Aaron Nola is 22 years old and just nine starts into his big-league career. He still has a lot to learn. At the same time, his approach is akin to that of a veteran. Drafted seventh overall last year by the Philadelphia Phillies, the Louisiana State University product has a mature mindset that belies his age.

Nola features two- and four-seam fastballs, a changeup, and a curveball. Each offering is of solid quality, but more importantly, he knows how to employ them. The right-hander isn’t a flamethrower — his fastball is averaging 91.7 mph — but that’s not his game. Mixing and matching, and commanding to both sides of the plate, is his M.O. Unlike most youngsters getting their feet wet at the highest level, Nola is more of a pitcher than a thrower.

Nola — who has won five of his seven decisions and has a 4.02 ERA — talked about his game when the Phillies visited Fenway Park over the weekend.

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Nola on simplicity and preparation: “Nothing in baseball is easy or simple. Everybody out there has a plan, and mine is to get guys out any way that I can. Everybody has their way of approaching pitching, and the game. But while a lot goes into it, you do want to try to simplify pitching. Over-thinking can get in your way.

“There’s a lot more information available up here. Nothing is really a secret anymore. We all study hitters, and the hitters study us. Especially when you haven’t pitched against a team — it’s good to look at the information to see what their approaches are. I definitely use it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Conforto got to the big leagues in a hurry; the 10th overall pick in last year’s draft is already wearing a New York Mets uniform. It fits comfortably. The 22-year-old Oregon State product is hitting a stylish .292/.375/.531, with five long balls, in 112 plate appearances.

Conforto flew through the system this summer, punishing pitchers at two levels before being promoted directly from Double-A. Hoopla accompanied his arrival and he wasted little time justifying the buzz. In his second game, the left-handed-hitting outfielder stroked four hits, including a pair of doubles. He did so with access to data never before at his disposal.

“When I came up, I wanted to use all of it,” Coforto told me on Wednesday. “I wanted to see the heat charts of pitchers, and the percentages of pitches they use in certain counts and with runners on base. Everything. I tried to digest all of the information, but it’s tough to put all of those things into your head and still hit.”

Veteran teammates cautioned the youngster to keep it simple, telling him “You didn’t have those things in the minor leagues and you still hit.” He heeded their advice, but not to the point of eschewing all available data. Read the rest of this entry »

Scooter Gennett came into the season with a .300 batting average in 704 big-league plate appearance. The stat obviously has limited value, but it does suggest an ability to put a bat on a baseball. Gennett excels at it, sometimes to his detriment.

The 25-year-old second baseman puts a lot of balls in play. His Z-Contact% as a Milwaukee Brewer is 91.9 and his O-Contact% is 74. Both are higher than average, as are his swing rates on pitches in and out of the strike zone. Those aren’t issues when batted balls are going for base hits. They are when they’re being converted into easy outs.

Gennett was hitting .154 in mid-May and he was still south of the Mendoza line in late June. Quality of contact was the main culprit. The left-handed hitter was topping, and popping up, too many pitcher’s pitches. With his frustration level rising, he also began chasing out of the zone on two-strike counts, causing a slight up-tick in his K-rate.

A change of approach was in order. and so far the results are to his liking. Gennett has hit .317/.338/.444 over the last four weeks, raising his seasonal slash line to a more respectable .266/.300/.402. He still isn’t drawing many walks, but that’s not his goal. What he wants is to attack pitches he can barrel up, and not ones he can simply reach.

Gennett talked about his quest for discipline when the Brewers visited Wrigley Field in mid August. Read the rest of this entry »

Justin Bour is a big man who hits bombs. The 27-year-old Miami Marlins rookie is 6-foot-4, 250 pounds — and this season, 10 of his 14 home runs have gone at least 400 feet. On Saturday, he clubbed a 453 foot shot against Jordan Zimmermann at Nationals Park.

The lefty swinger has power to all fields. Seven of his Bour’s blasts have been to the pull side, while six have been from right-center to left-center and one has been to the opposite field.

Bour sees himself as more than a power hitter, although his numbers don’t necessarily reflect it. The slugging first baseman is slashing .257/.325/.449, in 326 plate appearances, and same-sided pitchers have mostly given him fits. He’s 10-for-43 versus southpaws.

As for the opportunity he’s getting in Miami, Bour is fortunate to no longer be buried in a star-studded Chicago Cubs system. The former 25th round pick was selected by the Marlins in the Triple-A portion of the 2013 Rule 5 draft.

Bour talked about his development as a hitter, including his all-fields approach, when Miami visited Boston earlier this summer. Read the rest of this entry »

Andrew Heaney was pitching in the Arizona Fall League when I first talked to him. A member of the Marlins organization at the time, he was 17 months removed from being drafted ninth overall out of Oklahoma State. This was in 2012, and Heaney had a clean delivery and a bright future.

He still has a bright future, although it’s now with the Angels. Anaheim acquired the 24-year-old southpaw from Miami, via the Dodgers, last winter. As for his delivery, it’s back after a brief hiatus.

“I went through a little funk last year,” Heaney told me earlier this month. “It’s hard to say exactly when it happened, but I developed some mechanical issues. It was also gradual, so I didn’t even feel it. I wasn’t pitching as well as I could, and I wasn’t sure why.”

Film from his time in the Fall League provided the answer. Read the rest of this entry »

Jason Bere had an interesting observation about Joe Borowski, who saved 45 games for the Indians in 2007. According to Bere – currently Cleveland’s bullpen coach – Borowski threw a lot of backup sliders. Contrary to what you might think, that was a good thing.

“A lot of times when he got a guy to swing and miss, it was with the one that just kind of stayed,” Bere told me. “They would react to what they were seeing out of the hand, the spin, but while it had the tightness of a true slider, it didn’t break like one.

“Hitters will tell you that something that backs up on them is hard to hit. A hanger, they’ll crush. But something that backs up – that last second it’s not going where they thought it was going to go – they”ll have trouble with it. You can see it from the swings they take.”

Intrigued by what Bere told me, I set out in search of further opinions on the effective, yet almost always unintentional, backup slider.

Alan Nathan, the man behind The Physics of Baseball, shared a scientific perspective. Read the rest of this entry »

Jimmy Nelson has emerged as Milwaukee’s best starter thanks to a pair of tweaks. The 26-year-old righty has unleashed a spike curveball and tightened up his delivery. The results are striking. Nelson leads Brewers hurlers in punch outs, wins, and innings, and his 3.61 ERA is as solid as his 6-foot-6, 245-pound frame.

Nelson discussed his adjustments, as well as his repertoire and approach, when the Brewers visited Wrigley Field earlier this month.

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Nelson on his delivery: “Before the season, I smoothed out the rhythm and timing of my delivery, which allows me to throw with less effort and to command the ball better. It was a mechanical change. Instead of going over my head with my hands to start my delivery, now I just keep them in front and drop them down. That allows me to be more consistent and repeatable, and a lot more relaxed. Read the rest of this entry »

David Cone was a thinking-man’s pitcher before he became a thinking-man’s analyst. The New York Yankees’ television color man took the mound for five teams in 17 major league seasons, and he logged lots of big wins along the way. Moxie played a role. The right-hander augmented his plus stuff with the same cerebral approach he now takes to the broadcast booth.

Cone shared some of his views on pitching when the Yankees visited Fenway Park earlier this summer. As you ‘d expect, he had a lot of interesting things to offer.

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Cone on Don Mattingly going 1-for-17 against him: “I can’t really explain it, but generally speaking, my formula for getting left-handed hitters out was fastball, split. Against right-handed hitters it was fastball, slider. Maybe I threw some decent splitters to him that promoted ground balls. It’s possible that he hit some balls pretty hard at defenders, too. It was probably a combination of both. Of course, 17 at bats isn’t a very big sample, either.

“A lot of times when I was throwing a splitter to a left-handed batter, it was either-or. It was to get a swing-and-miss, or to get the hitter out front – get his timing thrown off – and induce weak contact. I’d take either one, so it was sort of the same pitch, looking for two different outcomes. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not entirely surprising that Adam Eaton has nine home runs. The White Sox outfielder used to be a three-hole hitter with passable power. He homered 24 times in 434 at bats over his final two seasons at Miami University, and 13 times in his first 470 professional at bats.

Then the team that drafted him took away his bite.

The Arizona Diamondbacks moved Eaton to the top of the order – and sometimes near the bottom – when they promoted him to Double-A, in 2011. It was at that point they asked him to start developing a lead-off hitter type of approach.

“They wanted me to work my hands inside the ball consistently and drive the ball the other way,” explained Eaton. “Being a smaller guy on the left side of the plate, you definitely get tailored to your speed, and Arizona wanted me to ‘get on base, get on base.’ I’ve always been a guy who likes to hit the ball the other way, but that was still a completely different mentality.”

Eaton is 5-foot-8, so it makes sense that a team would want him to eschew swinging for the fences. To their credit, the White Sox realize it also makes sense to let him take advantage of his sneaky pop. Read the rest of this entry »

Nelson Cruz leads both leagues in home runs, and he ranks second behind Bryce Harper in SLG. Neither is a surprise. The Seattle slugger left the yard 40 times with Baltimore last season, and moving to Safeco Field wasn’t going to squelch his production. Per ESPN Home Run Tracker, 22 of the 34 bombs he’s hit this year have traveled more than 400 feet. Nine of them have gone at least 440 feet.

One thing has come as a surprise: Going into last night, the career .274 hitter had a .324 batting average, and he was tied with Prince Fielder for the most base hits (140) in either league. Once one-dimensional, the former Texas Ranger has morphed into more than just a basher.

It’s been a long process. In many respects, Cruz has been a late bloomer. Read the rest of this entry »