Austin Riley was relatively raw when our 2017 Atlanta Braves Top Prospects list was published in February of that year. Six weeks short of his 20th birthday, he was coming off of a Low-A season in which he logged 20 home runs and a 124 wRC+, but also fanned 147 times. With lingering concerns about both his contact profile and conditioning, Eric Longenhagen conservatively ranked Riley no. 28 in a then-strong Atlanta system.
Riley has obviously gone on to have a highly successful career. Since debuting with the Braves in May 2019, Riley has put up a 124 wRC+ and 19.9 WAR across parts of seven seasons, slugged 30-plus homers in three different years, and made a pair of All-Star teams. A mainstay in the middle of Atlanta’s lineup, the 41st-overall pick in the 2015 draft out Southaven, Mississippi’s DeSoto Central High School has developed into one of the senior circuit’s top sluggers.
What did Riley’s 2017 FanGraphs scouting report look like? Moreover, what does he think about it all these years later? Wanting to find out I shared some of what our lead prospect analyst wrote and asked Riley to respond to it.
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“Riley began the year struggling with any sort of velocity and then improved the timing of his footwork, quieted his hands and started hitting. Late in the year, he was turning on plus velocity.”
“Very accurate,” Riley said. “Coming out of high school, I hadn’t seen velo a lot, and I kind of had a lot going on with my swing. I needed to make some adjustments. Being a bigger guy, a power guy, it was kind of, ‘All I have to do is touch the ball, get a barrel to the ball.’ It was one of my first steps in learning how to shorten everything up and just get a barrel to it. From there, good things happen.”
“He has plus raw power (at least) and has improved his body composition since high school (when he was a heavy 230). But at just 19, with some general stiffness to his actions, Riley is pretty likely to kick over to first base as he matures.”Read the rest of this entry »
Mason Fluharty is flying under the radar as one of baseball’s most effective lefty relievers. Since making his major league debut with the Toronto Blue Jays on April Fools Day, the 23-year-old southpaw has a 1.96 ERA and a 2.94 FIP over 18 appearances. Moreover, he’s allowed just seven hits in his 18-and-third innings, and prior to surrendering a solo home run to former Jay Danny Jansen this past Tuesday he’d retired 21 consecutive batters. All three of his decisions are in the win column.
His initial two outings were especially challenging. The first batter Fluharty faced in the bigs was Washington Nationals 2024 All-Star CJ Abrams, who lined a run-scoring double. Three days later, the first batter in his second outing was Juan Soto; the New York Mets superstar also stroked a run-scoring double.
I asked the 2022 fifth-round pick out of Liberty University about those welcome-to-the-big-leagues ABs prior to his third appearance.
“Get put into the fire and see what happens,” said Fluharty, who later that same day faced Rafael Devers [E-6], Alex Bregman [K], and Rob Refsnyder [DP]. “I’m glad they have faith in me. While I obviously would have preferred better outcomes in those first outings, it’s all about adjusting. This game is hard.”
Marcus Semien was a promising prospect heading into the 2013 season, but he was far from a high-profile player. When that year’s Baseball America Prospect Handbook was published, the 2011 sixth-round pick out of the University of California-Berkeley was ranked just 14th in a light Chicago White Sox system. (At the time, in-depth scouting reports were still in their nascent stages here at FanGraphs.)
In the 12 years since then, the 34-year-old Semien has gone on to exceed those modest expectations. He reached the big leagues with the White Sox in September 2013, then established himself as an everyday player after they traded him to the Athletics before the 2015 season. Now in his fourth year with the Rangers after six seasons in Oakland and one in Toronto, the Bay Area native has three All-Star selections, two Silver Sluggers, and a Gold Glove on his résumé. Scuffling in the current campaign — Semien has a 47 wRC+ over 176 plate appearances — he nonetheless has 1,533 hits, including 241 home runs, to go with a 108 wRC+ and 36.1 WAR over his major league career.
What did Semien’s Baseball America scouting report look like in the spring of 2013? Moreover, what does he think about it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what then-BA contributing writer Phil Rogers wrote, and asked Semien to respond to it.
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“The son of former California wide receiver [Damien] Semien, Marcus was a three-sport standout in high school who followed his father’s footsteps to Berkeley, where he focused on baseball.”
“I actually just played basketball and baseball in high school,” Semien replied. “I was part of a state championship runner-up in my senior year, so I missed probably the first three weeks of my [baseball] season. Once I graduated high school, I knew that baseball was all that I was going to play in college.” Read the rest of this entry »
Paul Molitor was a maestro with the bat. Over 21 seasons — 15 with the Milwaukee Brewers and three each with the Minnesota Twins and the Toronto Blue Jays — he recorded 3,319 hits, the 11th-highest total in major league history. Moreover, Molitor’s 605 doubles are tied for 15th most, while his 2,366 singles are 12th most. Walking nearly as often as he struck out (1,094 BB, 1,244 K) the sweet-swinging corner infielder/designated hitter put up a .306/.369/.448 slash line and a 122 wRC+.
Elected to the Hall of Fame in 2004, the St. Paul, Minnesota native went on to manage the Twins from 2015-2018, and prior to that he served as the team’s bench coach and as the hitting coach for the Seattle Mariners. Now an analyst on Twins radio broadcasts, Molitor sat down to talk hitting on a recent visit to Fenway Park.
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David Laurila: You played [from 1978-1998]. Did hitters and/or hitting change over the course of your long career?
Paul Molitor: “I don’t think as drastically as we’ve seen over the past 10 years or so. I don’t know if we’ve ever been through a period where the percentage of teams’ runs scored were as closely related to how many home runs they hit. The game is always evolving. Breaking down the game in terms of what plays, the numbers show how driving the baseball, getting extra-base hits, [produces runs].
“I do like the old-school. Trying to get hits is still a good thing. You’re obviously going to have guys in your lineup who are more prone to striking out, but they’re going to get you that two- or three-run homer every now and then. And then you have the guys who create the flow on the bases. If you can run the bases, you give yourself more opportunities to get in scoring position. A perfect example would be the 2025 Red Sox. They put a lot of pressure on teams defensively. I think both can work.
“So yeah, there have been changes, but again, not too much when I played. Guys were always trying to figure out how to get better, but the involvement of analytics has changed some of the approach — everything from uppercut swings to how pitchers are throwing the baseball, spinning the baseball. It all plays a part in the counter strategy that hitters are trying to employ.”
Mike Bacsik is best known for having surrendered Barry Bonds’s 756th home run. The August 7, 2007 bomb at San Francisco’s AT&T Park gave Bonds the most in MLB history, one more than Henry Aaron. Unlike the legendary bashers, Bacsik is but a mere mortal. A left-handed pitcher for four teams over parts of five seasons, the now-Texas Rangers broadcast analyst appeared in 51 big-league games and logged a record of 10-13 with a 5.46 ERA in 216 innings.
Despite his relative anonymity, the gopher wasn’t the only noteworthy happening in Bacsik’s career. Moreover, those didn’t all take place with him on the mound.
“In my first 14 at-bats, I didn’t get a hit, didn’t strike out, and didn’t walk,” explained Bacsik, who finished 5-for-50 at the dish. “Apparently that’s a record for not having one of those outcomes to begin a career. I didn’t know this until last year when we were in Detroit and they brought it up on the broadcast.”
In Bacsik’s next three plate appearances, he doubled, singled, and struck out — all in the same game. Two years later, in his 44th time standing in a batter’s box, he drew his only career walk.
The first home run that Bacsik allowed — there were 41 in all — was to Kevin Millar. It isn’t his most-memorable outside of the Bonds blast. Read the rest of this entry »
Lucas Giolito is looking to return to form following elbow surgery that cost him all of last year. Now 30 years old and in his first season on mound with the Boston Red Sox, Giolito has made a pair of starts — one solid, another squalid — in which he has surrendered 15 hits and nine runs over 9 2/3 innings. At his best, he’s been a top-of-the-rotation pitcher. From 2019-2021, the 6-foot-6 right-hander fashioned a 3.47 ERA and a 3.54 FIP while making a team-high 72 starts for the Chicago White Sox.
Turn the clock back 10 years, and Giolito sat atop our 2015 Washington Nationals Top Prospects list. Our then-lead prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel was understandably bullish about Giolito, writing that the 2012 first-round draft pick had true no. 1 upside.
What did Giolito’s FanGraphs scouting report look like at the time? Moreover, what does he think about it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what McDaniel wrote and asked Giolito to respond to it.
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“Giolito was nationally known by scouts all the way back to when he hit 95 mph at age 15.”
“I always threw hard,” Giolito said. “I was one of the hardest throwers in Little League and everything like that. I started long tossing a lot around the time I got to high school, and just kept building and building. I think I hit 90 when I was 14, and then 95 maybe closer to my 16th birthday. So yeah, it kept going up until I blew my elbow out.
“Probably,” Giolito responded when asked if the velocity was too much, too early. “There wasn’t too much understanding on the medical side, like strengthening, stability — all the stuff that we’re doing now to maintain the little muscles, the big muscles, to support your body when it’s outputting that much force. I was also very skinny. My shoulder blades winged out. I didn’t have much muscular development at that age, but I was moving very fast. It eventually caught up to me.”
“[He] was in the running to go 1-1 as one of the top prep pitchers of all time, until he was shut down with a sprained UCL in his elbow. This led to an expected Tommy John surgery one outing after he signed for an $800,000 overslot bonus as the 16th overall pick.”
“I remember having an outing where I think the Astros’ GM came to see me pitch in person,” Giolito said. “I pitched really well that day. I was on top of the world. It was like, ‘Oh my God, I might be the first-overall pick if I just continue what I’m doing for the rest of the season.’ It was the next outing, or maybe two outings later, where I hurt my elbow. I had to shut down. We didn’t want to do the full TJ yet, because we thought that would hurt me in the draft. Plus, if I was going to get TJ, I wanted to be in a professional organization where you get access to the best care. I tried to rehab it.
“Going into the draft, I had no idea,” added Giolito, a product of Harvard-Westlake High School. “I thought I’d be picked somewhere in the first three rounds, that a team would take a flier on me. I didn’t know I’d be in the first round. That was kind of the beginning of the pre-draft-deal era, but I literally was watching the draft on the TV when they said my name. That was when I found out I was drafted in the first round.
“The Nationals picked me. I was a prep arm with a blown-out elbow, which is a big, big risk. I have Stephen Strasburg to thank, because he was a big prospect who came up, blew his elbow out, got Tommy John, and had a relatively successful recovery from that. The Nationals kind of saw me in that same vein. It was, ‘OK, we’ll get this guy. He’ll have TJ, but we feel confident with this.’”
“The stuff was all the way back this year as he dominated Low-A at age 19/20 in his first full year coming off of surgery. The Nationals were understandably conservative with pitch and innings counts.”
“My first full season back they had my innings count at 100,” Giolito recalled. “I got to 100 innings and they shut me down, and that sucked, because our team was so good. Our starting rotation consisted of me, Reynaldo López, Nick Pivetta. Austin Voth was in the rotation, but he got sent up to High-A at some point that year. We had a really nasty one-two-three with me, Reynaldo, and Nick, but then I got shut down with a few weeks left in the season and had to be a cheerleader. We ended up losing in the playoffs.”
“His knockout curveball, which gets 65 or 70 grades from scouts, is his signature offspeed pitch.”
“Not any more,” replied the righty. “I still have it, but I don’t throw it as often. I always say that Tommy John gave me my changeup. When I was recovering I messed around with changeup grips a lot and found one that was comfortable. I threw it a lot in that same season you mentioned, that Low-A season. I threw a ton of changeups, because the curveball made my elbow hurt that first season back.
“My curveball was good in the minor leagues — I still used it — but we mixed that changeup in a lot. Over time, especially when I developed the slider, the changeup really became the big pitch for me.”
“He has true no. 1 starter upside.”
“Yeah, I mean, I had that with the White Sox for a couple of years,” Giolito said. “I still have confidence that I have true no. 1 starter upside. I just have to come back from this thing and develop some good consistency.”
Matt Seelinger has taken an atypical path to the doorstep of the big leagues. Drafted in the 28th round by the Pittsburgh Pirates out of Division-III Farmingdale State College in 2017, the 30-year-old right-hander subsequently played in the Tampa Bay Rays, San Francisco Giants, and Philadelphia Phillies organizations before getting released and hooking on with the Atlantic League’s Long Island Ducks before the 2024 season. His fortunes turned last summer. The Detroit Tigers signed Seelinger in late June, and since returning to affiliated ball he has logged a 1.26 ERA and a 38.4% strikeout rate over 29 relief appearances between Double-A Erie and Triple-A Toledo. So far this season, the Westbury, New York native has a 4-0 record to go with a 0.57 ERA and a 30.9% strikeout rate over nine appearances, the last five of them with the Mud Hens.
His signature pitch is every bit as notable as his late-bloomer success. Seelinger’s repertoire includes a four-seam fastball and a cutter/slider, but it is his unique offering with an unorthodox grip that most stands out. Seelinger shared the story behind it when Toledo visited Triple-A Worcester last week.
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David Laurila: You throw a unique pitch. What exactly is it?
Matt Seelinger: “So, it was coined on Long Island, where I’m from. It’s called a knuckle drop. Basically, what I do is take a four-seam fastball grip and flip it so that the horseshoe is on the inside. I take my two fingers — my pointer finger and my middle finger — and bend them. I take the top lace, and put them on the bottom of it. I put my ring finger and pinky on the seams. The thumb, I try to get underneath as much as possible, although thumb placement isn’t as big of deal as long as it’s not too high up on the ball. From there, I throw it just like a fastball, only I’m pushing it out.”
Bailey Ober wasn’t highly regarded when our Minnesota Twins Top Prospects list was published in December 2019. The towering 6-foot-9 right-hander was ranked no. 40 with a 35+ FV. And our prospect-analyst team at the time wasn’t alone in having relatively low expectations for him. Baseball America’s 2020 Prospect Handbook didn’t include Ober in its 30-deep rankings of the Twins system, nor did MLB Pipeline find room for him in its own top 30.
Yet despite the lack of hype, Ober is now a mainstay in Minnesota’s rotation. A 12th-round pick out of the College of Charleston in 2017, he made his major league debut in May 2021, and he’s since gone on to log a 3.76 ERA and a 3.89 FIP over 95 starts comprising 510 innings. So far this season, Ober has toed the rubber seven times and has a 4-1 record to go with a 3.72 ERA and a 3.85 FIP.
What did his FanGraphs scouting report look like at the time? Moreover, what does he think about it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel wrote, and asked Ober to respond to it.
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“There’s very little precedent for someone with Ober’s velocity having big league success, but it’s clear why his mid-80s fastball has been dominant to this point.”
“That was the year my velo dipped way down,” Ober said. “I was 92-94 before that. My mechanics were terrible. We were trying to work on some stuff and it just went in the wrong direction. But I also had the best success I’d ever had, stats-wise. My ERA was [0.69] that season, which is why no one was in a rush to change anything. I was able to blow guys up with 88 mph.”
Joe Nicholson, Troy Taormina, Nick Turchiaro, Jeff Curry-Imagn Images
It is well known that analytics have changed the baseball landscape. Moreover, it is widely understood that the evolution is ongoing. Embracing innovation, especially within the technology realm, has increasingly become a must for teams looking to keep up with — and ideally get a step ahead of — the competition. For front offices across the game, it’s adapt or die.
What does that mean for the general managers and presidents of baseball operations who lead those front offices? In other words, how have the ever-continuing advancements impacted their jobs over the years? Wanting to find out, I asked four longtime executives for their perspectives.
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On how analytics have impacted the job
John Mozeliak, St. Louis Cardinals
“When I first broke in, how you made decisions was basically based on scouting reports and traditional statistics. Now it’s much more analytically driven because of the advanced metrics. If you think about it, in the old days when people would invest in stocks… it’s the same kind of thinking now. The more information you have, the better your decisions are. That’s changed quite a bit over the last 25 years.
“Two things come to mind. One is understanding the longevity of a player. In other words, how long should you be investing in a player? The other thing is prospect evaluation; how much value someone might have, even though they’re still in the minor leagues. When you think back to 20-30 years ago, a lot of times minor league players didn’t have the same type of value that you’re seeing today.
“The economics of baseball have changed drastically. There is more revenue in the game, and higher payrolls, but there is also how you think about moving talent for talent. It’s much more based on economics than just pure ‘I think he’s a good baseball player.’”
Ty France went into last season trying to be something he’s not, and the results reflected that. Over 535 plate appearances split between the Seattle Mariners and Cincinnati Reds, he slashed .234/.305/.365 with 13 home runs and a 93 wRC+. Statistically speaking, it was the worst year of his career.
Now with the Minnesota Twins after inking a modest $1M free-agent deal in mid-February, France went into yesterday with numbers more in line with what he did from 2019-2023. A month-plus into the campaign, the 30-year-old first baseman has a 118 wRC+ and a .271/.341/.407 slash line.
How has he rediscovered the better version of himself?
“My swing is simple and compact right now,” France told me prior to an 0-for-4 Friday night that included his being robbed on a diving catch and lining an at-em ball at an infielder. “Instead of trying to do too much, I’m just trying to get in my best position and take a good swing.
“Guys are getting paid for homers and doing damage, so a lot of my training last offseason was geared toward trying to hit the ball in the air and drive the ball,” France added. “I kind of lost touch with what I was best at, which is using the right side of the field just collecting hits. This past offseason was about getting back to the basics and rediscovering who I am as a hitter.” Read the rest of this entry »
