Regular readers of this column may recall the law school aspirations of Milwaukee Brewers prospect Jon Perrin. When he was featured here in May 2016, the Oklahoma State graduate was dominating Midwest League hitters — he’d fanned 47 and walked just one in 36 innings — but he was nonetheless contemplating saying goodbye to baseball. Perrin had applied to Harvard Law, and if accepted he was “probably going to be out of here.”

As we later reported, that didn’t happen. Perrin received a letter of rejection from the prestigious institution, and went forward with his pitching career. Harvard’s loss is proving to be Milwaukee’s gain. The 24-year-old right-hander spent this past season with Double-A Biloxi, continuing his stingy ways. In 105-and-a-third innings, he issued 21 free passes while fashioning a 2.91 ERA.

Perrin was pleased with his performance.

“I feel I proved that I can get advanced hitters out,” said Perrin, who relies heavily on his sinker. “A sub-3.00 ERA at the Double-A level is nothing to spit at. I had some up and downs and fought through an injury, but was able to finish on a strong note. I can’t complain.”

His Juris Doctor plans haven’t gone away. They’re simply on the back burner. Perrin was accepted into the University of Kansas’s law school program this past spring, and while he’s “100% committed to baseball,” he knows that a playing career only lasts so long. Once the spikes are hung up, he’ll begin his legal studies in his home state. Read the rest of this entry »

Aaron Bummer made 30 relief appearances for the Chicago White Sox this season. The first two were especially memorable. The 24-year-old left-hander stepped onto a big-league mound for the first time on July 27 and promptly struck out crosstown rival Anthony Rizzo. Two batters later, he gave up a bomb to Kyle Schwarber.

On July 29, Bummer entered a tie game with two on and two out in the top of the eighth inning, and retired Cleveland’s Michael Brantley. He then came back out for the ninth and took the loss in atypical fashion. Lifted with two on and two out in the ninth, Bummer watched as the pitcher who replaced him plunked consecutive batters (yes, Brandon Guyer was one of them), forcing in the deciding run.

A few days later, I talked to Bummer about those experiences — and about earning his degree from the University of Nebraska while recovering from Tommy John surgery — when the White Sox visited Fenway Park.

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Bummer on reaching the big leagues: “The past week has definitely been surreal. Things started calming down as I got into a routine — it turned more into just baseball — but now that I’m in Fenway Park… I mean, this is as pinnacle as it gets. Coming here kind of brought the surreal back, kind of got those butterflies going again.

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Who were the best players in the Midwest League this year? I posed that question to some of the circuit’s broadcasters late in the season, with an important qualifier: I wanted them to mostly base their selections on what they saw with their own eyes and not on reputations.

Because the Midwest League is comprised of two divisions, with an unbalanced schedule, a certain amount of sample-size bias was inevitable. I felt that was preferable to having the broadcasters put much too weight on second-hand information. Their expertise is what I was after.

I asked each of the participants for a list of seven players, ranked in order, plus any honorable mentions they cared to include. Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. are partially responsible for the list size. I originally planned on five, but as Lansing’s dynamic duo dominated my initial inquiries, I decided to bump up the number two notches.

Seven broadcasters participated, five from the Eastern Division and two from the Western Division. A pair of them, Alex Cohen and Chris Vosters, augmented their lists with snapshot scouting reports.

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Alex Cohen, Bowling Green Hot Rods (Rays)

1. Bo Bichette (Lansing Lugnuts, Blue Jays): Not sure what position he’ll play in the long run, and Vlad Jr. may have a better/longer career, but he was by far the best player in the league this year and it’s not really even close.

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The Detroit Tigers are in full rebuild mode, and Isaac Paredes projects as a big part of their future. His bat is the primary reason why. Despite an August swoon that caused his numbers to plummet, the 18-year-old shortstop finished the season with a .725 OPS. Given that he was one of the youngest players in the Midwest League, that’s not exactly chicken soup.

Paredes was acquired by the Tigers, along with Jeimer Candelario, in the trade-deadline deal that sent Alex Avila and Justin Wilson to the Cubs, and the news threw him for a loop. When I talked a him a week and a half later, the Hermosillo, Mexico native admitted to having been shocked and not particularly pleased. His initial thought was “this is something bad.”

Once his head stopped spinning, his attitude shifted to “this is a good thing.” Paredes realized he was going to an organization that would be relying heavily on players just like himself. Read the rest of this entry »

The Oakland A’s gave up a pair of quality relievers when they traded Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson to the Washington Nationals in July. The trio of players they got in return are pretty talented themselves. One is already established — Blake Treinen logged 16 saves this year — while the others are promising prospects.

Sheldon Neuse, a 22-year-old infielder out of the University of Oklahoma, recorded a .321/.382/.502 slash line in his first full season of pro ball. The 2016 second-round pick did his damage at three levels, hopscotching from Low-A to High-A to Double-A.

And then there’s Jesus Luzardo, whose ceiling would be best described as “lofty.” While getting his feet wet at the lowest rungs of the minors — Rookie-level ball and the New York-Penn League — the polished-beyond-his-years southpaw struck out 48 and walked just five in 43.1 innings. His ERA was a smooth-and-shiny 1.66.

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Following the final game of the regular season, Jose Altuve told a small group of reporters that once October rolls around, “everybody starts with zero wins and zero losses, and everybody’s average is zero.”

Nearly a month later, the Astros are even-steven with the Dodgers in the World Series and Altuve’s average (.322) is farther above zero than anyone’s in the postseason (minimum 20 at bats). That’s hardly a surprise. The 27-year-old second baseman captured his third American League batting title this year, hitting a career high .346. He doesn’t consider it his biggest personal accomplishment to date.

“That would be the Silver Slugger,” Altuve told the scribes, citing an honor he was awarded last year. “With the batting title, they only care if you hit .300/.320, but the Silver Slugger is all around — doubles, triples, home runs — and I’m 5’ 5” and 160 pounds.”

His numbers have been anything but Lilliputian. Over the past four seasons, the Venezuelan spark plug has a .334/.384/.496 slash line and 254 extra-base hits. And while he leads MLB in one-base hits over that same period, it’s not as though singles are a bad thing. Read the rest of this entry »

A recent Sunday Notes column published here featured the title Charlie Morton Is Different (and Better). While those words referred to his pitching identity, they could just as easily refer to his personality. The 33-year-old right-hander is about as far away from Nuke LaLoosh as you can get. Thoughtful and articulate, he is anything but a cliche-spouting dumb jock.

His career has been a roller coaster. Prior to this year’s breakout with the Houston Astros, Morton had compiled a record of 46-71 and a 4.54 ERA in nine up-and-down seasons with the Braves, Pirates, and Phillies. Injuries played a big role in the inconsistencies. Along the way Morton had multiple surgeries, including Tommy John, and repairs to both hips.

And then there’s his psyche. Morton has been guilty of getting into his own head, which has resulted in frustration and a tendency to get “too finicky about things like my mechanics and my approach.” Admittedly not serious enough in his early years of pro ball, he eventually found himself taking things too seriously for his own good.

An integral part of the Astros’ win over the Yankees in Game 7 of the ALCS, Morton is scheduled to start Game 4 of the World Series on Saturday. He talked about his evolving approach to the game — and to life — at the conclusion of the regular season.

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Charlie Morton: “Between injuries and not pitching well, and getting older… your perspective changes. You try to enjoy your time. You try to enjoy the cities you go to, you try to enjoy your teammates, you try to finish up your last few years on a high note.

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Tony Kemp had barely started his professional career when we ran a Q&A with him in July 2013. Just a month earlier, the 5-foot-6 second baseman had been drafted in the fifth round out of Vanderbilt University. With his position, physical stature, and bat-to-ball skills in mind, the piece was titled Tony Kemp, the Astros Next Altuve.

Four years later, he is well established at the minor-league level and essentially blocked in Houston. Kemp has slashed .309/.368/.423 in 1,164 Triple-A plate appearances, but when your comp is collecting batting titles, cups of coffee are about all you can ask for. Altuve’s understudy has logged just 175 plate appearances over parts of two big-league seasons.

A more extended opportunity seems inevitable. Whether it comes with the Astros or elsewhere, Kemp will have more than his raw ability to thank. The 25-year-old infielder has learned a lot since joining the organization, most notably how to consistently square up baseballs. In short, he’s learned how to hit the Astros way.

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Tony Kemp on evolving as a hitter: “Man, a lot has changed for me [since entering pro ball]. How my swing has kind of come to fruition, how I’ve adjusted to each level and what needed to happen — control the strike zone, get my strikeout rate down and my on-base percentage up, hit for a little more power… being able to do those things over the last four years has been something special.

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Keston Hiura went into the 2017 draft with a compromised throwing arm and a reputation as the best pure hitter available. Downplaying the severity of the former and embracing the latter, the Milwaukee Brewers selected the University of California, Irvine, infielder with the ninth overall pick of the first round. They’re not regretting the decision. Hiura began his professional career by slashing a healthy .371/.422/.611 in 187 plate appearances between Rookie-level ball and Low-A Wisconsin.

Just as importantly, his elbow appears sound. Hiura primarily DH’d during his initial taste of pro ball, but he played second base during his stint in instructional league. He probably could have done so earlier. When I talked to him in August, the erstwhile Anteater told me that his elbow has been back to 100% for approximately a month.

Our conversation was primarily about his offensive acumen, which is spurred by a smooth right-handed stroke honed between trips to the library. Keston Wee Hing Natsuo Hiura — his father was born in California and is of Japanese descent; his mother was born in Hawaii and is of Chinese descent — majored in business economics at UC Irvine.

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Hiura on his hitting mechanics: “I have a different swing than most people. You see people with leg kicks and you see people with toe taps, and I do both. I toe tap into a leg kick — a pretty high leg kick — and then my swing is very inside-out oriented with a high finish at the end. I also finish with both hands on the bat. That helps me get quick through the zone with some good bat speed, as well as generating power with my backside. I’m able to drive the ball to all sides of the field.

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Collin McHugh wasn’t consumed with worry, but he was concerned. The Astros right-hander had shoulder/biceps tendinitis in the spring, and then his elbow tightened up during a rehab outing in April. Tests didn’t raise any red flags, but it’s hard not to ponder worst-case scenarios when your livelihood is at risk.

Tendinitis is mostly an inconvenience. Tightness can be a prelude to surgery.

“I wouldn’t say it was scary, but I guess you do get a little bit nervous,” admitted McHugh. “Tommy John is so prevalent that I think everyone thinks about that when they feel some tenderness. I’d never had an elbow problem in my life.”

The relationship between his shoulder and elbow maladies was talked about “ad nauseam,” and while McHugh isn’t sure — “everything is so minuscule in your delivery” — he assumes the latter was related to effort level and trying to come back too soon. Opting for caution over expediency, the Astros subsequently kept him on the shelf until July.

My conversation with McHugh turned to mechanics, and to how many feel that continual max-effort makes a pitcher prone to elbow issues more than does increased velocity. Read the rest of this entry »