Author Archive: David Laurila

The conversation began a bit clunky, then it turned a little nerdy. Not in a numbers-crunching way, but rather in a bat-path way. Danny Espinosa, it turns out, wasn’t too loopy after all.

I’d never formally met the Angels infielder prior to approaching him in Tempe earlier this spring. We had interacted, albeit briefly. That was last September, when he was in Pittsburgh as a member of the Washington Nationals, and I was interviewing Trea Turner. Sidling up from the adjoining locker, Espinosa raised an imaginary microphone and asked his then teammate: “Are you the best player in the National League?” He then walked away, bemused, as I claimed that was going to be my next question. (It wasn’t.)

Fast forward to our recent, and more expansive, exchange. The first thing I asked Espinosa, who was acquired by Anaheim over the offseason, was why he was so inconsistent with the bat as a Nat. After a quizzical look that led me to rephrase my question, he suggested he’s happy to be in the American League.

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Bob Melvin is up to date on advanced stats and baseball’s technological advancements. As the manager of the Oakland A’s, he has to be. The game’s original Moneyball club is in much the same position they were when Kevin Youkilis was being dubbed “The Greek God of Walks” — monetarily challenged, they need to be as progressive as possible to compete.

When it comes to communicating ideas with his players, Melvin is careful not to introduce sensory overload. After all, not everyone on the roster is a Brandon McCarthy or a Jed Lowrie.

“It’s our job, as a staff, to be able to reach the players who want this type of information,” said Melvin. “Some can handle it, while for others it might be a distraction. Certain guys need information in layman’s terms. You have to take the principles and present them in a language they can grasp, because when you’re in a game, you can’t have too much clutter in the your brain.

“We’re a cutting edge organization that is always looking for advantages. With things like exit velocities and spin rates… we hire people to look at that. The people above me — David (Forst) and Billy (Beane) and these guys — do a good job of helping spoon-feed it down to the people we feel can handle it, and benefit by it.”

According to Melvin, more than aptitude is at play. Read the rest of this entry »

Alan Zinter has a challenging job. The 48-year-old former first baseman is San Diego’s hitting coach, and the position players on the Padres roster are, with few exceptions, young and inexperienced. There is a plenty of raw talent, but there are also plenty of learning curves. Works-in-progress abound.

Zinter embraces the challenge, in large part because he enjoys teaching. By all accounts, he is very good at it. Prior to joining the Padres a little over a year ago, he served as assistant hitting coach in Houston, and before that he was Cleveland’s minor-league hitting coordinator. He began his coaching career in the Diamondbacks system.

He’s anything but old-fashioned in his understanding of the craft. Zinter is well-versed in launch angles and exit velocities, and as a result, he’s not interested in seeing his hitters — not even the speedy ones — slap balls on the ground and run. He wants them driving through the baseball with a swing plane that opens up a window and results in gap shots. From his perspective, it all starts from the launch position.

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Zinter on teaching proper swing mechanics: “With technology being what it is today, with the slo-mo cameras — the ability to slow down the swing — we can actually see what a good swing looks like. A lot of times, what’s taught is ‘chop wood, swing down on the ball, knob to the ball’ — things like that, which make for a shorter compact swing. But some guys who feel they’re doing that end up swinging improperly.

“A lot of hitters, when they try to swing down, lead with their hands. They’re too steep into the zone. Other hitters, for whatever reason, think the same thing and do it properly.

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A few weeks ago, Cincinnati Reds general manager Dick Williams was one of several executives to weigh in on the question: “How necessary is it for an MLB front office to pick a direction and stay the course?”

Williams gave an expansive answer, addressing the fact that he leads a small-market team in full rebuild mode. But while he covered a lot in his four-paragraph contribution, much was left unsaid. A lot has changed since he replaced Walt Jocketty as the Reds’ general manager 15 months ago. Many of the particulars have flown well below the radar, so I followed up with the former investment banker to get a deeper look at what’s been happening behind the scenes in Cincinnati.

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Williams on rebuilding in a small market: “Rebuilding in a smaller market has its challenges. Because of that, we’re being extremely prudent with our investment dollars. When some of the bigger-market teams are going through a rebuilding phase, they can do a one-year signing of a guy making $8-10 million. He’ll be a good contributor to that club, then be a flip candidate to bring back prospects at the trade deadline. Smaller-market teams can’t go out and do a bunch of those deals when they’re in a rebuilding phase.
 
“Attendance tends to drop off more quickly for small-market teams in a rebuild period and that can have a big effect on revenues. Bigger-market teams… usually have a higher and more solid attendance base, so they can sort of weather the down times a little better.
 
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The first words out of Casey Kelly’s mouth surprised me. When I asked the former top prospect how he’d describe his career, I expected something along the lines of, “It’s been frustrating.”

He said “It’s been fun.”

That’s a glass-is-half-full attitude if there ever was one. Since being taken in the first round of the 2008 draft by the Red Sox, the 27-year-old right-hander has thrown just 640 professional innings, 62 of which have come at the highest level. They haven’t been pretty innings. Kelly’s big-league ERA is an unattractive 6.39.

His future look especially bright after he was acquired by San Diego in the Anthony Rizzo–Adrian Gonzalez trade. Heading into the 2011 season, Kelly was ranked by Baseball America as the Padres top prospect (Rizzo was right behind him). Displaying a power arsenal, he went on to hurl 142 quality frames as a 21-year-old in Double-A.

Clouds were looming on the horizon. Read the rest of this entry »

For Lucas Giolito, KISS doesn’t mean Keep It Simple Stupid. Given his intellectual curiosity — picking Max Scherzer’s brain didn’t hurt — the acronym more aptly equates to Keep It Simple Smart.

Giolito is now in the White Sox organization, having been acquired by Chicago from Washington in December’s Adam Eaton mini-blockbuster. Blessed with a big arm and a made-for-movies persona, the 6-foot-6 righty projects as a front-line starter, but only if he can keep his delivery in sync. That was an issue in last year’s six-game cameo with the Nationals, when he allowed 39 baserunners in 21.1 innings.

The 22-year-old former first-round pick believes that striking the right balance is the secret to future success. Being studious and cerebral comes naturally to Giolito, but at the same time, he understands that simplicity is a pitcher’s friend.

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Giolito on how analytics impact his thought process: “It’s tough, because they make it a little more complicated, and when I’m pitching I like to make it super simple. But things like spin rate and extension play a role in, ‘How good is your stuff?’ What I especially looked at last year was… usually, I’m a big extension guy. On my fastball, I’ll get seven-foot-whatever.

“I was looking at some numbers, and saw that I was down to six-foot-eight, six-nine, six-whatever. That’s not what I should be doing. Sure enough, video showed that I was flying open and yanking everything. So that stuff can be very helpful. Same thing with spin rate. Is the ball coming out of your hand at its best right now? It used to just be a feel thing, and now you can actually look at the numbers to back it up.

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When I interviewed him in April 2013, Jason Hammel was a 30-year-old pitcher yet to hit his stride. Following his previous path, he went on to have a ho-hum season. In 26 appearances for the Orioles — 23 of them of them as a starter — Hammel had seven wins, a 4.97 ERA, and a 6.2 K/9. His two-seamer and slider showed signs of coming around, but for all intents and purposes, he was a run-of-the-mill, back-of-the-rotation righty.

That has changed. Since originally joining the Chicago Cubs prior to the 2014 season, Hammel has fashioned a 3.68 ERA and fanned 8.3 batters per nine innings. Last year, he won a career-high 15 games for the World Series champions. The cerebral 6-foot-6 hurler is now a 34-year-old Kansas City Royal, having inked a two-year, $16 million deal with the AL Central club over the offseason.

Hammel discussed his mid-career emergence, which was fueled by an improved slider and a subsequent confab with a sexagenarian guru, in the waning days of February.

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Hammel on what has changed since our 2013 conversation: “A big part of [becoming more successful] was throwing a slider for a strike. It was kind of the idea of pitching backwards. Before, I never had a breaking ball that I could start with. I was throwing a curveball more than a slider, and the curveball is more of a… I get a lot of takes on it, because it’s a bigger break. I had to find something else with spin that I could put in the zone. The two-seamer has been a big, big pitch for me, and the two-seamer and slider complement each other really well, because they’re going two separate directions.

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Mike Harkey saw his career go south in 1991. Coming off a rookie year where he went 12-6, with a 3.26 ERA for the Cubs, the former fourth-overall pick suffered a shoulder injury that essentially squelched a promising future. He persevered after surgery, pitching parts of another six seasons, but he was never the same.

The what-could-have-been hurler doesn’t blame anyone for what happened.

“I think it’s one of those things where everybody is preordained,” said Harkey, who is now the bullpen coach for the Yankees. “X amount of pitchers are going to get hurt, and it was just my turn. I don’t feel I was ever overused. I threw every Friday night at Cal State Fullerton, and when I got to pro ball I pitched every fifth day.”

Four games into his 1991 campaign, he succumbed to the inevitable. His shoulder had begun barking the previous September, but thinking it was tendonitis — “I always had a high tolerance for pain” — he soldiered on. As he said when we spoke last summer, he didn’t know how bad it was until he couldn’t pitch anymore.

Harkey doesn’t begrudge his fate, but he does admit looking back. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in December, Bryan Price opined in these pages that young pitchers should throw more, not less. The Cincinnati Reds manager was referring to the minor leagues — youthful amateurs are a different story — which is essentially finishing school for up-and-coming hurlers. In Price’s view, “throwing is the only way for them to learn the craft.” For that reason, they should “carry a heavier workload.”

Price uttered those words at a winter-meetings media session, which limited his ability to elaborate on, and clarify, certain salient opinions. With that in mind, I recently followed up with the former pitching coach to give him that opportunity. Injuries and causation was the first subject he addressed.

“I don’t see anything in our baseball community — our pitching community — that suggests protecting these kids by decreasing their workload leads to a lessening of the number of injuries that require surgery,” said Price. “We have yet to put a finger on how we’re going to cure, and completely avoid, the Tommy John issues, the ulnar collateral ligament issues. Perhaps it’s training methods, and kids playing year round now, as opposed to playing seasonal sports. That would be my guess, but I don’t know that as a fact.

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Adam Ottavino is a cerebral pitcher. You probably already know that, especially if you’re a regular reader of FanGraphs. Eno Sarris and I have both talked to, and written about, the Rockies reliever multiple times in recent seasons. From spin rates to spin axis to release points, he digs deep into data in search of any and all advantages he can find.

Last week, I approached Ottavino at Colorado’s spring-training facility — the scenic-and-pristine Salt River Fields at Talking Stick — to get a pitcher’s view of how launch-angle studies could end up impacting the game. His answer, studious as always, segued into the optimization of his own offerings.

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Adam Ottavino: “It’s going to be a natural, evolutionary process. People are going to change what they’re doing at the plate and, as pitchers, we’re going to have to change in response to that. They’re trying to get on plane and create fly balls, staying through it really well. I think we’re seeing more guys now with the ability to lift lower pitches. In years past, the swing wasn’t really designed to do that. They were trying to hit the ball on the ground, hard, and run.

“I think we’re going to continue to see pitchers elevating. We’re going to continue to see pitches designed to turn those fly balls into weak fly balls. But I think until it’s fully embraced — the uppercut swing, and all that — until it’s prevalent throughout all of baseball, it’s hard to imagine we’ll see a major trend on the pitching side in response to that.

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