The Miami Marlins are coming off of a 100-loss season, and a lack of bats had a lot to do with that. The NL East club scored the fewest runs in the senior circuit. The arms weren’t all that much better — only the Colorado Rockies allowed more runs — but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Sandy Alcantara and Eury Pérez are on track to return from Tommy John surgery, while Jesús Luzardo and Max Meyer should be healthy following comparably minor injuries. Moreover, the organization’s top pitching prospects have high ceilings. Pitching — especially young pitching — is the organization’s greatest strength.
Miami’s President of Baseball Operations largely agreed with that opinion when I presented it to him at last month’s GM Meetings in San Antonio.
“I think so,” Peter Bendix told me. “I hope so. We have a lot of guys I’m really excited about. I think that next year a lot of these guys have things to prove, whether that’s health, bouncing back from a disappointing season, just establishing themselves, or building on what they did last year.”
A pair of pitchers who are likely a few years away from reaching the big leagues stand out. One of them is is a now-20-year-old southpaw whom the Marlins drafted 35th overall in 2023 out of Andover, Massachusetts’s Phillips Academy.
“Thomas White is maybe the best left-handed pitching prospect in baseball,” said Bendix, whose opinion is by no means singular (Noah Schultz and one or two others are also in the conversation). “If you look at left-handed pitchers who were 19 years old, missed as many bats as he did, didn’t walk guys, limited hard contact, throw 95-plus, have a plus breaking ball, and have command, it’s a short list. Now it’s his job to go out there build on that, see what he can he can do with another full year underneath him.” Read the rest of this entry »
Joshua Kuroda-Grauer began his professional career this past summer on the heels of a stellar junior season at Rutgers University. The 21-year-old shortstop from New Brunswick, New Jersey, was named Big Ten Player of the Year after slashing a robust .428/.492/.590 with five home runs. Moreover, he swiped 24 bases, had more walks (23) than strikeouts (18), and played well defensively. The first player selected on the second day of the amateur draft — he went 75th overall — Kuroda-Grauer is No. 12 on our recently released 2025 Athletics Top Prospects list.
His pro debut was indicative of his skillset. Over 126 plate appearances across Low-A Stockton, High-A Lansing, and briefly Triple-A Las Vegas, the right-handed-hitting middle infielder slashed .324/.421/.343 with a 123 wRC+, and just as he’d done as a Scarlet Knight, he had more free passes (12) than strikeouts (9). As our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen described in his writeup, “Kuroda-Grauer’s offensive profile is built around his advanced bat-to-ball chops…. [he] is short to the ball with average bat speed.”
Toward the end of the minor league season, Kuroda-Grauer discussed his draft experience, how he’s developed as a hitter, and the role model mindset that was ingrained in him by his two mothers.
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David Laurila: You were drafted in the third round. What were your expectations?
Kuroda-Grauer: “I was told to expect anything from the second to the fourth, so I fell kind of where I thought I’d fall. I’m just really happy and fortunate to be with the A’s organization, especially with the group of guys that came in.”
Laurila: Were the A’s a surprise, or were they a team you knew was on you?
Kuroda-Grauer: “I definitely knew they were interested. When I went out to the combine in Phoenix, I had a great meeting with them. So I wasn’t too surprised, but a crazy thing about the draft is that you can meet with however many teams, but then you get picked up by one that never really talked to you.”
Tyler Holton got a 10th-place vote in American League MVP balloting, and as you might expect, social media reacted like social media is wont to do. Responses to the news leaned negative, with a number of people saying that they had have never even heard of him. Some were disrespectfully profane, offering variations of “Who the [expletive] is Tyler Holton?”
Needless to say, not everyone who posts on social media platforms is an especially-knowledgeable baseball fan. Which is perfectly fine. There are many different levels of fandom, so if you mostly just know the big names — the Judges, the Sotos, the Witts — all well and good. Follow the game as you see fit.
Those things said, it is high time that more people become familiar with Holton. Much for that reason, Toronto Star columnist Mike Wilner doesn’t deserve the brickbats he’s received for his down-ballot nod to the 28-year-old Detroit Tigers southpaw. What he deserves is applause. And not just because he was willing to go outside the box. Holton has quietly been one of MLB’s most effective pitchers.
When I interviewed him back in January, Richard Fitts told me that his goal was to be a longtime big leaguer in Boston, and that his focus was simply on becoming the best version of himself. He’s since taken important steps on both fronts. The 24-year-old right-hander worked on fine-tuning his repertoire and usage at Triple-A Worcester, then impressed after receiving his first call-up in September. Moreover, he etched his name into the record books. Fitts didn’t allow an earned run over his initial 18 2/3 innings — this over three-plus starts — the most ever for a Red Sox pitcher to begin his career. As of right now, Roster Resource projects Fitts to be in the Red Sox rotation next season, though that could change depending on Lucas Giolito’s health and whether they sign a frontline starter or two this winter.
The Auburn University product had recently come to Boston via trade when we spoke 11 months ago. A sixth-round pick in the 2021 draft, Fitts was acquired along with Greg Weissert and Nicholas Judice from the New York Yankees in exchange for Alex Verdugo. At the time he’d been relying primarily on a four-seam fastball, with a slider serving as his best secondary. He described the latter as being “a little bit in between” a conventional slider and a sweeper.
How does the current iteration of the 6-foot-4, 245-pound hurler compare to the one I’d spoken to last winter? Is he basically the same pitcher? I asked him those questions on the final day of the regular season. Read the rest of this entry »
Niko Kavadas had recently been named Boston’s Minor League Player of the Year when he was first featured here at FanGraphs in November 2022. Two years later, he’s now playing for the Los Angeles Angels, after the Red Sox traded him at this summer’s deadline as part of a five-player swap. Power and patience are his calling cards. Kavadas was slashing .281/.424/.551 with 17 home runs in Triple-A at the time he was dealt, and while he subsequently struggled after receiving his first call-up — a 77 wRC+ and 38.7% strikeout rate over 106 plate appearances — he did go deep four times.
The 26-year-old first baseman very much remains a work in progress, as evidenced by his having spent the last month-plus playing in the Arizona Fall League. And while assessing progress in an extreme hitter-friendly environment can be tricky, he nonetheless crushed the ball during his time in the desert. Kavadas was named the AFL’s Offensive Player of the Year after slashing .329/.462/.700 with 13 extra-base hits, including six home runs, over 91 plate appearances. We’ll get to why he was there in a moment.
When I caught up to Kavadas prior to a Fall League game in October, the first thing I wanted to know was how the present-day iteration compares to the hitter I’d spoken to 25 months earlier. Read the rest of this entry »
The team that signs Nick Pivetta this offseason will be getting a veteran starter who, as my colleague Ben Clemens stated in our 2025 Top 50 Free Agents rundown, has “long been a favorite of pitching models.” The team will also be getting someone who believes in pitching to his strengths. The 31-year-old right-hander is studious about his craft, but with a notable exception. Poring over scouting reports isn’t his cup of tea.
“I think about it not as a specific hitter, but more of, ‘Is he a lefty or a righty?,’” explained Pivetta, whose past four-plus seasons have been with the Boston Red Sox. “I have certain sequences that I do against lefties or righties. I do the same sequences against either side, no matter the hitter.”
That’s not to say he totally ignores weaknesses. As Pivetta told me in our last-weekend-of-the-season conversation, there are certain hitters who struggle with a particular pitch and/or location, so he might vary his “same game plan around a certain spot.” But for the most part, he is “doing the exact same thing over and over again, just trying to execute.”
The extent to which that is optimal is open for debate. As his 50 Free Agents blurb spells out, Pivetta’s numbers suggest that he has never reached — and perhaps not even approached — his full potential. The stuff is unquestionably plus, but the consistency has clearly been lacking.
The Victoria, British Columbia native has pitched more than 1,000 innings over eight big-league seasons, so opposing teams have a pretty good idea of what to expect when he takes the mound. Moreover, certain lineups will present, at least on paper, a greater challenge for his pitch mix and standard attack plan. Might adherence to advance reports be a meaningful advantage add? Read the rest of this entry »
Hitting coaches and swing coaches aren’t the same thing.
I heard those exact words, or variations thereof, a number of times this season while talking to coaches. More often that not, the words were accompanied by an opinion that too many hitters — especially young hitters — are overly focused on honing a perfect swing, whereas what they should primarily be focusing on is… well, actually hitting the baseball. That’s not to discount the importance of good swings — every hitting coach understands their value — but much more goes into squaring up pitches within a game environment. As San Diego Padres special assistant Mark Loretta put it in yesterday’s Talks Hitting interview, “Obviously, you have to swing to hit the ball, but swinging isn’t hitting.”
Here is what three MLB general managers had to say on the subject, primarily as it relates to player development.
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Ross Fenstermaker, Texas Rangers GM
The Texas Rangers named a new general manager on November 4, promoting Ross Fenstermaker from assistant GM/player development and international scouting, a role he’d held since October 2021. A University of California Davis graduate, Fenstermaker has been with the organization since 2010, initially coming on board as a baseball operations intern.
Given his PD experience — and with swings in mind — I asked Fenstermaker about the advancements the Rangers made in that area over recent seasons. Read the rest of this entry »
Mark Loretta was a solid hitter over 15 big league seasons, and he was especially good in 2003 and 2004. Over that two-year span, the right-handed-hitting second baseman slashed .325/.382/.469 with 75 doubles, 29 home runs, and a 129 wRC+ with the San Diego Padres. Contact was one of his strong suits. The Northwestern University product had a 7.9% strikeout rate to go with an 8.2% walk rate in 2003-04, numbers largely in line with his 9.2% and 8.5% career marks.
His overall production was comparably modest. Loretta consistently put up high batting averages – they ranged between .280 and .335 during his 11 full seasons — but he went deep just 76 times and finished with a 100 wRC+. Those numbers came over seven-plus seasons with the Milwaukee Brewers, three with the Padres, two-plus with the Houston Astros, and one each with the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers. Your prototypical “professional hitter,” Loretta debuted in 1995 and played his last game in 2009.
Now a special assistant with San Diego, Loretta sat down to talk hitting when the Padres played at Fenway Park in late June.
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David Laurila: Looking back, what style of hitter were you, and did that change over the course of your career?
Mark Loretta: “That’s a good question. I would say that I was developed and came up as [someone who hit] inside the ball, hit the ball up the middle, hit it the other way, hit it where it’s pitched. I was very contact-oriented. I didn’t really sit on pitches or sell out for fastballs, I mainly liked to see the ball get deep.
“About halfway through my career I made a concerted effort to learn to pull the ball better, and more often. I think that’s when my career sort of took off. I was able to get to keep that contact-hitter, hit-it-where-it’s-pitched approach, but also handle the ball inside much better.
“My power — more doubles, more home runs — came when I pulled the ball. For a lot of my career, pitchers would pound me in, pound me in, because I hit the ball well the other way. I made a couple of adjustments with my swing and started looking a little bit more in when I was in hitter’s counts. I would lay off the ball middle-away when it was 2-0 or 3-1.”
When I talked to him at last year’s GM meetings, J.J. Picollo told me that an offseason priority was to add “guys with experience” to a Kansas City Royals roster that was long on promising young talent but short on veteran presence. Picollo did just that — Seth Lugo, Hunter Renfroe, Will Smith, and Michael Wacha were among those brought on board — and while the additions only told part of the story, the end result was a best seller. One year after winning just 56 games, the 2024 Royals went 86-76 and played October baseball for the first time in a decade.
What does the AL Central club’s Executive Vice President/General Manager see as the top priority going into next season?
“We need to be a little more dynamic offensively, and by that I mean we need to get on base at a higher rate than we did this year,” Picollo told me earlier this week in San Antonio. “We’re trying to target players we can lengthen out our lineup with, whether it’s someone at the top, in the middle, or toward the back end. Our identity is more pitching and defense, base running, and situational hitting, so how can we add some guys that can complement what we already have that will allow us to score more runs?”
The Royals crossed the plate 735 times in 2024, the sixth-highest total in the American League. Their .306 on-base percentage was ninth-highest, while their .403 slugging percentage and their 170 home runs ranked sixth and tenth respectively. As power obviously helps provide more runs, I asked Picollo if OBP is indeed the priority. Read the rest of this entry »
The Seattle Mariners had the most starter innings in the majors this year and fell short of the playoffs. Conversely, Detroit Tigers had the fewest starter innings and reached the postseason. For their part, the Kansas City Royals, who had the second-most starter innings, did play October baseball, while the San Francisco Giants, who had the second-lowest total, did not. And then there were the Milwaukee Brewers. Much like the Tigers, the Brewers made the postseason despite getting a low number of innings from their starters — they ranked fifth from the bottom — in part because several of their relievers had outstanding seasons.
What does that all mean? Moreover, what might it mean going forward?
In search of answers, I spoke with the general mangers and/or presidents of baseball operations of the five aforementioned teams at this week’s GM Meetings in San Antonio, Texas. For the execs whose clubs had a low number of starter innings, I was interested in how few innings they felt they could get next year and return (or advance) to the postseason. For those whose clubs topped the starter innings rankings, my inquiries were more about their philosophy and preferences in the seasons to come.
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Justin Hollander, Seattle Mariners
“I don’t think there is such a thing as too many [starter innings],” said Hollander, whose club had 942 2/3 starter innings this season. “We are very cognizant of pitcher health and of making sure we’re putting them in positions to succeed. I think we did about as well as you can with that. In a perfect world, you would never have a stressful inning as a pitcher; that’s not realistic. But surrounding our starters with an impact bullpen, which we’ve done over the years, gives the manager and the pitching coaches the freedom and confidence to let the starter go to the point where they feel like they’ve done everything they can to win the game.
“Our starters take a ton of pride in going deep into the game. We don’t want to artificially limit them, or script out what that’s going to look like. Watching and evaluating the game as it goes on — when is the right time? — is something that our staff has done a great job of.”
The days of a Mickey Lolich going 300-plus innings, like he did multiple times in the 1970s with the Tigers, are long gone and unlikely to be repeated. Even so, are today’s top-end innings standards — Logan Gilbert’s 208 2/3 was this year’s highest total — at all detrimental to a pitcher’s long-term health and effectiveness?
“In the 2024 baseball universe, our starters are pretty optimized,” opined Hollander. “And I think there is a distinction between optimized and maxed out. We’re not looking to max out and get every possible pitch out of our starters, we’re looking to optimize the performance of our team. We don’t ask them to do more than that, because then you might be risking maximizing to the detriment of the team.
Despite “an impact bullpen,” giving more innings to relievers hasn’t been a consideration for the Mariners.
“We’ve never talked about that,” Hollander told me. “Obviously, there is a rest component, and there may be a time when someone hasn’t pitched in a few days so it’s kind of a must-pitch day for them if there is a spot to get them in the game. I think we had a great balance this year between pitcher usage and pitcher rest. But I don’t think we ever factored in the idea of wanting to take a starter out to put someone in from the bullpen if it wasn’t time to take the starter out. Our starters are among the highest-impact starters in baseball. We want to do everything we can to put them in position to succeed for as many innings as they have to give us.”
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Scott Harris, Detroit Tigers
Citing both his team’s 753 starter innings, a number that owes something to a spate of injuries, as well as the volatility of reliever performances year to year, I asked Harris, “What is the fewest you can get next year and return to the postseason?”
“I think the line between starter and reliever is blurring,” Harris replied. “If you watched the Tigers in the second half, we didn’t have traditional starters that started our games; we had a pitcher come in and replicate a starter’s workload. The philosophy behind that is, we felt like we could get better matchups without putting an extra strain on our bullpen. And we didn’t actually put an extra strain on our bullpen. So, I don’t think it will be hard to replicate what we did last year if we choose to pursue that nontraditional pitching strategy of a reliever starting a game, then a starter-type pitching the bulk innings, and then relievers coming in at the end of a game. Read the rest of this entry »
