Author Archive: David Laurila

What type of hitter did the Cleveland Indians get when they acquired Jake Bauers as part of yesterday’s three-team trade with Seattle and Tampa Bay? From a biographical perspective, the answer is a 23-year-old left-handed-hitting first baseman who came into this year ranked fourth in the Tampa Bay system. He made his big-league debut in June and went on to post a .700 OPS, with 11 home runs, in 388 plate appearances. Bauers played his maiden season as a 22-year-old, not turning 23 until the month of October.

From a self-assessment perspective, Bauer is a hitter who knows who he is, and needs to stay true to those elements in order to be successful. The newest member of the Indians organization explained what those elements are when the Rays visited Fenway Park this past August.

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Bauers on his keep-it-natural swing: “My swing has just kind of been natural. Any time I went to a hitting coach growing up, the only thing they’d say is, ‘Don’t change anything.’ Beyond that, there have maybe been little tweaks here and there, but mostly it’s been about doing my work and staying right.

“I have to keep my swing and just let it happen. I have to trust that the natural path of my swing is going to take over — that by doing what comes natural, everything will take care of itself.

“When I’m trying to hit the ball in the air — trying to hit for launch angle — my swing tends to get long and loopy and I end up not getting the result I want. Everything will get out of sync. My hips will go early. My hands will drag behind and then try to catch up. I’ll end up pulling off to where I can’t reach the outside pitch and I’m getting jammed on the inside pitch.” Read the rest of this entry »

One great thing about the baseball Winter Meetings is that you have access to all 30 managers (this year that number is 29, as the Baltimore Orioles are currently sans a manager). A formal media session is held for each, and with 30 minutes of allotted time, a multitude of questions are asked by the collection of writers on hand.

I asked the following question, using roughly the same words, to a dozen of the managers: “We’ve seen some non-traditional coaching staff hires as of late, with pitching and hitting analytics being the driver. What are your thoughts on that?”

Here is what they had to say (answers edited slightly for concision and clarity):

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David Bell, Cincinnati Reds: “I love having different perspectives in everything we do in this game. Having different opinions and perspectives, from people with different backgrounds and expertise, helps the decision-making process. You’re creating an advantage for yourself. I think it’s an exciting time in the game because of that. And it’s a great time to be a player, because you have all these different resources to pull from to make adjustments a lot faster. You can maximize who you are as a player.

“I do see it as a balance. There are certain parts of this game we all love that aren’t going away. The competition. The hard work. The teamwork. We just have more resource to make all of that work better. It’s important to communicate, and to work together with all departments, and really have no ego, and be able to work really well together.”

Bud Black, Colorado Rockies: “I like the creativeness of thinking from the people who were making hires. I think it shows that it’s not a closed box; it’s opened for whoever might have a skill set that a certain team is looking for, to give it a shot. I think that’s great. Read the rest of this entry »

Jayson Stark received a standing ovation from his BBWAA colleagues when it was announced that he is being honored with the J.G. Taylor Spink Award. The honor is well deserved. The award is given for meritorious contributions to baseball writing, and Stark, who currently writes for The Athletic, has been at the pinnacle of his profession for decades. (The National Baseball Hall of Fame announcement, which includes a snapshot of his career, can be found here.)

Following yesterday’s news, I asked Stark if he could share the story behind his love of writing with FanGraphs readers. Ever gracious, he told me the following.

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Jayson Stark: “I love baseball, and I love the art of baseball writing. This is all I ever wanted to do. From the time I was nine years old, what I wanted was to be a sportswriter. Not a baseball player, but a baseball writer. All the time, I have to take a step back and think, ‘Oh my god, that happened. How lucky am I?’

“My mom (June Stark) was a writer. She wrote for a paper in Philadelphia — she knew Red Smith a little bit, because he worked there briefly — and was also the editor for Wear Magazine, Philadelphia. She was the president of the League of Women Journalists, Philadelphia chapter.

“She was a great writer with a love of turning a phrase. She loved reading great writing, and that inspired me to to have a love and appreciation of writing. Growing up, I had that and a love of sports. Read the rest of this entry »

Alex Kirilloff grew up hitting baseballs. A lot of baseballs. His father owns an indoor hitting facility, and having been home-schooled for much of his life, the top prospect in the Minnesota Twins system not named Royce Lewis would often accompany dad to work. He didn’t sit around reading comic books while he was there.

“I was blessed to have access to a cage, and I took advantage of that,” Kirilloff told me prior to suiting up for this summer’s Futures Game. “We had these big Iron Mike machines that would hold something like 600 balls in the hopper and I would hit two or three of those a day.”

This past season, he banged out a steady stream of hits against Florida State League and Midwest League pitching. Playing 65 games each in Fort Myers and Cedar Rapids, the left-handed-hitting outfielder stroked 107 singles, 49 doubles, seven triples, and 20 home runs. His slash line was a scary .348/.392/.578.

In terms of hands-on molding, Kirilloff isn’t Frankenstein’s monster. His hitting-instructor father didn’t skimp on pointers, but he also understood that a swing has to come naturally. Read the rest of this entry »

Cincinnati’s 2018 Minor League Hitter of the Year isn’t a slugger, nor is he among the club’s higher-profile prospects. That’s not to say TJ Friedl won’t be roaming the Reds’ outfield in the not-too-distant future. Blessed with a smooth left-handed stroke and plus-plus wheels, he is — according to our own Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel — “almost a lock to hang around the big leagues for at least a few years in some role.”

His background is unlike that of most players who reach the doorstep, let alone get invited inside. Friedl entered pro ball in 2016 as a non-drafted free agent out of the University of Nevada. More on that in moment.

At 5-foot-10 and 170 pounds, the 23-year-old Friedl looks the part of a table-setter, and the numbers match the image. In a 2018 season split evenly between Hi-A Daytona and Double-A Pensacola, the speedster slashed .284/.381/.384 with five home runs and 30 stolen bases.

His top-of-the-order-friendly OBP was fueled by a change that occurred shortly before his 2017 campaign ended prematurely due to injury. Wanting to recognize pitches earlier, he tweaked his timing mechanism. Read the rest of this entry »

Bill Madden of the New York Daily News wrote a column the other day explaining — among other things — why he checked off Placido Polanco’s name on his Hall of Fame ballot. Predictably, the reaction on social media has been anything but kind. There are two reasons for that: 1. While he was a fine player during his day, Polanco falls short of traditional Hall standards. 2. Social media is social media.

Let’s pause for a moment to define a pair of idioms:

“Maddening crowd” means that the crowd is driving one mad.

“Madding crowd” means that the crowd itself is mad.

Back to Madden’s opinion(s).

While his perspective was maddening to many of you, I found it interesting. (Calm down; I don’t view Polanco as being Hall-worthy either. No need to @ me.)

Madden noting that Polanco boasts the highest fielding percentage in history at both second base and third base was especially eye-opening. Does the stat itself need to be taken with a sizable grain of salt? Of course it does. Even so, Polanco having that dual honor is impressive. So are some of the Dominican infielder’s other accomplishments. He was a very good player. Read the rest of this entry »

Seth Lugo has a quality bender, and he relied on it heavily this year. The New York Mets righty ranked seventh among qualified relievers in curveball frequency at 33.9%. It’s hard to argue with the results. Lugo made 54 appearances — all but five out of the bullpen — and logged a 2.66 ERA and a 3.17 FIP while fanning 103 batters in 101.1 innings.

The increased usage — and the effectiveness that went along with it — stood out to Travis Sawchik. My former FanGraphs colleague likened Lugo to a right-handed Rich Hill in this informative piece that ran on these electronic pages back in mid-June.

Two months later, I asked Lugo for the story behind his go-to pitch, and about his approach to attacking hitters.

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Seth Lugo on learning to throw a curveball: “My dad was my coach growing up. We used to go to a local college — Centenary College, in Shreveport, Louisiana — and the coach there showed my dad how to teach young pitchers to throw breaking balls, curveballs. He showed him what he thought was safe, what would keep your elbow healthy.

“He used a tennis-ball container. You’d throw it, and make sure that it went end-over-end. That way you’d be taking pressure off your elbow. I was throwing a tennis-ball container and making sure it was spinning the same way. Or maybe a Pringles container. Either one. If it started to spin sideways instead of going end-over-end … that’s not how you want to throw it. Anyway, you’d practice that a few times, then switch to a curveball. That’s how I learned. This was when I was 10 or 11 years old. Read the rest of this entry »

Hall of Fame debate season is upon us, and subjectivity is inherent in the process. For every no-brainer candidate there are always several for whom a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down is largely in the eye of the beholder. Pushing bias aside — not always an easy exercise — one must weigh a ton of factors. Think “The Scales of Justice,” but with WAR, win totals, and DRS taking the place of a blindfold, a balance, and a sword.

Cutting to the chase, Omar Vizquel — arguably the most-polarizing player on the current ballot — probably deserves to be enshrined in Cooperstown. Attempting to not clumsily put a thumb in my eye while stating his case, I hereby offer the following statistical facts:

Vizquel ranks 43rd all-time with 2,877 hits. Nine of the 10 players directly below him on that list — Brooks Robinson among them — are in the Hall of Fame. The one who is not is Harold Baines. Vizquel had more hits as a shortstop than did Cal Ripken.

Vizquel has 3,727 total bases. That is more than the career totals of Edgar Martinez (3,718), Andruw Jones (3,690), Lou Whitaker (3,651), Mark McGwire (3,639) and Scott Rolen (3,628). Read the rest of this entry »

Patrick Murphy won’t be available in next month’s Rule 5 draft. Along with four other players, the 23-year-old right-hander was added to the Toronto Blue Jays’ 40-man roster yesterday. His addition was well-earned. A third-round pick in the 2013 draft, Murphy has been a picture of perseverance. As noted in the feature we did on him last February, Murphy has undergone Tommy John surgery, thoracic outlet syndrome surgery, and had a nerve moved in his elbow.

This season, he went from question mark to fast-mover. In 27 starts — all but one with High-A Dunedin — Murphy fashioned a tidy 2.64 ERA and fanned 141 batters in 152.2 innings. Those numbers earned him an accolade; Murphy was named the Florida State League’s Pitcher of the Year.

The innings total was especially meaningful to him, as was the fact that he made all of his scheduled starts. Calling it “a big step,” the Chandler, Arizona native was able to show the organization — and prove to himself — that his am and body could hold up over a full season.

He also showed that he could hit triple digits. But while he considered it “pretty cool” to have hit 100 mph on the radar gun, Murphy was more enamored with a pitch that traversed 60-feet-six-inches in a comparably meandering manner. Read the rest of this entry »

Ray Black hasn’t received much attention here at FanGraphs. That’s understandable. The 28-year-old San Francisco Giants reliever has consistently been clocked at over 100 mph, but only when he’s not on the shelf. And he’s spent a lot of time on the shelf.

Black had Tommy John surgery as a high school senior, a knee issue in college, then missed his first two-plus professional seasons after undergoing labrum surgery. A seventh-round pick by the Giants in 2011, Black didn’t take the mound until 2014. More obstacles followed. Notable among them were a second elbow surgery — this time to remove a bone spur — which resulted in him missing almost all of 2017.

This past season he missed a lot of bats — and not just down on the farm. Black made his long-in-coming MLB debut in early July and went on to fan 33 batters in 23.1 innings. He was even more overpowering in the minors, logging 66 punch-outs in 35.2 innings between Double-A and Triple-A. Not surprisingly, velocity played a big role in that success; he reached triple digits numerous times.

His heater and a return to health weren’t the only reasons he reached the big leagues this summer. With the help of San Francisco’s minor league pitching coordinator, and the Giants analytics staff, Black has become a bit of pitching nerd.

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Ray Black on technology and his slider: “The increase of technology in the game is incredible. StatCast. TrackMan. The Rapsodo machines. They show you your release point, the way your fingers come off the ball — all of this in super slow motion. You can break it down to so many frames per second.

“After one game against the Diamondbacks, they showed me the side-by-side of my fastball and my slider. If I throw my slider correctly, it’s mimicking my fastball — I’m keeping it on the same plane long enough that the hitter can’t recognize it. The technology can basically tell you if you had a good one or a bad one, and I had it working that day. This was after I got sent back down to Triple-A in late August.

“I’d given up a walk-off home run on my slider, in Cincinnati [on August 17]. When I went back and looked at that one, side by side with my fastball, I could see a big hump. I looked at the velo as well, and it had gone from an 88-90-mph pitch down to an 83-84-mph pitch. It was slurvier, with a hump, and it got tagged. Read the rest of this entry »