A Look at Glenn Sparkman

   

Brad Glazer/Milb.com photo

   The Blue Jays surprised a number of people (myself included) when they selected RHP Glenn Sparkman from Kansas City in last week's Rule 5 draft.
  Coming off Tommy John surgery last year, Sparkman, a 20th round choice by the Royals in 2013 out of Wharton County (TX) JC, was very much an under-the-radar Rule 5 candidate after pitching 60 innings at 4 levels this year, the highest of which was AA.  Sparkman's 2015 was limited to 4 AA starts.
   "The arrows were pointing right at him," GM Ross Atkins told the media after the draft.  "It was clear he was the guy that we'd like to select if he was still available.  We feel like there might be some upside to his stuff as well."
    Much of the information that we've received about Sparkman since he was drafted is stats-based.  I like to go deeper than that, so I've conducted some research, asked people some questions, pored over his secondary numbers, and watched a number of his 2016 outings online.  Here's a summary of my efforts:

   Sparkman grew up in Ganado, TX, a town of 2 000 about two hours southwest of Houston.  He was not heavily recruited as a high school shortstop, so he walked on at nearby Wharton County CC, where he was converted to pitching.  He struck out less than a batter per inning in his two years there, but he also showed a feel for the strike zone, walking only 8 batters over 78 innings in his final season.
 Sparkman moved quickly through the Royals system, missing bats along the way.  He averaged 11.5K/9 in his first pro season in rookie ball in 2013, and he skipped Low A to start his second season, which he attributes partially to learning how to pitch.  When he arrived at Wharton, he didn't really know how to throw off of a mound, but under the tutelage of his college and then his pro coaches, he made up for lost time in a hurry.
   In his final start in 2014, he felt a strain in his forearm in his final inning of the year, but his elbow felt fine. He woke up the next morning with severe pain in the elbow, but an MRI revealed only a 10% UCL tear, and he was ordered to rest and rehab his arm.  The regimen did not work, however, and he underwent Tommy John in June of 2015.
   Even though minor league back-of-the-baseball-card stats can be incredibly misleading, Sparkman did post the second-lowest ERA in all of minor league baseball in 2014 (and was named Carolina League Pitcher of the Year), and even though he posted an inflated 5.22 ERA this year, take two outings out of that record and you have a 3.93 ERA.  More impressively, despite a 4.58 ERA at his last stop in AA, he had a 3.24 FIP.
   But let's go behind the numbers

   Sparkman showed some obvious signs of rust this year.  His command began to improve as the summer progressed, but his velocity didn't make a full return.  Prior to the surgery, he touched 96, and sat anywhere from 89-94 with his fastball.  Reports this year had him sitting at 90-92.
   Standing on the 3rd base side of the pitching rubber, Sparkman has a smooth, drop and drive delivery, which can be deceptive, both from the angle it presents to right-handed hitters, and the slow-fast tempo of his windup, making him tough on hitters from both sides to time.  He can command his fastball to both sides of the plate, as well as his curve and slider.  His change up has good depth and some glove-side run:

   If the best pitch in baseball is strike one, Sparkman has one of the better ones in minor league baseball. He often gets ahead of hitters (despite his command issues in his comeback this year, he allowed only 10 walks), when his secondary pitches become more effective.  He can also use his fastball in pitchers' counts to induce whiffs, as hitters are often sitting on his secondaries.

 Because he is around the plate so much, Sparkman does give up some contact, but it's not often of the hard variety.  He was victimized by less-than-stellar defence in his AA outings this year, which inflated his numbers.

   A preview of this year's Rule 5 draft by Baseball America made no mention of Sparkman, who was the Royals' 17th-ranked prospect after the 2014 season.  And to tell the truth, given the success of Joe Biagini in his conversion from middling MiLB starter to MLB bullpen stalwart, it was easy to overlook Sparkman in favour of more projectable arms (with far less control, however) that could be more reasonably expected to add velocity in a relief role. This is a guy who knows how to pitch - how to set up hitters, and how to command the strike zone.  With a catcher who can frame pitches effectively, and a sound defence behind him, Sparkman could one day become a mid to back of the rotation pitcher.
  Perhaps limited to his fastball and one of his offspeed pitches, Sparkman's fastball could return to its former velocity, and he could become 2017's Biagini.  He has experienced more success than Biagini as a minor league starter (and please, please don't throw Biagini's 2.42 ERA at AA in 2015 at me, or I will bury you with secondary stats and scouting reports), so he is an interesting choice, because he appears to profile better in that role in the long run.  Just the same, you can never have enough good arms in spring training, and even if Toronto feels Sparkman won't fit into their plans, he only will have cost $50 000 if the Royals take him back.

Blue Jays Quietly Building a Strong Organization

Gil Kim
National Post photo

   A Major League Baseball team's off-field personnel roster encompasses many people, with a wide variety of skills and backgrounds.  There are those who specialize in scouting, while others have expertise in instructing and developing minor leaguers, and more and more teams are building analytics departments. If each of those groups pull on their oars in their own direction, the result for the organization will be chaos, and the team will be sailing in circles on second division seas for years.  It takes a concerted effort for all of these employees to be on the same page, and to work toward a common goal.

   Mark Shapiro has taken more than his fair share of heat since he took over as President at the end of the season, effectively becoming the face of the franchise.  A slumbering fan base had been re-energized, and thousands more lapsed fans scrambled aboard the Blue Jays band wagon, but the elation of October baseball turned to the November blues for many when GM Alex Anthopoulos, opted not to accept a new contract when his expired at the end of October, and free agent David Price, who would have been a difficult sign even if AA had remained with the organization, bolted for the Red Sox.

    AA was a tough act for Shapiro to follow in the eyes of many.  Anthopoulos was the (kind of) local boy who made good, a guy who worked his way up from interning the Expos mail room to running the nation's baseball team.  And where Anthopoulos was effusive (if not evasive) with the media, Shapiro is concise, and not afraid to be blunt - his comment that a grass playing surface at the Rogers Centre was not a priority may have been correct, but it sure did not play well with some.  To his credit, Shapiro did not tiptoe around the issue, however, or offer vague promises somewhere down the road.  Still, this rankled with some fans, who have turned Shapiro their own personal Rogers-bashing pinata.


   So, while fans and the media may be complaining about the failure to sign Price, or any other remaining free agents, and the fact that departing President Paul Beeston's warm and fuzzy assurance about grass coming to the Dome by 2017 seem to ignore the major engineering issues that will come with that project, Shapiro has been quietly revamping the organization, particularly the player development side.

   His first and most notable hiring was Ross Atkins, his VP of Player Personnel in Cleveland, who was brought over to fill the same role in Toronto.  Despite many fans' misgivings about the new guy bringing along one of his own to run the team, Atkins' story is one of shrewdness and determination.   Atkins has an impressive record as a drafter and developer of talent, with the Indians now boasting one of the deepest farm systems in baseball.  While the Blue Jays pennant run filled the Rogers Centre (and Rogers' coffers) unlike at any time since they took ownership of the Jays over a decade ago, the heavy toll it took in terms of prospects clearly did not set well with the corporation - hiring Atkins is proof that this is a team that wants to work towards being a model of player development.

  Atkins' hiring was just the first of several for the Blue Jays.  Just before Christmas, the team announced that analyst Joe Sheehan was promoted to Director of Analytics, taking over a newly-created department.  The Blue Jays, under Anthopoulos, under-utilized Sheehan, and lost several promising younger analysts and interns when they proved reluctant to use their data interpreting skills for much more than figuring out if a player would be a good fit in the clubhouse.  The Indians, of course, with their proprietary baseball information system DiamondView, were pioneers in developing the analytical side of the game.  Shapiro protegee Neal Huntington married the best of traditional and analytical methods shortly after taking over as GM of the Pirates, and the club was named organization of the year by Baseball America for its ability to find value in players, and new methods of playing the game.  Travis Sawchik's excellent Big Data Baseball detailed how the Pirates were able to blend analytics and traditional baseball methods seamlessly.


  Early in the New Year, the Blue Jays announced the hiring of Angus Mugford as the head of their new High Performance division, responsible for the mental and physical development of all Blue Jays players.  Mugford has an impressive resume, having worked as a sports psychologist at the famed IMG Academy in Florida. His plan is to expand the department, hiring another psychologist, and experts in nutrition and sport science. The whole performance coach issue is not new to the Jays - hitting guru Steve Springer has done an excellent job working with Jays prospects on the mental side of the game, but the hiring of Mugford is a huge investment in the players in the organization, and takes the sport science angle to a higher level.

   The hirings continued last week when the Blue Jays hired world-travelling Gil Kim from the Rangers (who he was scouting for) to become their first-ever Director of Player Development, overseeing the club's minor league operations.  Kim has extensive playing experience from time spent in the Netherlands, China, Spain, and Venezuela, soaking up as much baseball knowledge as he could at each stop.  Like Atkins, Gil speaks Spanish, and has the ability to develop a rapport with Latin players, which gives an indication about where the team may be headed as far as scouting is concerned.  The club did lose Ismael Cruz to the Dodgers after the season ended, and while they may decide to promote his replacement from within, the Indians and Director of Latin American operations Ramon Pena parted ways last week, and it may be just a matter of time before he's introduced in that role with the Blue Jays.

   The most recent hiring this past weekend was Mike Murov in yet another newly created post, that of Baseball Operations Director.  Murov had been with the Red Sox since 2010, and will be responsible for creating and implementing decision-making processes, according to a press release. He will help in the preparation of financial, statistical, and contractual information, coordinating contract negotiation, and preparing for arbitration hearings.  One of this last duties with the Red Sox was to help put together a study on Price prior to his signing with Boston.

  So, looking from a glance, the Blue Jays have hired an expert that will develop the conditioning, nutrition, and psychological aspects of their players, as well as a co-ordinator of the minors who has a background in working with Latin players, expanded their analytics department, and have hired a specialist in contract negotiations.   This is another sign that the Shapiro regime is in things for the long term, and while Blue Jays fans may be more concerned about the present more than the future, the organization does appear to be building a template to gain a competitive advantage for years to come.   A MLB front office is a complicated, many-headed beast, and Shapiro is at least attempting to tame that monster, and it's unlikely that he's done just yet.

   For further reading on the analytics-driven growth of MLB front offices, here is an excellent look at that trend by Fangraphs' Dave Cameron.  The Blue Jays appear to be headed in the direction of what Cameron calls a "classically hierarchical (vertical) structure."

What (If Anything) to Expect From Joe Biagini

 With the 26th selection in the 2015 Rule 5 draft, the Blue Jays selected RHP Joe Biagini from the Giants.

  The Blue Jays have been noticeably quiet on Rule 5 day, after using it very effectively in the first years of the franchise to select players like Willie Upshaw, Jim Gott, Manuel Lee, Kelly Gruber, and one of the greatest sluggers in team history, George Bell.

  The Rule 5 draft was originally developed to keep teams from hoarding minor league talent; it essentially put a limit on the length of time a team could keep a player in the minors without placing him on their 40-man roster.  Last year's draft was one of the better loads of talent in some time, but most of the talent was gone by the time the Blue Jays turn came up.  Changes to eligiblity rules several years ago now allow teams to hang onto their talent for an extra year, so the Rule 5 lost some of its luster.  And even though it's a risk to stash a Rule 5 draftee on a big league roster for a year, teams have found value in it by changing their preference from projectable players to ones who can fill an immediate need.


  Pickings were slimmer this year, but it helped that a number of teams (15 in all) passed before the Blue Jays, meaning that Biagini was actually the 10th player picked.

  A number of other sites have weighed in on Biagini, and truth be told, there's not a lot more that I can offer.  But I'll try.

  Bay Area native Biagini was taken in the 26th round of the 2011 draft out of the University of California-Davis, by way of San Mateo Jr College.  He sat out a year between the two schools because of an apparent arm issue. A good summer in the Cape Cod League the summer before his draft year boosted his stock considerably, and he signed for a surprising $175K bonus.

  He signed too late to play in 2011, so Biagini was sent to the Northwest League the following year, and even made it as far as Low A before 2012 finished.  As one might expect with a low draft choice, he was brought along slowly after that, one step at a time.  He has been ranked in the 20s in most Giants' Top Prospects lists that I've seen.

  Here's what Josh Norris of Baseball America had to say about Biagini prior to the Rule 5 draft:

    Following the draft, Norris called Biagini " (a) savvy righthander (who) doesn’t possess a plus pitch, but average arsenal and pitchability makes stuff tick up."  MLB.com calls his fastball a plus pitch, sitting from 91-94, and touching 96.  He trusts his change-up more than his curve, although the latter has been described as flashing plus.  His strikeout totals have never been high, topping out at 7.4K/9 in his first full season, but his command has improved considerably, as his walks/9 have dropped from 3.9 to 2.3 over three seasons.  Biagini does not give up a lot of home run balls, either.  One graphic kind of jumped out during the course of researching him:

MLBfarm.com 

   Clearly, Biagini pitches to contact, and I would hazard a guess that his fastball is of the two-seamer variety.  MLB.com suggests that he has a shot at a back-of-the-rotation spot, but with that part of the Blue Jays roster more than full at the moment, perhaps the club is thinking of auditioning him in the departed Liam Hendriks' role in long relief, especially with new GM Ross Atkins expressing a preference for durable bullpen arms who can get guys out.  The 6'4", groundball-inducing Biagini fills the first role, but not necessarily the second, with the traditional bullpen arm being of the flame-throwing variety.  Pitching in relief, Hendriks experienced a bump in his fastball velocity this season, and it's likely the same could be projected for Biagini.  He already generates plenty of weak contact, so maybe this represents a bit of a paradigm shift for the Jays - K's from relievers are nice, but with the vastly improved Jays' defence, may not be a necessity.

  Whatever the case, Biagini still has to be considered a long-shot to break camp with the team next March.  They either have to keep him on the roster for the entire season, or offer him back to the Giants for half his draft price of $50 000.  The Jays could also try to work out a deal with the Giants, who currently have no room on their 40-man roster.  Just the same, the cost to bring him into Spring Training is minimal, and well worth the risk.  He sounds very much like a two-pitch guy whose change may be made even more effective by a possible bump in velo.