tigers.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago White Sox continue to slide down the rankings, and the New York Mets will need to bounce back from being swept by the Atlanta Braves as their offense continues to struggle mightily.
One thing remains true: These rankings are a fluid process, with teams moving up or down based on where they ranked the previous week. If a club keeps winning, it will keep climbing—it’s as simple as that.
Here’s a look at where all 30 MLB teams stand heading into the week of June 20.
Rookie of the Year candidates, current (and former) All-Stars and high-paid veterans litter Week 11’s All-Dud team. Once again, the funk proved it doesn’t care about a player’s track record of success, how much money he makes or how highly touted he was as a prospect.
The funk can strike any player at any time—and neither popping two Advils nor spending the day in bed is enough to get rid of it. The cure is different for every player.
Taking traditional and advanced statistics into consideration, here’s a look at those players who wish there was an over-the-counter remedy for what ailed them in Week 11 action.
Injuries, as they say, are part of the game. But we can all agree they’re never the good part.
This week, the Pittsburgh Pirates placed pitcher Gerrit Cole and catcher Francisco Cervelli on the 15-day disabled list. The New York Mets announced third baseman David Wright would undergo surgery to repair a herniated disc in his back.
We want to see players, particularly of the caliber of the three aforementioned, play the game. Watching them rehab isn’t entertaining.
But nonetheless, in their absence this week, MLB still wowed us. Care to see what those who played did this past week?
The 2016 MLB draft is in the books, with 1,216 players selected over the course of the 40-round, three-day event.
With no clear-cut No. 1 talent in this year’s class, the first round was as unpredictable as any in recent memory and a number of highly regarded prospects wound up slipping below their expected draft position as a result.
Now the focus for each team the next few weeks will be on signing its respective draft picks and getting their pro careers started.
With that in mind, what follows is an updated look at where all 30 farm systems rank, assuming all of the top draft picks sign. Day 1 talents who slipped due to signability concerns were not included, as they will almost certainly be heading off to school.
The following factors helped determine the rankings of players and teams:
An updated list of the top 10 prospects for each team has been provided, as well a breakout down of each team’s top position-player prospect, pitching prospect and one prospect on the rise.
It should be noted that players on the big league roster who have not yet used up their rookie status (130 AB, 50 IP, 45 days on roster) were included as prospects.
The idea of making a living playing professional baseball probably pops into the minds of nearly every youngster at one point or another.
That’s one of the reasons that it is so tough to accomplish. The level of competition is staggering, and there’s no end to the amount of work that it takes to get there.
To those lucky enough to make it to the show, it’s a non-stop battle to stay there. Players must constantly work to improve, upgrade their conditioning and learn more about the game.
Some players are tightly wound as a result and may come close to the breaking point. But there are others who know how blessed they are and have gratitude every step of the way.
These are baseball’s good guys. They make life better for those around them and give back to society with their friendliness, warmth and charitable nature.
In this piece we look at 10 good guys in the national pastime.
With the MLB draft now in the books, the next major milestone on the MLB calendar is the All-Star break, and we’re now less than a month away with the All-Star Game scheduled for July 12 in San Diego.
In the meantime, the MLB landscape continues to shift with each passing week, but everyone is still chasing the Chicago Cubs, who picked up two more series wins last week and are now 43-18 on the year.
While the Cubs are in a tier of their own at this point, the Texas Rangers and Washington Nationals have also begun to separate themselves from the rest of the pack as two teams to be reckoned with.
A little further down the rankings, the St. Louis Cardinals are a team on the rise after a weekend sweep of the rival Pittsburgh Pirates, and the Detroit Tigers are showing some signs of life behind standout rookie Michael Fulmer.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago White Sox have continued their impactful crashes back to earth after terrific starts to the season.
One thing remains true: These rankings are a fluid process, with teams moving up or down based on where they ranked the previous week. If a club keeps winning, it will keep climbing—it’s as simple as that.
Sticking with the “one month from All-Star weekend” theme, we’ve included a rundown of each team’s potential All-Star candidates in lieu of our usual picks for hitter and pitcher of the week.
Here’s a look at where all 30 MLB teams stand.
The melee between Baltimore Orioles shortstop Manny Machado and Kansas City Royals pitcher Yordano Ventura unquestionably headlined MLB’s Week 10.
Ventura, a reputed rabble-rouser, drilled Machado in the midsection with a fastball. The Baltimore slugger charged the mound, the benches cleared, and brawling ensued. Ultimately, both players were suspended, but the incident raised questions about whether MLB should take steps to eliminate brush-back pitches.
But as that storyline percolated throughout the past week of baseball action, other happenings provided us with great on-field theater.
What exactly were those?
Soon-to-be Hall of Fame catcher Mike Piazza wasn’t drafted until the 62nd round of the 1988 MLB draft, when the Los Angeles Dodgers made him the 1,390th overall selection. Not only was he the biggest steal of that draft, but he stands as one of the biggest draft steals of all time.
We mention Piazza to tell you this: The biggest steal of the 2016 MLB draft may not be listed on the pages that follow, just as nobody pegged Piazza as a steal nearly 30 years ago. As noted Friday when we hit on the biggest winners and losers on Day 2, we simply lack the clairvoyance needed to see into the future.
All we can do is take what we know about the players drafted this year, what the scouting reports and prospect profiles tell us—mix it up with some gut instinct—and make our selections.
While a number of things, including a player’s signability, were taken into consideration, our rankings primarily revolve around two criteria:
That’s it. There’s no convoluted statistical formula involved that requires you to reach out to your eighth- grade calculus teacher on Facebook for assistance, and no inside information that’s so well-guarded that not even WikiLeaks knows of its existence.
As we’re limiting this to our top 10 steals, there were a few players who fell short of making the cut. So to Rice University’s Jon Duplantier (selected by Arizona with the 89th overall pick) and, once again, to Mercer College slugger Kyle Lewis (Seattle, 11th overall, who didn’t make our list of Day 1 steals), our apologies.
*Note: Players who would have been drafted before Day 3, were it not for their strong college commitments, were not considered steals, as there’s no chance they’ll sign. An example would be Florida State commit Drew Mendoza (No. 42), who was selected by the Detroit Tigers in the 36th round.