Jud Fabian Joins The Party, Matt Barnes Is Sticking Around

Lots of goings on in the baseball world. I’m not a huge All Star guy so I haven’t yet mentioned the All Star game or any of its associated promotions or competitions or other baseball-adjacent things here at Sox Outsider. It’s all well and good and no judgement if you enjoy it, but it’s not something I’m looking to cover here. Unless Xander or Rafael Devers hits a homer off some sad NL pitcher. I might write about that.

In other Red Sox news…

The MLB Draft Continues

As a concept the draft sucks. As a reality, it’s a ton of fun. The idea of assigning players to individual teams and thus removing a huge amount of their ability to negotiate is fundamentally anti-worker and really, anti-American. It exists to suppress the players salaries and it does a fantastic job of doing that.

With that out of the way, wow is it fun! The best part of almost any fantasy season is the draft, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to say the best part of any baseball season is the draft, and in fact I wouldn’t go near saying that, the draft is certainly one of the fun parts. New players are exciting! Watching your team go through a draft is great fun and it doesn’t hurt that the Red Sox seem to be doing a bang-up job on this particular one.

Yesterday I wrote about Boston’s first round draft pick, Marcelo Mayer, a shortstop out of a San Diego area high school. He’s the kind of player you can dream on. Yes, that’s a cliche, but it’s a cliche for a reason. He’s tall, strong, smooth defensively, can make good contact with the ball, and scouts feel he could develop power as he ages. He has the makings of a star. In 10 years Mayer will be the starting shortstop for the World Champion Boston Red Sox, or at least that’s the hope.

Yesterday the Red Sox were at it again as rounds two through 10 of the MLB Draft happened. There was craziness, there was silliness, there was bland name reading over a conference call, because we all know that’s what drives the kids nuts-o. Oh, do they love a good conference call! Those kids!

Anyway, enough about the kids. Let’s talk about those rounds. The Red Sox selected, well, a bunch of guys. And they all sound pretty good, of course. Imagine if they drafted some guy who didn’t sound great on his draft day? He’s short, squat not very athletic, and pees a bit when he sneezes. You don’t hear that enough on MLB Network.

In reality though, it’s not hard to hear the particulars of any of the draftees and imagine them as an important part of a future Red Sox team. I won’t go into the specifics of all the guys they drafted Monday because well, I don’t know the specifics of all the guys they drafted Monday. I haven’t scouted any of these guys and if I know anything at all, it would be from some other source that you can just as easily read as I can.

There is one guy though. In the second round Boston took University of Florida centerfielder Jud Fabian. Fabian is interesting beyond being a second round pick in the draft. It wasn’t long ago that scouts thought Fabian would be a top 10 pick in this draft, if not a top five. He is a fast runner, he plays plus centerfield defense, and he has a ton of power. It’s an exciting package and you can see him as a starting centerfielder who hits bombs from the top of the lineup if you squint just a bit.

The problem, and the reason Fabian wasn’t picked in the top 10, but went 40th instead, was his tendency to strike out. He has what scouts call “swing and miss” in his game, and that lack of bat-to-ball skills means it’s harder to reach that power potential, to put it into games. It’s also harder to be a star player when you’re striking out a ton. It puts a ton of pressure on all the other at-bats to be good ones. If you’re striking out 30 percent of the time, you only have 70 percent of your at-bats to generate all of your offensive value from.

So Fabian has this problem, and it could sink him as a prospect. It’s possible he’ll get into pro ball and just won’t make enough contact to ever make the majors. But there are two things to like about this pick. First, they took Fabian at 40, not four. The Red Sox already have Marcelo Mayer! That’s not to say you throw pick 40 away because you’re excited about what you did at pick 4, but Mayer’s upside and relative stability as a prospect might give the Red Sox a bit more wiggle room to take a chance on Fabian’s upside, and they can do that without sinking their draft if he doesn’t develop.

The other thing to like about this pick is Fabian’s defense. Coming into the draft I had thought he was some sort of corner outfield masher guy, but that’s not the case. He’s got impressive power, it’s true, but he’s a good defender at an important up-the-middle defensive position. If he never becomes a great hitter, he could still make the majors as a backup outfielder, or maybe a defense first outfielder, somewhere in the mold of Jackie Bradley, Jr. Despite some strong seasons at the plate, Bradley was mostly below average offensively during his time with the Red Sox. He was close enough to league average though that his excellent defense made him a valuable player. That’s not a bad (relative) downside. And for funsies, guess where the Red Sox took him? The 40th pick, the same pick they just used yesterday on Jud Fabian.

So Fabian doesn’t have to turn into a star to be a useful player for the Red Sox, but he does possess star potential. If he can harness that power a bit, cut down on the swinging strikes, there’s a shot he’s an above average hitting good defensive center fielder. That’s a star player, right there.

Time will tell as it always does with draft classes, unless time stops, in which case we have other problems to worry about beyond the Red Sox 2021 draft class, but at least right now from where I’m sitting, I like the shot taken with Fabian. He might not be the best guy who was available at 40, but he has a chance to be, and that upside is worth the risk in drafting him.

The rest of Boston’s draft

Sorry, I don’t know much about any of them. I’d heard of Fabian and Mayer before the draft and had some idea of who they were and what they could do, but the list of future Red Sox taken in rounds three through 10 yesterday may as well be composed entirely of made up names. They weren’t funny enough to invent, so they likely weren’t, but if the Red Sox take Snackers McPee or Burpers Buttson with their 11th pick, I’ll definitely get suspicious.

For your draft information, check out FanGraphs’ coverage, Keith Law at The Athletic, and for Red Sox specific content, I highly recommend Sox Prospects. They’ll have everything you need there, so you can just read them and skip the national guys if you want to, but I like to get information from multiple sources when possible. But if you only have time for one, Sox Prospects is the place to go.

Matt Barnes Is Staying In Boston

This actually happened before the draft but I was so focused on draft study that I didn’t write about it at the time. My apologies. Time to rectify that. Red Sox reliever Matt Barnes was scheduled to be a free agent following this 2021 season, but he came to agreement with the Red Sox on a two-year contract extension that will keep him in a Red Sox uniform through 2023 and potentially through 2024 if the Red Sox exercise their $8 million team option on that season.

This is good news as Barnes has reinvented himself a bit this season. I wrote about Barnes back in early April and what I said back then has miraculously held true to the present day. The big change in Barnes hasn’t been his pitch mix, or his velocity or the break on his pitches. It’s first pitch strikes. Barnes has been attacking the strike zone on pitch one of each at-bat. In his career Barnes had thrown a first pitch strike a hair under 60 percent of the time. This season it’s up to 70 percent. He’s getting ahead of hitters early and that leaves them vulnerable to chasing his crazy curveball out of the zone or his upper 90s fastball at the letters.

Because, here’s the funny thing, he’s not actually throwing more strikes at all. It’s just first pitch strikes! In fact, the overall percentage of pitches he’s thrown in the strike zone has barely moved since last season and is essentially right around his career average. Barnes is getting ahead and once he does that, he can more easily induce hitters, now behind in the count, to chase pitches outside the zone with more frequency.

Anyway, it’s an interesting contract with Barnes essentially getting what Blake Treinen got from the Dodgers last off-season. If Barnes continues to be this good, it’s a steal for the Red Sox. If not, well not great I guess, but the money spent won’t be a huge issue for them. This is betting on Matt Barnes improvement being real and so far since I wrote about it in April, it’s remained pretty constant. Barnes isn’t and likely never will be the best reliever in baseball, but he’s a very good one and for a team without a lot of stability in their bullpen, having him locked up for a few more years with a team option (Chaim Bloom loves his team options!) seems like a smart play to make.

The All Star Break

As I said, I don’t plan on covering the All Star game. Depending on what happens with the last 20 rounds of the draft today (Tuesday) I may have a post on that for you. Otherwise, I’ll be trying to get around to a few mid-season posts about the team, where they are in the standings, what needs to be done, etcetera. If there’s something, some angle or topic, you’d like to read about, drop it in the comments section.

As always, thanks for reading Sox Outsider. If you enjoy the newsletter, don’t be shy about telling a friend, or posting about it. That sort of word of mouth is really the only way to grow something like this. I appreciate it.