Scott Barlow made his big-league debut on Monday. Pitching for the Kansas City Royals against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, the 25-year-old right-hander went three effective innings in a 10-6 loss. With family watching from the stands, he allowed just one run while working the sixth, seventh, and eighth frames. Needless to say, it was a night the former Los Angeles Dodgers farmhand — a 2011 sixth-round pick out of a Santa Clarita, California high school — won’t soon forget.

Barlow, who signed a free-agent deal with the Royals over the winter, took us through his once-in-a-lifetime experience the following afternoon.

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Scott Barlow: “Around the fifth inning, [bullpen coach] Vance Wilson told me, ‘Make sure you’re staying loose,’ so I started stretching and kind of getting my energy going. This is my first time ever at Fenway, so I was also soaking up the scenery a little bit. Tim Hill started warming up, and they called down to have me warm up with him.

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Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In the fifth installment of this series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Danny Duffy, David Price, and Sergio Romo — on how they learned and/or developed a specific pitch.

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Danny Duffy (Royals) on His Changeup

“My changeup used to be a two-seam circle. It was a really good pitch in the minor leagues because of the difference in velocity — I could get away with lack of movement — but, up here, it was starting to get ineffective.

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Daniel Robertson has been scorching the horsehide. With 84 plate appearances under his belt — just enough to qualify for our leaderboards — the 24-year-old Tampa Bay Rays infielder ranks fourth from the top in both wOBA (.451) and wRC+ (189). His slash line heading into the Month of May is a stand-up-and-take-notice .333/.476/.561.

He credits an adjustment for his fast start. Rightly unsatisfied with his rookie-season output — Robertson logged a .634 OPS in part-time duty — he spent the winter revamping his stroke under the tutelage of a pair of hitting gurus. No longer satisfied with a “pretty generic swing,” he’s now embracing launch angle (a term he uses cautiously) and adopting a rhythm-conscious mindset that allows him to transfer his energy through the baseball.

Robertson talked about his new mechanics and approach when the Rays visited Fenway Park over the weekend.

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Robertson on making the adjustment: “I got knocked for what I did offensively last year. I feel that I impressed with what I did defensively, but for my whole career I’ve always been a hitter. I think I’m starting to show that again this year, thanks in part to things I worked on in the offseason. I’m putting myself in a better position to hit and that’s translating into me seeing the ball a lot better, as well as doing damage rather than having a defensive swing and just slapping it around.

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Jonny Venters was in the news this week after becoming the first pitcher to appear in a big-league game after undergoing three Tommy John surgeries. The 33-year-old veteran worked one-third-of-an-inning for the Tampa Bay Rays after having last pitched for the Atlanta Braves in the 2012 postseason. It’s a great story, worthy of the attention it’s garnered (and will continue to garner; colleague Jay Jaffe will have more on Venters in the coming days).

On Friday, I approached Venters to discuss a tangentially-related subject: the worm-killing sinker that made him an effective setup man before his elbow became stubbornly uncooperative. Since the stat began being tabulated, no pitcher with at least 125 career innings under his belt has had a higher ground-ball rate than the 68.4% mark put up by the come-backing left-hander.

Venters transitioned to a sinker-ball pitcher in 2009 when he was a starter with the Double-A Mississippi Braves. He’d been primarily a four-seam guy, but the organization asked him to put that pitch in his back pocket and begin prioritizing his two-seam. Helped initially by the tutelage of pitching coach Marty Reed, it eventually became his go-to.

Success wasn’t instantaneous. Read the rest of this entry »

Kevin Kiermaier has come a long way since I first talked to him in the spring of 2014. At the time, his big-league experience consisted of two games — two very important games — as a defensive replacement with the Tampa Bay Rays. Already considered elite with the glove, he was seen as the club’s centerfielder of the future — assuming he could hold his own with the bat.

A little over a year later, in May 2015, I followed up with the uber-athletic former 31st-round draft pick. As he was coming off a rookie season where he’d slashed a better-than-many-expected .263/.315/.450, the resulting Q&A was titled “Kevin Kiermaier on Turning a Corner”.

The years that have followed have been a combination of prosperous and unkind. The now-28-year-old Kiermaier accumulated 11.3 WAR between 2015-2017, in large part because his defense has been nothing short of exemplary. Despite multiple trips to the disabled list, he led MLB with 89 Defensive Runs Saved over that three-year stretch. At the plate, he slashed a credible .262/.320/.426, with a dozen home runs annually.

Staying on the field has obviously been a major issue. Kiermaier has missed chunks of time with hand and hip fractures, and earlier this month he went on the shelf with a torn ligament in his right thumb. Prior to the most-recent injury, I sat down with Kiermaier to discuss his career thus far, with the main focus being his continued development on the offensive side of the ball. Read the rest of this entry »

When Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel released FanGraphs’ 2018 Top 100 Prospects list in February, Mike Soroka was described as “polished.” That’s especially meaningful given that the right-hander in the Atlanta Braves organization won’t turn 21 until August. And it’s far from his only attribute. Augmenting the aforementioned plaudit was an equally praiseworthy note that “everything he does is above average to plus.”

Add in the fact that Soroka dominated Double-A last year as a teenager — he had a 2.75 ERA in 26 starts at Mississippi — and it’s understandable why he ranks No. 34 overall on our list. Among pitchers (including two-way stalwarts Shohei Ohtani and Brendan McKay), he comes in at No. 14.

Drafted 28th overall by Atlanta in 2015 out of a Calgary, Alberta, Canada high school, Soroka is continuing his fast-track ways in the early stages of the 2018 campaign. In four outings with the Gwinnett Stripers, the 20-year-old has allowed just five runs in 22.2 innings against Triple-A competition. On Monday, he held Pawtucket scoreless through seven efficient frames.

Soroka discussed his have-fun attitude and the optimization of his repertoire this past weekend.

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Soroka on switching his focus from hockey to baseball: “I was a hockey player growing up. That was my main focus. When I was 12, I went to the Cal Ripken World Series, which is about the same age as the Little League World Series with a few differences. I represented Canada there. That’s when baseball got a little more serious, although it was still only in the summer months. A year or two later, I found that I just liked baseball better. I never went to a baseball practice, or to a game, that I didn’t want to be at.

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Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In the fifth installment of this series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Max Fried, Tommy Kahnle, and John Smoltz — on how they learned and/or developed a specific pitch.

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Max Fried (Braves) on His Curveball

“I learned my curveball when I was pretty young, maybe nine or 10. It started out as more of a knuckle curve, although I didn’t really spike it. I would kind of curl my pointer finger down on the ball.

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Trey Mancini did some tinkering prior to the start of the season. Hoping to “limit a bit of pre-swing movement,” he decided to lower his leg kick. The Baltimore Orioles outfielder hit that way throughout the offseason, and he continued the experiment in spring training.

Then, about a week and a half before opening day, he returned to doing what feels natural.

“I am who I am,” Mancini told me last weekend. “The leg kick is just something that works for me — there’s a comfortability factor involved — so once I realized what I was trying didn’t feel totally right, I went back to my old one.”

Mancini felt that the lower kick disrupted his timing. Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a slider in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In the fourth installment of this series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Andrew Cashner, Drew Pomeranz, and CC Sabathia — on how they learned and/or developed a specific pitch.

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Andrew Cashner (Orioles) on His Sinker

“I got cut with a knife in 2013, in the offseason. I cut the flexor tendon in my right thumb. That was when I really learned a sinker. After I got cut, I had to learn a new pitch.

“My slider wasn’t the same pitch after that. I had a hard time getting extension with it, getting out front. The cut healed, but the tendon was tight. I think it just took time for the tendon to lengthen. It’s a feel pitch and it just never felt the same. It took a long time, but I’ve got [the slider] back now.

“The good thing is that I gained another pitch. And the sinker isn’t just arm-side run. Once you can learn to locate it back-door, it’s almost like a reverse slider for s lefty. You throw it at the hip and it comes back.”

Drew Pomeranz (Red Sox) on his Curveball

“It would have to be my curveball. Everybody I play with is like, ‘How the hell do you throw that?’ That’s because I flick it forward. I don’t turn my wrist like a normal person does.

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If you’re not a Tampa Bay Rays fan, you probably aren’t too familiar with Yonny Chirinos. That would be understandable. The 24-year-old right-hander has never been a highly-ranked prospect, and prior to a few weeks ago he hadn’t set foot on a big-league mound. As a matter fact, were it not for a dinged-up Rays rotation, he’d probably be facing Triple-A hitters right now.

Instead, he’s flummoxing big-league hitters. Over his first three MLB outings — two starts and one relief effort — Chironos has thrown 14-and-a-third scoreless innings. Facing formidable Red Sox (twice) and White Sox lineups, he’s allowed just eight hits and a pair of walks, while fanning a dozen. His ground ball rate is a solid 50%.

His two-seamer is his bread and butter. Chirinos started developing the pitch in 2015, per the urging of his coaches, and the following year it became part of his arsenal. It’s now his best pitch, which makes him atypical among Tampa Bay hurlers. As manager Kevin Cash put it, “A lot of guys on our staff throw the fastball at the top of the zone and utilize the carry, and he’s kind of the opposite of that. He sinks the ball.” Read the rest of this entry »