Author Archive: David Laurila

Darrin Jackson is 62 years young and in his 26th season as a broadcast analyst for the Chicago White Sox. Currently paired with Len Kasper in the radio booth, the erstwhile MLB outfielder is equally adept at breaking down plays and sharing entertaining anecdotes. Much for the latter reason, he is a fantastic fit for our Challenging Career Quiz series, which now runs 11 deep and most recently featured Baltimore Orioles legend Jim Palmer.

Jackson’s playing career comes nowhere close to rivaling Palmer’s, although he did have his fair share of success. Suiting up for seven clubs — including both of Chicago’s — over a dozen seasons, Jackson was at his best in San Diego. Across the 1991-1992 campaigns, the right-handed swinger swatted 38 home runs as a Friar while logging a 99 wRC+ and 8.5 WAR. Filling a platoon role for much of his big league tenure, Jackson retired with 676 hits, including 80 round-trippers, over 2,816 plate appearances.

Which pitcher did he face the most times? That proved to be an easy question, as Jackson correctly guessed Tom Glavine with little hesitation. When I informed Jackson that the southpaw was also the pitcher against whom he’d garnered the most hits, he offered an unsurprising recollection of Glavine. As most fans know, the Hall of Famer had a well-earned reputation for getting strikes just off the plate.

“Facing him was never a fun practice, mainly because umpires had their own strike zones back then,” said Jackson, who went 11-for-44 with a pair of home runs and one walk versus Glavine. “He knew how to abuse that strike zone by working away, away, down and away, down and away. He would get you diving across the plate, looking in that zone, and the next thing you knew, he’d be throwing a two-seam fastball on the inside corner to freeze you for strike three. I probably got rung up looking by him more than anyone else I faced, because of that exact way of pitching. It drove me crazy. Even though you said I had a bunch of hits, I never liked facing him. He was just too smart and too good.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ryan Weathers allowed a lot of home runs in the early months of the season. Going into the final week of June, the 26-year-old New York Yankees southpaw had been taken deep 16 times over 14 starts comprising 80 2/3 innings. Frustratingly gopher-prone, he had a 4.13 ERA and a 4.31 FIP.

He has since been keeping balls in the yard. Over his last nine outings, the son of longtime big-league hurler David Weathers has surrendered just a pair of home runs over 46 innings while logging a 2.93 ERA and a 2.71 FIP. The reasons behind his turnaround? I haven’t spoken to Weathers since June 27 — one start into his resurgence — but based on that conversation and his pitch-usage numbers, an answer isn’t hard to deduce.

Weathers has thrown his four-seamer just 16.3% of the time since he stopped surrendering home runs at a 2004 Jamie Moyer pace, whereas he had previously been throwing it at a 27.8% clip. Meanwhile, his slider and changeup percentages have jumped as he has held his two-seamer usage fairly static. Read the rest of this entry »

Davis Martin had a first inning to forget on Tuesday. Pitching at Fenway Park, the Chicago White Sox right-hander was torched for six runs by a scorching-hot Red Sox team that went on to prevail 14-2. He settled down after the tumultuous frame — only one more runner crossed the plate before Martin departed in the sixth — but by then the damage was done.

What happened in the fateful first inning? I asked him that question the following day, but before we get to his thoughts, a quick recap:

With two on and one out, Willson Contreras singled home a run. Two batters later, Caleb Durbin launched a grand slam. Jarren Duran then followed with a solo shot on Martin’s 20th pitch of the game.

The hurler’s take?

“First, there is a lot to be said about how good this Red Sox team is, and what they’ve been doing,” said Martin, who is 9-6 with a 4.13 ERA and a 3.48 FIP over 122 innings on the season. “We studied the scouting report, and there weren’t a lot of pitches that I would want to take back. But yeah, I felt that they were one step ahead. They were doing a really good job of keeping me off balance.”

Red Sox hitters had clearly been more aggressive than the White Sox expected. Half a dozen runs coming on 20 pitches thrown to seven batters is notable, especially when you consider that Contreras saw six of them. His at-bat was arguably the key to the inning. After fouling off consecutive two-strike offerings, the slugger got his RBI knock on a breaking ball that was well wide of the plate. Read the rest of this entry »

Jim Palmer faced 870 different hitters over the course of a Hall of Fame career that spanned from 1965 to 1984. A Baltimore Oriole throughout, the now-80-year-old broadcast analyst did so while fashioning a 268-152 won-lost record and a 2.68 ERA. A six-time All-Star who captured three Cy Young Awards, he is widely considered the best pitcher in franchise history.

How well does Palmer remember his matchups against Carl Yastrzemski, Rod Carew, and other notables from his era? Moreover, can he correctly answer questions such as “Who did you strike out the most times?” and “Who did you surrender the most home runs to?” I decided to find out. Given his reputation as an entertaining storyteller with a good memory, Palmer seemed like a perfect fit for our Challenging Career Quiz series.

That he didn’t know who he had faced the most times came as a surprise. Palmer faced Yastrzemski a whopping 197 times, with his next most frequent matchup, Graig Nettles, lagging well behind with 160. Of course, his not being able to name the Red Sox icon didn’t mean there weren’t stories. With Palmer, there are almost always going to be stories. Read the rest of this entry »

Kevin Gausman has been a fan favorite for most of his 14 big league seasons, and for good reason. Now a Chicago Cub after Sunday’s swap with the Toronto Blue Jays, the 35-year-old right-hander has not only performed well on the field, he is widely regarded as both a good teammate and an all-around nice guy. With that reputation in mind, and the trade deadline fast approaching, I broached the subject of fandom with him at Fenway Park in the final week of July.

I began by asking about his boyhood allegiances.

“I was more a fan of players than teams,” replied Gausman, who was born and raised in the Denver area. “I wouldn’t say I was a huge Rockies fan — I was more fair-weather — although when I was in high school, they did go to the World Series. Even so, I was more a fan of the Cargos [Carlos González], the Tulos [Troy Tulowitzki], and guys like Todd Helton and Ubaldo Jiménez. It wasn’t so much, ‘This is my favorite team.’ I didn’t have that. I did have my favorite uniforms, which is kind of funny looking back. I always liked the old Blue Jays uniforms.” Read the rest of this entry »

What has Tarik Skubal been thinking about lately? The obvious answer is where he will be playing once the trade deadline passes, but that wasn’t how I posed the question to him a few weeks ago. What I was interested in were his thoughts on pitching as a whole.

“The evolution of the fastball,” replied Skubal, whom the Detroit Tigers dealt to the Los Angeles Dodgers late last night for a package of prospects. “What is a fastball and how guys pitch. In today’s game, more than ever, guys have two versions of the fastball. Maybe three. The cutter is still a fastball in my eyes, so cut-fastball, sinker, four-seamer. Lance Lynn was the guy who did it when I was first in the big leagues. He threw three fastballs. Now you see Cam Schlittler doing it, others guys doing it. The development of fastball offerings: just how much different it is now versus, say, 10 years ago? That’s something I would be interested to see.”

I dug up that info — more specifically, my colleague Jon Becker unearthed it for me — and we’ll get to that in a moment. First let’s hear more of what the always-insightful southpaw had to say.

“I think you almost have to have two different fastballs now, just to give them different looks,” Skubal told me. “Hitters are so good at covering one fastball, and if you give them two, that’s tough on them. I feel like that transition — multiple fastballs — is happening a lot right now.”

Skubal, whose arsenal is sans a cutter but includes an elite changeup, has thrown his four-seamer at a 36.5% clip this season, and his sinker at a 19.8% clip. The lesser used of his two fastballs isn’t great in a vacuum, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an important weapon in his arsenal. Read the rest of this entry »

Will Middlebrooks didn’t have an especially accomplished career. Hampered by injuries, the slugging third baseman saw action in just 347 big league games — the bulk of them with the Boston Red Sox — before hanging up his spikes shortly after his 29th birthday. But there were memorable moments along the way, and he has good stories to go with them. Now a broadcast analyst for the Red Sox, Middlebrooks shared several of them in the latest installment of our Challenging Career Quiz series.

I began by asking which pitcher he faced the most times.

“I had the most success against Mark Buehrle, and it could have been him,” replied Middlebrooks, who logged 262 hits, including 43 home runs, while playing from 2012-2017. “I know I faced him a lot. Was it Buerhle?”

Nope. Middlebrooks stood in the box against the longtime Chicago White Sox southpaw 19 times, going 8-for-18 with a pair of doubles and a hit-by-pitch, but it’s another hurler who has the honor. Asking Middlebrooks if he had any other guesses prompted a good exchange. Read the rest of this entry »

Caleb Durbin had a brutal first few months of the 2026 season. One week into June, the Boston Red Sox third baseman had come to the plate 208 times to the tune of a .190/.254/.288 slash line and a 47 wRC+. Despite his pull-oriented right-handed stroke seemingly being a good fit for the Green Monster, he had also gone deep just once — in a road game, no less. Understandably, the Fenway faithful weren’t exactly enamored with the player who had come East in February as a part of the multi-player deal that sent high-performing southpaw Kyle Harrison to Milwaukee.

Then things turned around. Since June 9, Durbin has slashed a robust .298/.363/.532 with a 145 wRC+ over 158 plate appearances. Moreover, he has homered nine times, with four of the blasts clearing Fenway’s fabled left-field wall. The most recent of the bunch was an eighth-inning game-decider that lifted the Red Sox to the 14th of their franchise-record-tying 15 consecutive wins.

What exactly did Durbin do to rebound from his disappointing early-season results? I asked him that question in the days leading up to the All-Star break, but before doing so, a related inquiry was in order: How does the present-day Durbin compare to the then-23-year-old New York Yankees prospect I spoke to in May 2023? Read the rest of this entry »

Three interviews — two with pitchers, another with a hitter — were published here at FanGraphs over the past week. All were the result of lengthy conversations, and in each case, worthwhile snippets landed on the cutting-room floor. This week’s column will lead with those leftovers, which come courtesy of Drew Rasmussen, Cole Sulser, and Pete Alonso.

We’ll start with Rasmussen, who addressed his ability to command his offerings, particularly his four-seam/two-seam/cutter combination.

“Command is kind of a sliding scale,” said the Tampa Bay Rays right-hander, whose 4.3% walked rate ranks lowest among qualified hurlers. “Some days it’s really good and some days it’s not so good. The job is to figure out what you have as quickly as possible. On days when my command is really good… I would say that is situation-driven. If I need a ball on the ground, I can throw it with a little more tail and a little less carry. If I’m just trying to steal strike one, maybe I don’t want the [movement] profile to be as big; that way it has a better chance of staying in the zone.

“Conversely, on days that I’m not overly confident with my command, I simplify to the absolute max,” he continued. “We’re going to try to just throw the same one over and over again. Then, hopefully at some point over the course of the outing, something clicks and I start to get more and more confident, and comfortable, with the command I have that day.” Read the rest of this entry »

Pete Alonso is known as a slugger, and for good reason. Now in his eighth major league season — and first with the Baltimore Orioles — the 31-year-old first baseman has 285 home runs and a .511 slugging percentage to go with a 132 wRC+ over 1,111 career games. His right-handed stroke produced 53 round-trippers in 2019, and he also boasts single-season totals of 45, 40, 38, and 37. Only in the truncated COVID campaign has he finished with fewer than 30.

It would be unfair to pigeon-hole the University of Florida product, and erstwhile New York Met, as simply a slugger, though. That’s especially true when it comes to Alonso’s approach at the plate, as well as his overall understanding of the craft. While the term “student of hitting” is arguably overused, it fits Baltimore’s top basher to a T.

In the latest installment of our Talks Hitting series — now 125 deep — Alonso addresses his self identity, the subtle adjustments he’s made over the years, and the studious manner in which he attacks pitchers. Our conversation took place at Fenway Park over the weekend.

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David Laurila: How would you define yourself as a hitter?

Pete Alonso: “I’d like to consider myself a line drive hitter that has strength, puts up really good professional at-bats, and can spoil pitches. I can kind of set traps. Ultimately, I’m a line drive hitter with strength.”

Laurila: You’re generally viewed as a power hitter. Do you like that label?

Alonso: “I love the label. Power is based on results. If you hit a ton of home runs and a ton of doubles, consistently, you’re a power hitter. It doesn’t matter what your physical stature looks like. If you get the power results, then you’re a power hitter.

“Honestly, I’m just trying to hit a hard line drive. That’s really all it is. Hit a hard drive, and not necessarily out in front. I’m better at just meeting the ball where it’s pitched and putting a swing on that. I’m not trying to produce power. I’m just trying to produce pure contact. I think chasing and producing pure contact is the best thing anyone can do. All good things happen on the sweet spot of the bat.”

Laurila: You mentioned setting traps. Can you elaborate on that? Read the rest of this entry »