JJ Wetherholt is one of the biggest All-Star snubs this year, but he still had a pretty great end to the first half of his rookie season. On Friday, he agreed to an eight-year contract extension that runs until the end of the 2034 season. Wetherholt is hitting .259/.356/.399 for a 114 wRC+ and 3.5 WAR, the last number leading the St. Louis Cardinals and ranking second among all second basemen, in a virtual tie with Brice Turang and trailing only Luis Arraez, whose advantage of two-tenths of a win comes from his time as a DH. The eight-year deal guarantees that Wetherholt will make $112.5 million, with the potential to net an additional $20 million from MVP votes and All-Star appearances. He also receives a $2 million signing bonus this fall, which ensures he’ll get something soon if the upcoming CBA negotiation proves to be an extended one.
We can argue all day whether or not Wetherholt is the most glaring All-Star omission this year, but with eight of the top 10 second basemen by WAR not making the cut, and a whole bunch of other positions to dig through, I’d have to write a very different article to tackle that question. But it’s inarguable that Wetherholt is having a marvelous rookie season, and is one of the favorites to win NL Rookie of the Year honors when it’s over. Read the rest of this entry »
Brendan Gawlowski: Hello everybody from steamy Philly
2:00
Brendan Gawlowski: I just got back to my hotel from the coffee shop, please give me a couple minutes to get settled, my apologies
2:07
Brendan Gawlowski: Okay, thanks for your patience
2:07
liljebbie10: Do you think Seth Hernandez will end the year in AA? If so, it seems that end of next year is in play if he stays healthy? Is he the top pitching prospect in baseball at the moment?
2:08
Brendan Gawlowski: 50/50, don’t think it impacts his big league arrival time one way or the other
2:09
rainingmozzarella: Hello! Sad Dbacks fan here. Am I wrong to be underwhelmed by the team’s draft? It seems they targeted a lot of safety and low upside players after the first two picks. I was especially unimpressed by their third and fourth rounders.
Today, we have the first of several Killers two-fers, with a pair of lists covering the right side of the infield. While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of a contender (Playoff Odds of at least 10%, a criterion that 22 of the 30 teams meet) and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far (which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season), I have also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. That may suggest that some of these teams will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because their performance at that spot is worth a look. All statistics are through July 12.
Jordan Walker was down to his last swing. Then he got another, and another, and another. When he finally stopped swinging, he was the Home Run Derby champ.
The Cardinals right fielder won the 2026 Home Run Derby in Philadelphia on Monday with five straight do-or-die swings. Hometown favorite Kyle Schwarber led off the final round and hit 11. That brought Walker to the plate under a chorus of boos from fans at Citizens Bank Park — boos that persisted and only grew stronger with every home run.
Walker tallied just eight homers in his 15 allotted swings for the final round, but new Derby rules this year did not allow rounds to end on a home run, so batters could keep swinging so long as they kept going yard. And so Walker kept swinging — and kept going yard. He launched his ninth and 10th long balls before crushing a 450-foot shot to left center to tie Schwarber. Walker took a brief pause to catch his breath, then took one last swing to end it. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and FanGraphs lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen banter about Zack Wheeler declining MLB’s last-minute All-Star invitation, JJ Wetherholt’s long-term contract extension, and how the Futures Game and amateur draft fell flat as spectator events, then discuss the top tier of draft picks, some surprising picks and revamped approaches by teams under new management, why better data hasn’t made teams much better at drafting, why no team has tried blowing by its bonus allotment, and more, plus closing banter about Bryce Harper’s explanation of his video message for a sports-betting addict.
In a race for a playoff spot, every edge matters. Yet all too often, for reasons that extend beyond a player’s statistics, managers and general managers fail to make the moves that could improve their teams, allowing meager production to fester at the risk of smothering a club’s postseason hopes. In Baseball Prospectus’ 2007 book, It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over, I compiled a historical All-Star squad of ignominy, identifying players at each position whose performances had dragged their teams down in tight races: the Replacement-Level Killers. I’ve revisited the concept numerous times at multiple outlets and have adapted it at FanGraphs in an expanded format since 2018.
When it comes to defining replacement-level play, we needn’t hew too closely to exactitude. Any team that’s gotten less than 0.6 WAR from a position to this point — prorating to 1.0 over a full season — is generally in the ballpark, though my final lists also incorporate our Depth Charts rest-of-season projections, which may nose them over the line. Sometimes, acceptable or even above-average defense (which may depend upon which metric one uses) coupled with total ineptitude on offense is enough to flag a team. Sometimes a club may be well ahead of replacement level but has lost a key contributor to injury; sometimes the reverse is true, but the team hasn’t yet climbed above that first-cut threshold. As with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of hardcore pornography, I know replacement level when I see it. Read the rest of this entry »
Break out your biggest, dumbest hats, friends. It’s time for the Derby. The 2026 Home Run Derby is at 8:00 PM Eastern tonight at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. It will be streaming on Netflix, which means that in just a few hours, my parents (and probably your parents too) will discover that they have no way of watching it. If the streaming service’s official trailer for the event is any indicator, the action will be pixelated electric. There’s no Statcast broadcast this year, but the Derby will apparently be a crossover event with Hot Ones, the show where celebrities answer questions while eating chicken wings. If you tune in too late for the dingers, you can console yourself by watching Will Ferrell get very sweaty.
Every year’s preview contains a section in which we bemoan the absence of some of the game’s biggest stars, and though it would be great to see Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, or Yordan Alvarez, we honestly can’t complain about this field at all. It’s fantastic. It’s got three of the top four home run hitters this season, and six of the top 20. It’s got hometown favorites. It’s got one surefire Hall of Famer. It’s got a mix of first-timers and previous winners and runners-up. It’s got a mix of young players and established stars. It’s got participants from four countries. Most of all, it’s filled from top to bottom with jaw-dropping, light-tower, into-the-next-county power.
Every single participant has plus bat speed and a huge hard-hit rate. We don’t have any filler. Nobody feels like a last-minute replacement, and nobody made it just because of a fluky first half or because they can combine average power with a high pulled-fly ball rate. Every single participant can mash, and none of them would be a surprise winner. Moreover, although practitioners of this brutalist version of baseball can sometimes struggle toward the end of the competition, when they’re tuckered out from all those daddy hacks, that may be less of an issue thanks to this year’s new format, which we’ll get to in a moment.
The ballpark should also help. Citizens Bank Park is a notoriously cozy venue that enables home run hitting. Statcast’s park factors rate it the fifth-friendliest home run park in baseball. However, that number isn’t exactly balanced. It plays roughly average for righties, while for lefties, it’s second only to Coors Field. The five lefties in the field should have the advantage.
The Rules
This year’s format change is drastic. After using a timer-based system since 2015, the league is going to a swing-based format. That’s actually different from the pre-timer format. In the past, players got a certain number of outs, which is to say non-homers, in each round. This year, it’s about swings. Each player gets 20 swings in the first round, and 15 in the second round and the final. However, the last swing of each round works like the old out system. You can’t end a round on a home run, so as long as you keep hitting homers, the round can go all night long.
This is a clever wrinkle, because it means that no matter how far behind he is, each player technically has a chance until he makes that final out. No longer will we watch players fall behind and know that, even with two minutes still on the clock, all their efforts will be futile. It’s also an annoying wrinkle, though, because that final ball has officially been branded the “T-Mobile Magenta Ball.” I’m not sure the enjoyment derived from giggling about the fact that this sounds like an embarrassing medical affliction will be worth the stultifying quantity of cellphone advertising that’s about to slam into our skulls.
As in the two previous Derbies, the first round will function as pool play. The four hitters with the most homers in the first round will enter a bracket, seeded by their first-round totals. Any ties in the first round will be decided by the length of each player’s longest home run. In the semifinals and final, the tiebreaker will be a three-swing swing-off.
The format contains one more odd wrinkle. In previous years, the order of the first-round pool play was determined by how many home runs each player hit in the first half. This year, the rules say the hitters “will hit in an order determined by the Commissioner’s Office.” I have no idea what would constitute an optimized order to the commissioner. However, I’m sure that somebody out there will disapprove of that order, so I hope they appreciate the gift of having a reason to complain about Rob Manfred before the Derby even starts.
The format change involves some tradeoffs. We lose the immediacy and adrenaline rush of a ticking clock. However, we gain the ability to enjoy each home run. No longer will we need a split screen or a camera that careens wildly from the infield to the outfield in order to see where the previous ball landed without missing the current swing. The big situations will get a moment to breathe, as will the big sluggers.
The new format is also a bit more fair. In previous Derbies, the pitcher wasn’t allowed throw the next ball until the previous one landed, but some teams – I’m looking at you, 2018 Bryce Harper and 2018 Bryce Harper’s dad – simply flouted that rule and gained a huge advantage. That will be off the table. We’ll also be free of gimmicky distance-based bonus rounds. Another effect of the new format is that a bad pitcher might be less of a handicap. Without a time limit, there’s no downside to taking a couple extra pitches and offering only at the tenderest of meatballs.
As for why the league changed the format again, why it’s constantly changing the format, I can’t really tell you. I’m excited about this new version. I think it’ll be more watchable than the timed version. But honestly, whatever problem the league has with the Home Run Derby, I think the format is rarely the culprit. The Derby always starts to drag halfway through because it runs for three hours, and that’s simply too long. Even the best, most exciting Derby is not a Christopher Nolan movie. It’s a one-note symphony, a fireworks display, and fireworks displays rarely last more than half an hour because eventually all those bangs and zooms start to blend together and get monotonous.
In order to stretch a Home Run Derby out for three hours, you need a bracket, multiple rounds, rest periods, convoluted bonus systems, indecipherable graphics, interviews with celebrities you wish you’d never heard of, and a full hour of commercials. You spend the whole time waiting for the good part, and because the contestants get physically tired, the good part can sometimes be a letdown. If the goal is to make the Home Run Derby as exciting as it can be, then the solution is to bring it down to a brisk 90 minutes. That probably won’t happen, because it means less advertising money, but changing the format is never going to solve that particular problem.
Alright, you’ve waited long enough. Let’s get to the large home-run-hitting men!
No matter what criteria you’re using to assess the Derby participants, Schwarber has to be a favorite. He’ll be in front of a raucous home crowd, and he has a history of showing up in big moments. At 33, he’s on the best two-year stretch of his entire career. He leads baseball with 32 home runs. As a matter of fact, since his debut in 2015, his 372 homers are second only to Aaron Judge’s 385 (and as Judge will be on the IL for at least another month, probably longer, Schwarber may just pass him). Schwarber has Derby experience, finishing second behind Harper in 2018 and going out in the first round in 2022. Maybe even more relevant considering this year’s format, he absolutely blew the roof off last year’s All-Star Game by laying waste to the swing-off.
Schwarber’s average launch angle of 21.8 degrees is the highest of the field by a mile and the sixth-highest among all qualified players. His 19.3% barrel rate ranks second in the field and fifth in baseball. Not only does it help that he is a lefty at Citizens Bank, but he is a pull machine. His average attack direction – the horizontal angle of his bat at the moment of impact – is 10 degrees toward the pull side, one of the most extreme marks in the game, and 16.9% of his batted balls are pulled fly balls, the highest mark in the group by a lot. At 25%, Schwarber also has the third-lowest chase rate in the field, and as players can take pitches to their hearts’ content waiting for the right one, that could end up being a difference-maker. But these are just numbers, and the argument for Schwarber is more visceral than that.
Ben Rice
Ben Rice debuted in 2024, and he’s done nothing but crush dingers ever since. He hit 26 last year, and he already has 29 this year. That’s the third most in baseball and the second most among Derby contestants. Still, if there is an underdog in this group, it’s probably Rice. The Big Grain (as everyone will soon by calling him) has the slowest bat speed of the field by quite a bit. He just doesn’t have the top-end power of the rest of the field. His average home run is the shortest of the bunch, and he’s benefited from Yankee Stadium’s shorter right-field dimensions. However, you know who had the shortest average homer in last year’s Derby? Winner Cal Raleigh. Additionally, as a lefty in Citizens Bank Park, Rice will have a similar advantage to the one he has at Yankee Stadium, and despite his relative shortcomings, he’s certainly not a weakling.
Rice ranks third among the group in barrel rate and home runs per fly ball. He leads all of baseball with a .320 isolated slugging percentage. He’s also coming into the Derby on a tear. Over his final 12 games of the first half, Rice batted .349 with a 259 wRC+ and seven home runs.
My biggest concern is that Rice is having his dad pitch to him. Now, Rice’s dad did pitch in college and has been throwing him BP for his entire life, and Rice also has the second-lowest chase rate of the field, but still, I think I’d rather have Dino Ebel.
Junior Caminero
If you’re simply looking for the most powerful player in the Derby, Caminero is your guy. His 28 home runs rank fourth in the majors. He has the fastest bat speed and the longest swing of any qualified player. He leads the Derby Field in 90th-percentile exit velocity, max exit velocity, fast-swing rate, and blast rate. The one thing he struggles at is getting the ball in the air. With a swing path tilt of just 24 degrees and an attack angle of just eight degrees, Caminero possesses one of the flattest swings in all of baseball. He’s got the second-lowest fly ball rate of the group, and his average fly ball travels the shortest. Hard-hit line drives are fantastic in baseball, but they can be killers in the Derby.
Still, Caminero has to be a favorite. He finished second in last year’s Derby, and the fact that he’s back certainly indicates that he’s in it to win it. He’s running it back with Rays major league field coordinator Tomas Francisco pitching to him again. Moreover, Caminero can hit absolutely anything out of the park. Here’s a side-by-side pitch chart of the home runs Caminero and Caglianone have hit. Caglianone has a sweet spot. He needs the ball middle up. But Caminero doesn’t care at all where you throw the ball.
Of course, this effect might matter just a little bit less in an untimed Derby, because batters can take as many pitches as they’d like, waiting for one that’s right in their sweet spot. But nobody’s perfect at this. Every pitch looks juicy in the Derby. And for Caminero, every pitch really will be.
Caminero is also coming into the Derby red-hot. Over his last 19 games, he’s batting .292 with a 227 wRC+, an .861 slugging percentage, and 13 home runs. Yeah, 13 homers in 19 games is pretty good.
Jordan Walker
The argument for Walker is the same as the argument for last year’s winner, Cal Raleigh: This is just his year. After big prospect hype and even bigger struggles in his first few seasons in the majors, Walker is finally putting it all together. He’s coming into the break with a 143 wRC+ and 22 home runs. He’s finally figured out how to lift the ball enough to take advantage all the power his 6-foot-6 frame can generate. Walker ranks second in the field in a bunch of big categories: bat speed, average exit velocity, 90th-percentile exit velocity, max exit velocity, and fast-swing rate. He’s also yet another participant coming into the Derby on a tear. Over his last 12 games, he’s running a 208 wRC+ with four homers and a .707 slugging percentage. He’s got his normal BP pitcher, St. Louis bullpen catcher Kleininger Teran, throwing to him. However, Walker’s launch angle is still the question.
Just 5% of Walker’s batted balls have been pulled fly balls, and even if you also add line drives in there to look for pulled-air percentage, he’s still at the bottom of the field at 15%. He just struggles to get the ball in the air, and it’s hard to win a Derby that way. But it’s not impossible. Just ask Juan Soto and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. If Walker does win it all, it will be an unforgettable laser show. Also, he has been practicing:
Munetaka Murakami
The final addition to the field was an exciting one. Murakami hit at least 28 home runs in all six of his first full NPB seasons. Injuries shortened his 2025 campaign to just 56 games, but he managed to launch an astonishing 22 dingers during that stretch. Over a 162-game season, that would be a 63-homer pace. Even though injury has shortened his 2026 campaign too, he’s still on pace for 34.
Murakami is also jumping straight off the IL and into the Derby, so don’t let his relatively low total of 20 home runs fool you. He reached that figure despite missing 35 games with a hamstring strain, and only returned to the White Sox lineup on Friday. And don’t overlook him based on the fact that his top-end power is in the middle of this particular pack. He always hits the ball hard. He leads the field in hard-hit rate, average exit velocity, barrel rate, home runs per plate appearance, and home runs per fly ball. All he does is find a way to put the ball over the wall.
Here’s an example. Home run derbies are all about pulling the ball in the air, because the wall is shortest down the line. But Murakami doesn’t care about that. He’s great at hitting home runs even to the deepest part of the ballpark. Center field is where home runs go to die, but he’s tied with Nick Kurtz for the major league lead with nine home runs to straightaway center. That’s 41% of his homers going to the deepest part of the park, the highest mark in baseball (minimum 15 straightaway fly balls). Caminero is the only other member of the field above 30%.
The two concerns about Murakami before this season were that he might not be able to handle velocity, and that he definitely couldn’t hit breaking stuff. Neither of those will matter at all here. And the swing-based format might help him most of all. Murakami has the lowest chase rate in the field, and not by a small margin. He’s great at waiting for his pitch. He is made for home run derbies, and maybe for this format in particular.
Willson Contreras
I don’t really have a way to look this up, but I suspect Contreras is the first player ever to participate in the Derby in the middle of a suspension. He’s currently four games into a five-game suspension for his role in a June 30 benches-clearing brawl. For a few reasons – he was responding to racially inflammatory language, he was not in the best place emotionally due to the devastation in his home of Venezuela – Contreras came off as at least something of a sympathetic figure, even though he removed his helmet and threw it in the melee with the same motion as a Tim Tebow jump-pass. I’m about as pacifist as they come, but even I must admit there’s something poetic about watching a man use a piece of protective equipment as a weapon. Sure, you can beat your swords into plowshares, but that doesn’t have to stop you from launching those plowshares right at somebody’s noggin, now does it?
At 419 feet, Contreras has the longest average home run of anybody in the Derby. Wait, sorry, that’s his brother William Contreras. It’s a talented family is all I’m saying. In fact, Willson actually asked his brother to pitch to him in the Derby, which would have been so much fun. Unfortunately, William declined. Instead, Boston’s interim bench coach José David Flores will be stepping in. It won’t be as fun a story, but it’s definitely a wiser choice, as Flores throws BP to Contreras all the time.
Contreras possesses the game’s third-highest pull rate at 54.7%. The lack of red cells in the table above may make him look like something of an underdog, but I actually think he’s an interesting dark horse candidate. Being right-handed doesn’t help, and he’s definitely not the most powerful swinger of the bunch, but he doesn’t have any blue cells either. He’s toward the top in pull rate and pulled-fly ball rate. He also sounds genuinely excited to participate, and he has a sound strategy, telling reporters, “I think Philadelphia is a good stadium to hit. The ball carries a lot, and the key for me in the Home Run Derby is not trying to do too much or trying to hit it a long way. I already have a plan on what to do.”
Earlier, I mentioned that Caminero can hit any pitch out of the ballpark regardless of where it’s located. Contreras is similarly indiscriminate, but with regard to pitch type. Left-handed hitters Harper, Caglianone, Murakami, and Rice are fastball mashers. Each of them has hit at least 45% of his homers on four-seam fastballs. Fellow righties Caminero and Walker, along with the lefty Schwarber, are around 30%. Contreras is all the way down at 15%. This might not help him all that much when all he’s getting is batting-practice fastballs, but it does speak to an ability to send any pitch he sees over the fence.
Bryce Harper
Harper enters the fray coming off a very weird week. The announcement that he was entering the Derby came mere hours after the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that he had recorded a video message for FanDuel to a debt-ridden gambling addict who had lost $1.5 million to the company. However, the next day, Front Office Sports reported that the video had simply been ordered through Cameo, where anyone can buy a personalized video from Bryce Harper for $899. Harper definitely should have gotten suspicious when, according to FOS, the video was purchased by a FanDuel employee who also provided Harper with the script, but the story is not nearly as unsavory as it originally seemed. Why is Bryce Harper, who will make roughly $900 dollars for each 1.5 pitches thrown in a Phillies game this year, on Cameo at all? That’s a good question, but one for another day. The question for today is whether this bizarre situation will give Harper extra motivation to win back some love by mashing baseballs. God knows high-level athletes have used lesser slights to fuel themselves.
Harper is a hometown favorite and the only previous winner in the field. He also has perhaps the best pitcher in the field. Although he won the 2018 event with his father pitching to him, this time he selected Dodgers third base coach Dino Ebel. Ebel is as renowned as a BP pitcher can be, which is why he’s pitched in the Derby four times, including 2024, when he and Teoscar Hernández won the whole thing. Ebel also pitched to Schwarber during last year’s All-Star Game swing-off.
The 33 year-old Harper is running his lowest exit velocity and hard-hit rate of the decade, and at this point, his ferocious uppercut is far from the most powerful in the field. He’s got the lowest hard-hit rate, average exit velocity, barrel rate, home run per fly ball rate, and he’s second worst in bat speed, home run distance, and pulled-air rate. I don’t think anyone would be shocked to see Harper rise to the occasion and channel his precocious past, but at this point, the numbers say he probably shouldn’t be the favorite.
Jac Caglianone
At first blush, Caglianone might look like the odd man out here. He’s the low man by quite a bit in terms of home runs. His 15 homers put him a 12-way tie for 49th in baseball. His 4.3% home run rate per plate appearance is the lowest of the field. His dad is pitching to him. But Caglianone is a gargantuan slugger who was built for the Derby. He has the third-highest hard-hit rate among qualified players and the second highest in the field. He’s just one year removed from a rookie campaign in which he bashed 19 home runs over just 62 games, a 47-homer pace. And luckily, he doesn’t have to do any throwing. Perhaps you’ll recall that Statcast created a metric called blasts when they introduced bat-tracking data. The loose definition is a ball that is squared up with a bat speed above 82 mph. This season, 23.5% of his batted balls have been blasts, third highest in the field and ninth highest in baseball.
I showed you the pitch chart of Caglianone’s home runs earlier, with all of them coming belt high and up. It’s the opposite of what you’d expect from lefty sluggers, who typically drop their bat head on the ball and finish with their hands high. There’s nothing wrong with tomahawking high pitches like Caglianone does, but it tends to lead to a lot more line drives and topspin. Just 5.6% of Caglianone’s batted balls have been pulled fly balls, the second-lowest mark in the field. It also means that Caglianone needs to pick his pitches carefully, and that might be tough, as he has the highest chase rate among the eight contestants. He also has the fewest home runs per plate appearance in the group. However, on the flip side, he has the longest average homer at 414 feet. Now, some of this may come from playing at Kauffman Stadium, but it also speaks to the fact that when Caglianone gets ahold of the ball, it can go an awfully long way.
Who’s going to win?
Look, we never really know who’s going to win. We do the best we can with the information we have, but there’s so much randomness involved. That said, it’s Kyle Schwarber. After last year, I just can’t pick against Schwarber.
I had the pleasure of attending the 2026 Futures Game yesterday in Philadelphia. Good weather, a big crowd, and great rosters — this game was especially loaded with pitching, which isn’t always the case — made for a fun event.
The nature of the game makes it an imperfect place to evaluate talent. It’s a showcase environment where big tools stand out more than refined skills, and, particularly in a seven-inning game, there’s precious little time for players to show off their range of abilities. Below you’ll find thoughts and reflections on the day, which also included batting practice and pregame defensive work. Inevitably, given the volume of players, some of these write-ups are fairly short, more of a weather report than anything else. In other cases, players moved the needle for me, or at least inspired things for us to monitor over the rest of the season. If you want the full monty on these guys, all of them have full scouting reports on our team-specific lists. We’ve also opted to tuck this recap into our draft coverage navigation widget. If you missed our recap of Day 1, or any of our other coverage, be sure to check it out. Read the rest of this entry »
Below is a team-by-team analysis of last night’s draft activity. Remember that you can find more detailed scouting reports and tool grades for the players drafted yesterday over on The Board. The positions below are what we have them projected as on The Board, not necessarily what the player was announced as. For pitchers, we have a role designated below: starter (SP), or single-inning or multi-inning reliever (SIRP and MIRP).
Arizona was in a tough spot, caught in the middle of the round just after the more skillful hitters (who are usually their type) were picked. They were left with a choice between a few hitters with balanced skill sets but bottom-dwelling defensive fits (like Logan Hughes) or good up-the-middle defenders with hit tool risk. They ended up taking a player from the latter category in Helfrick, who can frame, throw, and has power that he might not tap into consistently due to strikeouts. He could be a Mike Zunino reboot of sorts, which would be a good outcome at the 15th pick. Bryant has a nasty fastball/curveball combo and a projectable frame. We had him ranked 20 spots lower than he was picked, but we don’t really consider him to be a reach; the players in that range are comparable. Kerce has a good shot to be a speedy utility guy, Dowd needs to get stronger, and McDevitt is a test for a player dev group that hasn’t done well with pitchers. His fastball plays, but can they find a secondary pitch? — ELRead the rest of this entry »
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